Once it finally comes out, the sun sometimes does a better job at grabbing my kindergarteners’ attention than I do. I can’t blame them. I’ve been teaching long enough to anticipate this particular challenge. I have tools up my sleeve that keep my students engaged and refreshed, and maintain their learning momentum throughout the school day. Here are a few tech tricks that snap them out of their longing for summer vacation.
A variety of videos. Since our school only has one recess, I use video to give my students a brain break. It’s tough for five-year-olds to sit still all afternoon. When I begin a lesson, I use video as a warm-up. When we practice math, for instance, I start a short video using number sense. Boclips for Teachers is a video platform that houses education video for all ages, so I can always find a relevant, age-appropriate video there.
My kids love to dance and sing, so I add animated sing-alongs to a collection on the platform and queue them up for each lesson. If we’re working on letters, I have an entire collection of different videos that sing the alphabet in creative ways. I try to reinforce the same concept with different videos so that they’re exposed to a topic in multiple ways. The variety of content is bound to appeal to each learning preference and stick.
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