Technology Based Resources include:
Seesaw, Starfall, and Epic
RESOURCES USED IN A Preschool Classroom
Seesaw provides the opportunity to share wonderful learning experiences with students. Seesaw has many different uses within the classroom. Seesaw can create assignments about topics and classroom themes that will help enrich student learning (Seesaw, 2024).
- Seesaw allows teachers to create examples of how to perform learning tasks (Seesaw, 2024).
- Seesaw has a free user platform (Seesaw, 2024).
- Seesaw is very user-friendly in the way that it allows teachers and students to share their day.
- Seesaw provides students with the opportunity who are still gaining language skills to take pictures of their work. Students can take pictures of their work to capture the moment and point to ideas and images that they feel are successful. Students can also create short videos of their work (Seesaw, 2024).
- Seesaw gives teachers the chance to create a variety of different lesson plans . As mentioned above, these technology resources are used in the preschool classroom. Seesaw contains many different lessons and activities such as early literacy, daily literacy, character building, math, language arts, and science just to name a few :)! All of these different areas of learning create interactive lesson plans for teachers and activities that embrace of all subject areas (Seesaw, 2024).
Starfall is a learning tool that contains multisensory games that provide students the opportunity to touch, hear, and see during the learning process (Starfall, 2024).
Starfall is a research based platform that syncs with state learning objectives for mathematics and English language arts (Starfall, 2024).
- The program focuses on engagement through content that feels like play. The program puts a great deal of interaction on play, exploration, and positive reinforcement that helps to create a confident child (Starfall, 2024).
Starfall is a reasonably priced program. The membership of the program is at a low cost for students and educators. The home membership is $35 a year. The teacher membership is $70 a year (Starfall, 2024).
Starfall puts a focus on emergent readers, phonemic awareness, and students with learning difficulties (Starfall, 2024). Starfall is a great choice for education purposes in lieu of other entertainment options (Starfall, 2024). Starfall uses activities that focuses on math, language arts, and music which combines different curriculum through a combination of activities. The activities include letter, number, and song recognition (Starfall, 2024).
Epic is a resource that is used as an online reading platform (Epic, 2024).
Epic is used for books to be read to students. It is a type of Read-To-Me audiobook. The reading on the Epic online platform creates music, sound effects, and fun narration for students (Epic, 2024).
Epic can be used during large group read aloud lessons on the main teaching board, for example a Starboard. Epic can also be incorporated during independent student work. As preschool teachers, many of us may have a time of the day called Work Time. Epic can be used during this time of the day when students practice their literacy and phonemic awareness skills by having the story being read to them (Epic, 2024).
Epic also contains a list of suggested activities for teachers and students to use throughout the school year. One example is a monthly calendar with fun and innovative activities (Epic, 2024).
Engaging Activities
https://www.getepic.com/calendars/download?m=December&y=2024
Epic also suggests at home activities for more learning fun
https://cdn-gcp-media.getepic.com/website/assets/educator-resources/Epic_ColoringPages.pdf
Epic is paid for by schools and districts. It is a premium paid plan paid for free school offering (Epic, 2024).
Readiness, Interest, and Learning styles
Seesaw assesses readiness by implementing different activities by category of subject (Seesaw, 2024). The same activities that assess learning readiness focus on the interest of students by creating activities that are engaging based on the learning style of the student (Seesaw, 2024).
Starfall assesses readiness of students by focuses on the different leveled activities that are a part of the Starfall program (Starfall, 2024). Starfall incorporates activities that are scaffolded based on student grade and age (Starfall, 2024). Therefore, the program allows the teacher to choose an activity that suits the interest and learning style of the student (Starfall, 2024).
Epic assesses the readiness of students by asking the students what their age and grade level are while picking books (Epic, 2024). Once the student makes that choice then the reading program provides students with books that are appropriate for their age group and interest (Epic, 2024).
Seesaw, Starfall, and Epic all take into account the different learning needs of students by creating lessons, activities, and resources that match the separate abilities of each student. Some of the content within the platform may be geared toward visual, auditory, or kinesthetic learners, but the beauty of each program is that they provide enough choices to accommodate that learning need (Seesaw, 2024) (Starfall, 2024) (Epic, 2024).
As an educator, it is so important to keep track of student progress so that there is a visual record of growth overtime (Seesaw, 2024). Seesaw is a great program because it allows students to keep track of their progress by recording themselves while completing different lesson activities (Seesaw, 2024). Therefore, the growth can be tracked by going back to the previous lesson to identify what has changed from lesson to lesson (Seesaw, 2024).
Epic is another program that tracks growth the best way for students (Epic, 2024). Epic is able to track the number of books read by students (Epic, 2024). This program gives students the chance to show how many books have been successfully read overtime (Epic, 2024).
Seesaw and Epic are great tools that celebrate the learning achievements of all students. Seesaw and Epic allow students to show what they have experienced and created during the learning process (Seesaw, 2024) (Epic, 2024).
Please continue to keep track of what is offered throughout my blog so that new ideas can be implemented into your classroom!
References
References
Epic. (2024). Epic!
https://www.getepic.com/app/edu-dashboard
Starfall. (2024). Starfall education.
Seesaw. (2024). Resource library. Community library.
https://app.seesaw.me/library/seesaw
Murawski, W. W., & Scott, K. L. (2019). What really works with universal design for learning. SAGE Publications.
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