And it's at the district level that for our purposes, we need to kind of group things together. And so it made sense for us to pair pre-K and K together, first and second grade together, and then grades three through five. So by doing that, we were like, okay, that made it a little bit more manageable.
That was only nine lessons that we were doing because we decided that we were gonna do three per each of those bands. Then it was like, well, what are we actually going to teach in these lessons? What is it that we need our students to be learning? So as everything else, we always start with our standards. So we took a look at the standards.
And what we decided was, because we didn't know when in the school year this was going to be happening, we said, okay, let's look at the first half of the current year. And then let's look at for, in the case of the older grades, let's look at the standards that we cover in the second half of the prior year. So we still didn't have sort of a whole year that we could work with within those standards.
We also thought about the things that we know that students always need more help with. They always need more help with things like main ID and details, sequencing of events, excuse me, identifying parts of the character or parts of a story, summarizing, huge, always a huge issue in the intermediate grade. So we knew that those were gonna be some topics in terms of literacy that we could easily implement because they've had that, it's gonna be scaffolded throughout the years.
So then it was like, okay, well, what are our themes gonna be? What do we wanna have this work around? So this is where we really started to dive into the template galleries and the curriculum options that are already built in within Wixie. And this was just, it was so inspirational. And so much of a treasure trove, the Wixie team has done such a great job of putting things together.
And so we started, oh, there's all this transportation things. There's all of these weather related things, the mitten, the color monster came out as something that we could use with students. Even some things with the math.
Oh, we can do some area and perimeter. Does it, I mean, we'd like to work smarter, not harder. And so having a lot of those templates already ready to go for us, or that maybe just need a little bit of tweaking really made the process a lot simpler and easier for us.
In terms of themes, we love a good theme. We are elementary school teachers. So we do love a good theme, certainly helps it make it more engaging.
And so we decided, and I'll go out here and show you here in just a second. Of the three, even though we're calling them snow day lessons, we really only wanted one to focus on a winter type scenario because as Sam says, we have had schools. We've just had a group a couple of weeks ago, have to shut down and go virtual.
And so we didn't want everything to be snow related. So coming up with those activities and themes, again, from what we found within Wixie itself, but then also looking at our other supplemental materials that we have. We're very fortunate in AACPS.
We have a lot of things available to us. So we have things like Scholastic Literacy Pro, Discovery Education. We have quite a few different databases that we were able to pull from as well.
So what we ended up with, and I will go out to our site here. And Sam has dropped the link there so you can see that. So these are what we ended up with.
So again, there's a winter one for each one. We can't not do a snow day one after all, but we opted for topics that we thought would be very engaging for our students. So we have the mitten, we did transportation.
We have something there with our feelings and emotions, which is actually based on the color monster. What kid doesn't love a good dinosaur activity? So we threw that one in for second grade. And then I have to give a shout out to my own children for our superhero theme.
They were very much obsessed, and still actually are, with the Avengers. So that kind of provides some inspiration for the superhero one as well. So we just tried to find topics that we thought would be very highly engaging to students.
Because after all, they are going to be doing these activities on a day where they probably thought they were going to get away with not having to do anything. Let's be real here. So we want it to be something that was going to capture their attention.
So with that then, it kind of came down to, at this point, what is it that we wanted them to do? Making sure that they understood what was going to happen within these particular activities. Because as much as we would like to think that our students have an adult home with them, or an older sibling home with them to help them, we know that's just not reality. So it was very important to us as we worked through and built these activities, that we made them as accessible as possible for our students to do independently, and that they can navigate things independently.
And that was another, very much a guiding focus for us as we built these nine lessons. So with that in mind, we really utilized the instruction box. So if you open up any of those particular activities, and for example, I'm just going to go ahead and go into the mitten here.
Everyone loves the good mitten. We really worked to make sure that we utilized the instruction box. And so as you go through here, you'll see, particularly here on the front page, we wanted to set it up so the students also knew how Wixie would read aloud to them.
So instructions. We liked this too, because it was very easy for teachers to be able to go in later and modify these if possible. Because again, we're doing this at the district level.
And so we wanted, hey, they can see when the teacher opens this, oh, I can type in there, I can do something. So we have it set so the instructions open on each page when the students enter that page. We also liked that the teachers had the ability, if they wanted to customize this a little bit more for their students, that they could record their own voices, being able to do those instructions.
We chose not to do that. We didn't want people to not realize that maybe there is already recording and then you have the instructions and then they may not match if they made changes. But it is a nice customization thing to give it that little bit more personal touch, especially for those asynchronous days.
So within those instruction boxes, we also made sure to always include how students should respond. Are you going to use drag and drop? Are you going to use the drawing tool? Are you going to use the audio or video? And as you go through and look at those, you'll see we tried to be very specific in those. To kind of back up how we use those instruction boxes, we also wanted to make sure that on the page itself was very clear.
So we tried as much as possible to use the icons. Hopefully you're all familiar. If you go into the image folder here within Wixie itself and go into symbols and icons, there's actually a folder of all of the Wixie symbols and for both the primary and the intermediate or standard interface.
So we put these on the pages where appropriate and we tried to be as consistent as possible too in terms of where those icons were going to be located on the page. You'll see we did them less and less as we got to the older students because we're giving them the opportunity to respond in multiple ways. It's not as clear cut as maybe with our pre-K and our K little guys where we really focused on drawing and maybe doing some things with the microphone and the audio recording, but just giving them that visual.
Again, if they haven't been in Wixie very much, sure we're telling them in the instructions how we want them to respond, but then they can have that visual to link to the tool as well. So those were really things that we really concentrated on. We also changed the text box default text when appropriate.
And again, you'll see this more in the intermediate ones, but we know for students so often that when they come in here, it's like, well, what box am I supposed to type in? Or they delete it by mistake or they delete the text and they're like, what can we do? So we've tried here whenever you come in and add that text box within the Wixie page, if you go to edit, you can actually change that from type text here to whatever you want it to say, and it acts the same way. So when they click on that box, it disappears. So they don't have to backspace it because nobody's got time for that.
But it still gives them that information. So we might say something like type the character's name here. Just again, as clear as possible for our students, we don't want them to be frustrated.
And so, and have the least number of questions as possible. So those were some things that we did on the page itself to make sure that students wouldn't get frustrated. When it came to building the activities themselves, again, with that theme of less frustration for our students, we really tried to keep our fonts simple and minimal so they weren't distracting, easy to read.
We use the bubble tool to really emphasize the text. We didn't necessarily use the speech bubbles or the thought bubbles, but we really used a lot of the square options. So we would click into a lot of those and come over here to our bubble, and then just go ahead and choose this basic square, or even just the sort of like slight banner one if one it.
That also made it easier for us. And we were working on these jointly in different times. So we knew, hey, we didn't have to keep there and keep fiddling with the text to make it fit within the box.
It would automatically change for us. It was also very easy for us to link things, or not link things, lock things on the page. It took me about probably four, I was probably on like the fourth one of these activities when we were building it, when it was like, well, why don't you just go in and change your default text? So pro tip there, I kind of learned that one the hard way.
Every time I was going in, I was highlighting my text, changing my text, and changing the font size, and all of that. I was like, you can do that under your settings, Carrie. And so if you decide to do something like this, or even anything, and you're always using the same font, go ahead and make that change under your settings to change your default text.
It will save you quite a bit of time. I can definitely speak to that. The other thing when we were building, we were very purposeful in making sure that our format followed the same, not just the same thing from all of these lessons, but also kind of a typical day.
So all of our lessons start with some kind of engagement or hook piece. We built in the literacy for the most part, there's one or two where the science just seemed to fit in there a little bit better. But then we went to literacy, and then we always included a brain break as well.
And we had a lot of fun finding different kinds of brain breaks. If you go on, we use some things like YouTube videos. We also used just a lot of GIFs.
So a lot of the snow ones, they're acting out different motions. Again, shout out to my own children for the superhero ones. They had, they brainstormed so many different superhero brain breaks that the students could act out that we had to, I think we ended up with two or three different brain breaks in that particular lesson.
So we included that. We then went to math. Part of the other reason for including math towards the end was simply the theme had been very much established at that point.
So we could be a little bit more flexible with what we were doing. And then we always ended with some kind of reflection, just so the teachers would have an idea, hey, how did you like this lesson? So we made sure to include that as well. We really like, we also tried to include a little bit of social emotional activities, particularly for our little guys.
We thought that was important on a day where they're not gonna be with all their friends, that they would be able to explore some of those concepts. Absolutely, and thank you, Sam, for bringing that up. All of the lessons include math.
All of them include some piece of literacy. And then from there, we decided to include one other content area. And it was either science, social studies, or we opted for that social emotional component.
We just felt that that was very much typical of a regular day for us. And so we wanted this to mirror, it might not be as long as what they would have on a regular day, but still have that sense of familiarity and routine, which we know students actually really do thrive on. They might fight it, but they do thrive on it.
And in speaking of building, that also kind of gave, we hope, teachers inspiration for how they can create their own lessons. So even if they didn't use the ones that we have provided, they could at least get some ideas, even pull a few pages. And that goes back to, you'll see as you go through some of these lessons.
Again, we want it to be easy for our students. We want it to be easy for our teachers. And that idea of the standards and kind of going across, we knew that we were gonna have to provide some options.
And so you'll see as you go through here, particularly it's most evident when you look at the math, but we do have it for the literacy piece as well. What we're gonna do in pre-K is gonna be very different even from what we do in kindergarten. There's certainly a range with our, from third grade up to fifth grade.
So the teachers, we can come in here and they can simply delete the slides that they don't want to use. So even though we have those particular elements, it might be slightly different standards the teacher can choose from based on the grade level that they're gonna be working with. And they'll have to literally come in and delete the slides they don't want before pushing this out to their students.
So we were very mindful of that as well. Again, a little bit more with math in that aspect because that those standards definitely have a much broader range, if you will, than maybe something with the literacy piece. Yeah, and some of our teachers said, choose an activity, page 15 or page 16.
So it's nice that they gave student choice as well. Go ahead, Carrie, this page. I'm sorry, you're right.
You're on a roll, yeah. I'm on a roll. Yeah, we're fighting each other.
We had so much fun with these. So in terms of some other kind of tips and tricks and an activity setup, we really tried to use this default sticker library setting a default folder when it was appropriate. We do also know though that when you create that folder that's locked so that only the students can only get to certain images, that is for the whole entire project.
So it didn't work for every one of these, but when appropriate, we tried to do that. We also- Particularly for our younger students because we know that they aren't gonna be able to search. So we really made sure that if there was one activity, they were definitely gonna need a folder of stickers.
For example, in the case of the mitten, it's gonna take them to the sticker library that they need for the very first activity that they have on here. But all of the other pages are going to be, I'm seeing Lindy's stuff going there. I absolutely love those.
Yes, that would be great. Could we have different image libraries for each page? That would be great. So we were very purposeful in that as well.
So those are the ones that we need for this particular activity. So then for the other pages, we made sure to include the graphics that they needed, the images that they need directly on the page itself. Absolutely.
And we really tried to utilize the lock, protect the scale and clone options, especially for our headers and titles. And you saw that we have some charts and grids and stuff. We didn't want any of that moving, especially for our little guys.
And especially since a lot of our students are just using that trackpad mouse, we wanted to make sure that there was as little frustration as possible. So we locked and protected as much as we could. And if we did to do some drag and drops, we also protected the image and turned off that scaling so it would prevent it from being misshapen.
The other thing that we did is we made sure that we provided any hyperlinks both on the page of the project itself and also in the instructions. So we really wanted to put them in both spots so they didn't miss it and they're not thinking, what am I supposed to do on this page? And that was really important to us that we could do that in Wixie and that hyperlinking was super easy. We did link out for activities that we couldn't embed, but that was rare.
And Carrie is showing something there for you. This was an example of what we did there. So these, if they select on the headphones, takes them out directly to Discovery Ed.
Because we work with class link, we have that single sign-on so the students can select that. It's gonna take them directly to the song and they can listen to it. But then we also put that link here within the directions, or excuse me, the instructions box as well.
So two options depending on what they need to do. Yeah, and in a few cases, we tried to reduce that reading fatigue by embedding videos. And in some cases also, those were for our read aloud stories for our little guys.
We also did some uploading of PDFs, which we know Wixie does beautifully. Particularly one of our lessons that's off the top of my head was that it was a mystery science video clip and they had some great matching worksheets. And we thought, these are awesome.
Let's just upload them right in. And of course we made notations that the students were to use the text boxes and the paint tools in order to fill that out. But it allowed us to save some time in terms of, there it is right there, recreating this whole chart.
And we just use the upload PDF option, which was really nice for us. And this is also something consistent that our students are used to because they use mystery science during science throughout PK through five. I think that was everything for that.
I mean, Carrie, anything you wanna add? I just want, you'll see as you go through and as we were building the activities, we really tried to provide a variety of activities. It's not, everything's not all typing. In fact, you'll find there's actually very little typing that is required.
We know typing can be such a frustrating skill for students. And quite frankly, why does everything have to be typed out for them? Or why do they have to type all of their thoughts out? So we really encourage the use of the drawing, the image libraries. We have almost everything that requires some type of explanation or response.
It's, you can do a video or you can do the audio recording. Now that they can't type, we want them to have that opportunity as well. So that's certainly an option, but giving them that student choice, that student agency to choose what works best for them, we thought was also going to help them stay engaged in these activities and be more willing to complete them and then just kind of give a pathway through.
Yeah. And certainly a teacher could use these for assessment purposes, but that wasn't really our focal point. It was more so building those digital literacy skills, having fun and getting to practice some of those skills or upcoming skills.
So then of course we had to spread the word to everybody cause we thought they were great. We knew they were great. So one of the things that we did and you'll see on our site that Carrie showed earlier is that along with every one of our Wixie files, we also included some teacher directions.
And Carrie, do you happen to have that open? I can pull, is there one in the security? And I'll drop it in the link too. Yeah, I just have the superhero one right here on the top of my, so it's in the chat for you guys to look at as well. But we wanted to have sort of like a one pager, it ended up being a little bit more than that, but a little snapshot of what the teachers were expected to do, or if they were new to Wixie, how they could easily modify and get this right into the learning management system.
So at the very beginning there, we just have a little blurb about how this lesson was designed. We also made sure to note that students don't have to complete all of it and that you do have the option to delete. And we also did a little few tips in there, like making sure that they hit the play button when they're trying to hear the directions and things like that.
That next section, we have how to use it. So we broke down the different content areas there and how teachers can customize. We also made sure that we included some of the Wixie tutorials from our website, but also from YouTube from Wixie.
As you scroll down a little bit more, you'll see that we also made sure that for each slide, we included the content standard that we were covering. And we also included the ISTE standards, which mirror our Maryland Digital Learning Standards as well. So a really nice snapshot for teachers, they can kind of quickly go in and see, and you'll notice on this one, we had a range of content standards for three through five, especially in that math section.
So they can pick and choose what works for them. And you'll see here, cause I know this popped up as just a question in the chat, in terms of for our students or the parents who may not be familiar with Wixie, here on the teacher page, we have links to our student intro page. We have a whole website that we have fully developed that has how to use, not just Wixie, all of our applications.
And so we encourage our teachers, if they're going to be using these with their students to make sure when they post this in the LMS, that they also post those directions there, if it's not something that the students are 100% comfortable with.
