[ARCHIVED] How to use canvas with 5-7 year old children?

[greenfj]

Hi, My P-12 school has recently purchased canvas. I am looking for some examples and info about how to start to use canvas with our young children. The video of Mrs park's First Grade Class is lovely, but we really need more explicit info about how to build canvas tasks for children aged 5-7. Can anyone please suggest how to get started, and some online resources or examples?

Thanks, Fiona

[schela]

I teach 6th grade so this would be helpful for me to follow as well!  Great question!

[azwaldo]

1. How are these young learners using hardware and software already?
2. What do you imagine them being able to do?

*edit*

Fiona, are your students using tablets, iPads, Chromebooks...? What standards can be met?

Have you considered creating simple lessons as webquests?

Tech Quests ( K-2​, 3-5​, 6-8​ ) at webquest.org

Canvas Commons Search: K-2, modules, specialty

[greenfj]

Hi John,

Currently my class are 1:1 ipad savvy - they use Explain Everything to create explanations of their learning and ideas, literacy and numeracy apps to support skill development, and some internet sites. We also have a class blog.

I'd love to have a place where each student can easily store and share their digital creations (currently some tchrs are moving to seesaw for this)

Thanks,

Fiona

[gpiazza]

One elementary teacher shared that she uses it with stations.  The home page is designed with images that represent various stations in the room.  Students visit a station, log in to Canvas on an iPad, click the applicable image for the station, and access all the materials they need for that station.  If the activity involves an app, she includes a link that opens that app on the iPad. 

The rich content editor has a video/audio record option.  The teacher can record a prompt, students listen and respond by recording an audio file or video file.

[greenfj]

Thanks Giovanna. Yes, using images that link to materials is useful. I will have to find out more about the video/record option that you mentioned

Fiona

[mjoaquin]

Giovanna, do you have a screenshot of her Canvas homepage that she would be willing to share? Are these shared iPads or 1:1 devices? Thanks for any additional info!

[joseph_allen]

Great question.  We are in our first year of Canvas deployment.  We are doing OK with secondary, but are struggling a little bit with the K-5 group.  Teachers have been asked to create a home page which is largely used by parents to get information.  We don't use the gradebook with the K-5 students, we do with the older students.  I myself am looking for more solid examples of Canvas use in a K-5 environment.

[mburkhart_sales]

Hi Fiona!

Some of this might be dependent on your curriculum goals and available devices, but here are a few examples of things I've developed, or things I've seen in other K-2 classrooms using Canvas.

1. Reading Log - As my students progressed through K-2 with different teachers and different abilities - one thing was constant. The required at home reading log:) I recently visited some Canvas rock stars who were using an ASSIGNMENT to record student independent reading. The teacher used the same, single assignment for the entire year. She limited the response to only media recorder and text. This allowed the students to respond via video, audio, or written words, depending on their comfort, preference, and abilities. The assignment was linked on the homepage, so anytime a student logged in, they just clicked the link and started talking or writing about what they were reading. Because this was a single assignment,  the teacher could easily view multiple submissions and give video feedback to the students. The teacher reported that the students really enjoyed watching videos of the teacher "talking to them" and she appreciated the extra insight she got into her students reading and comprehension compared to a box checked on a reading log.

A single assignment can also be used to record reading. Students can video themselves reading, listen to it, select the best, and submit to you to review.

2. Discussion Posts - Not traditionally thought of as a an elementary feature, but it is really useful and easy - especially in the mobile app. Students have the option to reply with pictures, video, or text. I like using discussions for students to share their world and how it connects to the learning goal with students around them. One example I've seen is students taking pictures of geometric shapes they find in their home, identifying them, and posting to the group for others to see. I also have seen them used for practicing grammar in context. Let's say you want students to work on using descriptive words, and also proper punctuation. Post an interesting image, and ask students to write about it - using descriptive words and minding their punctuation. You can even deliver these instructions using video. You can set the discussion so students can't see each others post until they post their own, or you can allow them to see right away if some students would benefit from modeling. In 1st grade, I've seen this used in that way, however student were just learning how to log in, so every student logged in using the same account. Students typed their name or said their name if using video at the beginning of the post.  By the end of the year, the students were logging in independently with their own account and posting to discussions using text, video and images.

3. Resource providing - As you mentioned in your post, Canvas is a great way to post resources to be used by parents at home, but it also a great place to post digital resources that you might use in class that day, or post resources for students to use. I have see some teachers create a page for every day with the resources that they use, students might need to access, etc. Every day, the make that "daily page" their home page, so when parents/students log in to canvas, they are seeing the work of the day. It just takes a few seconds to change the home page from page settings. Also - if you create an event on the calendar with content, or an assignment with no submission requirement - the content can be launched and viewed from the calendar itself. So, some teachers I have worked with preferred this method. Students/parents just go to the calendar, click on the day, and they are in the right place. (Also helps with Calendar skills)

I'd love to hear your thoughts on these ideas! Let me know how I can help, and please share your successes!

[terry_maness]

Thanks for these wonderful ideas. I am just getting Levano Ideapad Miix 300's with my class and excited to learn new ways to use our devices. These ideas will certainly get me started! Look forward to more ideas and maybe even adding a few of my own!

[kmeeusen]

Marisa:

These are awesome suggestions! I teach in higher ed, and am also our Canvas Admin and provider of professional development for faculty. I started perusing this discussion because many things that work in K-12, also work in higher ed. Learners are learners! Your suggestions, and others in this discussion, amply prove I was right.

Some of the suggestions I would add (or are amplifications on yours) for you and Fiona include:

• Keep navigation simple: I love your suggestion of rotating out home pages, and this is easy in Canvas. As a work-flow suggestion I would create an unpublished "Teacher's Resources" module to house the various home pages so that they are unavailable to students, but are always available to the teacher for use and modification. You can learn more about how unpublished content works @How do I use Draft State in Pages?  Furthermore, I would severely limit the number of links displayed in the left-side course navigation menu. Work from Modules, because any content posted in a published module are always available to the student, even when you have hidden "Pages", "Assignments", "Quizzes" etc. in the navigation menu. Learn more @What are Modules for instructors?
• Use lots of Images: Use them to convey content and ideas, use them for navigation, use them to engage students. Images are a double-edged sword though. You must assure that your classroom is accessible to all students. Use alt-text, if the image is used to convey content, provide that content in an alternate format. You can learn more about accessibility in Canvas @General Accessibility Design Guidelines . If you want to learn more about some of the great tricks that can be done with images in Canvas using the HTML Editor (for more adventurous faculty), enroll in the CanvasHacks Demo Course. This open Canvas course incluses how-tos for many hacks and you don't need to be a coder to use most of them. Enroll @https://resources.instructure.com/enroll/8R9H7B
• Use Canvas as a platform to begin teaching 21st Century Skills: you alluded to some of this in your posting, but Canvas can be a great tool for teaching youngsters how to use computers, how to navigate on the internet, how to communicate digitally, how to upload and download files, and much more. Within a Canvas classroom, you can create a Collaboration space for groups of student. A Collaboration space is like a mini Canvas Classroom where students can create content together. You can learn more about Collaboration @What are Collaborations?

Finally, here is a link to a good YouTube video about Canvas and K-12: Get to know Canvas K-12 - YouTube

And remember, this K-12 Community Group is a great resource for learning more!

Agent K

[greenfj]

Hi Kelley,

Great tips thank you. I am particularly interested in the collaboration space you mentioned. I have a few very able children who could well work on their own project...good holiday project for me on how to set one up. Thanks for the links, I'll start there.

Fiona

[greenfj]

Hi Marissa,

Thanks for your reply. We have ample devices 1:1 iPads for all P-2 students which is fabulous. Love the reading log idea - will look into that, and the discussion post concept. Providing resources to access at home is fab too, although we do use our class blog for that. Currently our parents have not been given access to Canvas, do you know if parent access could be given to a small section of a school - for example a few year levels?

Thank you,

Fiona

[clong]

Thanks for sharing these great tips Melissa!

[p_mcmurray]

Hi, we have begun using Canvas from Years 5-12 but I have been experimenting with it in Year 2. I have set their Courses with links to sites that we are using in class so that we don't have students ending up all over the place. Students are confident that the sites are useful and can access them again on their own. Also I use quizlets for basic drills - sight words and times tables.

The other day I gave the students an assignment to record a story (not read a story) and afterwards we listened to them again to compare with their written piece. It was perfect to help the students become self-reflective learners. That's why I love Canvas - and why I'll try to find more and more ways to differentiate their learning experience so that all my students can show what they know and express it in multiple ways.

[kmeeusen]

Nice, Phillip!

You are teaching skills that will last a life time. Canvas is a great tool for accomplishing this, because a Canvas classroom can be as simple or complex as needed, and can be used to stepladder concepts and skills.

KLM

[greenfj]

Hi Philip, Great ideas, thank you. I must get started! Fiona

[azwaldo]

Great topic, any news?

[Melissa27]

I LOVE the idea to have students record their own story!  I have never thought to do that for writing!  With teaching my students online this year, I think I'm going to have them record themselves telling a story first, and then have them write it with the ability to listen to their own story.  This would especially help the students who struggle to think of anything to put on paper when asked to write.

[p_mcmurray]

I like the multiple attempt and resubmit ideas even for younger students. As teachers we get so time poor that we often have to move on to the next thing but I'm starting to think about how to write my quizzes so that students can achieve mastery via multiple attempts rather than simply record their first. I want to use the wrong answer feedback to not simply say "Wrong" but rather get students thinking - so using open questions. If anyone has used this effectively I'd appreciate your comments.

(Also I hope that you've voted for the idea to allow multiple attempts of the questions students got wrong idea, rather than having to resubmit the entire quiz)

[p_mcmurray]

I thought I'd share an update on some ideas we are using.

We have been using the Announcement feature at the group level (not course level as there are 3 Year 2 classes using the same course) to provide links to websites, answergarden collaboration tasks etc. Remember to check out this discussion (https://community.canvaslms.com/thread/8388?commentID=30716#comment-30716 ) so that your students don't get "lost" navigating away from their Canvas page. The other advantage is that students can switch tabs between Canvas where the task is defined and the other tabs where the content or activities are.

I hope this helps.

Phil

[tmercer]

Check out #canvas4elem chat on Twitter.  You can find dates on CanvasLive.  They are generally every other Tuesday at 9:00p.m. EST.  There is on on 8/30/16 on Making Canvas More Elementary Friendly.

[azwaldo]

Can any here post a field report or three?

[p_mcmurray]

Hi Fiona

I have used Canvas all year now on Year 2 (You may have seen my other posts). I think you need to think about Canvas in the same way we teach reading and build up. I call Year 2 our Canvas Kindy. Really we have made Canvas the portal - the first point for a lot of links to other sites so that students get used to starting in Canvas for everything. I used tables to lay out the links and get small pics to help them navigate through to where they need to go.

The second thing we do is teach students about discussions and page creation. I use page creation lessons in Science and English to get them to produce work that other students could look at and discuss.

The greatest thing we did this year was use quizzes and mastery. Traditionally our exams and formal assessments are a mixture of questions that cover multiple outcomes. I broke from that. Instead I made a quiz for each outcome we had to assess. Here in Australia (NSW) I had about 12 for English and 15 for Maths. For all the tests where a multiple choice or single word answer was all that was required I wrote a quiz for those. I deliberately used a question bank with lots of the same style of question in them. Then the quiz could randomly select questions for each student. That way we didn't have to worry about cheating.

In addition we used the new Mastery option to allow students multiple attempts to show what they knew when it came to quizzes not how they performed on one day. This worked well especially as we randomised the questions so no student was simply memorising answers. I found students were looking at what they got wrong (no answers were given) and really thinking about their responses. I was impressed how this immediate feedback encouraged, challenged or even shocked some students. Most second attempts were more thoughtfully completed.

Next year we hope to use Mastery Pathways to allow this differentiation to be more finely controlled.

In summary, I think you need to think about 2 key things. Are you prepared to flip your teaching style to allow students to be more exploratory and self-directed. If you are then Canvas is wonderful. It will allow you to put content and links there for students and give time for reflection and discussion. My class have amazed me by the way they are thinking more critically, more open to explore and happy to share and support one another.

Sorry for the long reply but I have nothing but praise for the way Canvas can free me up to be more open, collaborative and flexible in my teaching. Ultimately though I have seen the students embrace change, learning and thinking!!! That's the best!

[angela_timmons]

How have you or you school used ePortfolios in the young grades.  While I see that the ePortfolio option needs to be created by the student.  I know that 2nd-4th grade students could do this on their own at my site just wondering if you are familiar with teachers of younger students doing this and how they have simplified the work flow.

[wbarnes]

It was our plan to use Canvas e-Portfolios as well when we started, but the requirement that students in grades K-2 set up their own drove us to SeeSaw for e-Portfolios. Our faculty, students and parents love it.

Winnie Barnes

Director of Organizational Initiatives

The Allen-Stevenson School

132 East 78th Street

New York, NY 10075

212-933-5221

Open a Technical Support Ticket<mailto:mailto:helpdesk@allen-stevenson.org>

“The smartest person in the room is the room.”

[Bobby2]

 @wbarnes ‌ do you use see saw within Canvas?

[wbarnes]

Our tech specialist inquired about Canvas adding it as an LTI, but we never heard back. It isn’t right now, but you can put a link in your Canvas page to Seesaw.

Winnie Barnes

Director of Organizational Initiatives

The Allen-Stevenson School

132 East 78th Street

New York, NY 10075

212-933-5221

Open a Technical Support Ticket<mailto:mailto:helpdesk@allen-stevenson.org>

“The smartest person in the room is the room.”

[Bobby2]

Hi  @greenfj  it's been a bit of time since you posted your question. How has everything gone? We are about to embark with canvas, a very similar situation to you when you asked.