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"The summer is a great time to explore new-to-you iPad apps that you might want to add to the iPads that you have in your classroom. Each day this week I'm going to share a selection of apps appropriate for four ranges of pre-K-12 grades. Yesterday, I shared 21 apps for Pre-K through 2nd grade. Today, I have apps 3rd through 5th grade students. Apps for grades six through eight will be shared tomorrow. Apps for 9th through 12th grade will be shared on Thursday. "

"So this collection wasn't as easy to curate as it'd seem. It wasn't a matter of simply choosing the best apps across content areas-math, science, social studies, etc. The title says "every iPad," which seems to imply universal needs. Every. iPad. Same with age and grade level, reading level, and gender. So we took at look at apps that could be used in any content area, and at (almost) any grade level K-5. (Phonics Genius likely wouldn't be as necessary in later elementary grades as it might in K-3, for example.) The focus is on literacy, content, and play. An argument could be made that elementary school students may be better served with an Encyclopedia app rather than Google Search. You almost may want something with a subscription as Brainpop has, or a slightly more child-friendly word processor than Pages. Substitute away!"

As a school librarian, I try to offer spaces where students can create, make, and innovate. Trying to offer a makerspace to 100% of the student population can quickly become limiting due to space. Offering a mobile classroom makerspace solves this problem. A mobile classroom makerspace library program allows classroom teachers to check out 6 to 8 makerspace activities with the needed supplies packed together in one cart. Teachers can check-out a cart for their classroom for a week. During that week teachers can unpack the activities, and create a pop-up makerspace in their classroom when it fits into their schedule.      Last year I tried this at Ed White E-STEM with kindergarten and first grade classes. The teachers and students loved the mobile classroom makerspace carts so much we added a cart for 2nd grade this school year. The 2nd grade teachers want to take it a step farther. They want the library to supply a book with each activity, so they can use the cart as part of a Literacy Station. The students will explore, make, read, and then write about their experience.   The second year of this program has been a learning experience. This year we were able to fine tune the offerings in each cart by teachers expressing what worked, and what didn't work last year. We used teacher input as one measure to create this year's inventory list for the mobile classroom makerspace carts. 5 things to think about when creating a mobile classroom makerspace."

"I'm now a little over a month into my new role as the coordinator of our brand-new makerspace in my PS-8th grade school here in Seattle, and I'm honestly loving it every bit as much as I expected! Over the course of this month, 450 students made prototype boats for their stuffies (PK), built "doodle bots" (K and 1),  "hacked" their notebooks with surface-mount LEDs (2), made dioramas powered by Hummingbird Robotics kits (3 and 4), designed and laser cut labels for their new classroom spaces (5), made postcards using the greenscreen of themselves visiting exotic locales (5 French), built casino games for math class (6), and built symbolic representations of their personal core values (8). 7th grade will be building turbine-driven generators next week! And, that's not even a comprehensive list… In the process of collaborating with my colleagues to develop and implement these projects with our students, I've figured out a few tips to pass along to educators at other schools initiating similar programs."

"8th Grade Class 3D Prints an Amazing Prosthetic 'Spider-Man' Hand for 5-Year-Old Dante"

"This week, Grade 5 began a unit on Volume, Capacity and Surface Area. On a weekly basis, I take combined groups from the 4 grades consisting of the higher achievers, while the classroom teachers concentrate on the mainstream group and students needing more individual instruction to achieve success. I made a conscious decision this week to focus on using iPads with my group to explore both volume/capacity as well as surface area."

"Assessment reports and online grading tools take away the tedious task of collecting and grading quizzes, as well as provide educators with spreadsheet-style assessment results that can focus on the student, the question, or even the topic. To help bring solutions to the classroom, our Teq PD team created this eBook, to inform you about some of our favorite and most useful assessment apps."

"Last year at this time, I was trying not to think about kindergarteners. I was still teaching ninth grade English and had just accepted a job teaching technology to K-5. I was excited about the challenge, and I knew that I'd bitten off more than I could chew. Developing the tech curriculum challenged me to teach programming or at least computational thinking at each elementary grade level. Our school is mid-pivot in technology -- we're in our second year of a middle school 1:2 iPad program, our first year of having a cart of iPads available for elementary, and our last year of two PC labs for the students to use (next year we'll have only one lab). Knowing this, I wanted to design a program that mostly used tablet-based tools."

"ne of the most common questions math teachers hear from their students is, "why does this matter?" They are constantly trying to convince students that math is useful and could help them in their everyday lives. But it can be a tough sell. Word problems alone often feel contrived and students see right through them. Thomas Petra has taught math at every level for more than 20 years and encountered dubious students at every grade level. That's why he developed Real World Math, a free website with lessons based on Google Earth aimed at grades 5 - 10. "I was trying to show them actual applications of the math ideas that they see in the textbook," Petra said."

"Last year at this time, I was trying not to think about kindergarteners. I was still teaching ninth grade English and had just accepted a job teaching technology to K-5. I was excited about the challenge, and I knew that I'd bitten off more than I could chew. Developing the tech curriculum challenged me to teach programming or at least computational thinking at each elementary grade level. Our school is mid-pivot in technology -- we're in our second year of a middle school 1:2 iPad program, our first year of having a cart of iPads available for elementary, and our last year of two PC labs for the students to use (next year we'll have only one lab). Knowing this, I wanted to design a program that mostly used tablet-based tools."

"CK-12 has long offered tutorials and practice exercises for middle school and high school science and math students. Today, CK-12 unveiled a new collection for resources for elementary school mathematics. The collection is organized by grade level (grades 1 through 5) and skill. The resources are a mix of videos and online practice exercises."

"This blog post includes a 5 minute video, a lesson plan and examples of student that show integration of visual art curriculum and Computational Thinking in my grade 3 classroom. Thank you to Bea Leiderman, Carolyn Skibba, Douglas Kian and my experience at the Apple Institute in Berlin for this idea.  Using Keynote and Kandinsky is Bea's idea. It's brilliant. Bea, Carolyn and I went to the Bauhaus Archive in Berlin where we saw Kandinsky's work. We also had in depth workshops on Keynote. The combination of these experiences at the Apple Institute in Berlin lead to this idea and a project. Bea, Douglas and I are currently working on a project where we are investigating how these ideas of art, coding, and Computational Thinking might fit together. This is the early stage of this team project. This video gives an overview of the lesson and a chance to peak inside my grade 3 classroom:"

"omputational thinking is one of the core objectives that runs through the computing program of study in England from Key Stage 1 to Key Stage 4. Before computers can be used to solve a problem, computational thinking refers to understanding the problem itself and the ways in which it could be resolved. Software engineers and computer scientists for example, routinely engage in computational thinking. As a higher order thinking skill, computational thinking has applications both across and beyond the school curriculum. There are four key techniques to computational thinking: Abstraction - focusing on the important information only, ignoring irrelevant details Algorithms - developing a step-by-step solution to the problem Decomposition - breaking down the problem into smaller, more manageable parts Logic - looking for similarities among and within problems Learning to program is one of the best ways to develop computational thinking, as it uses each one of these techniques. My intention here is to show an example of a lesson in which computational thinking is taught at Key Stage 1 (5 to 7 years) through programming. I took the lesson plan (attached above) from The Barefoot Computing Project and I taught it to my 1st grade class last week.  It required the children to work in pairs to create step-by-step instructions through pictures.  The pairs then swapped each other's instructions, which they used to draw the 'crazy character' that the other child had in mind."

"You may not have thought much about the iPad background screens of student iPads.  Whether you share a cart with your grade level or have a small set to use or even have 1:1 iPads in the classroom, the iPad background screen is key real estate that you want to integrate into your iPad management plan.  Students look at the lock screen every time they open their iPads and the background whenever they switch apps.    Here are 5 ways to utilize that space:"

"Formative assessment strategies in the classroom provide both teachers and students with invaluable information about what students understand, and what they don't.  These ungraded assessments are valuable guides for students to help them enhance their performance. They also help teachers determine if further instruction is necessary. When formative assessments are used consistently, and effectively, neither teachers nor students are surprised by their final grades. Some formative assessments can take just a few minutes, while others require longer periods of time. The following are 5 great formative assessment strategies for teachers."

"There's nothing quite as satisfying as the soft, smooth roll of pen on paper. That ability to scribble, strike, crumple and tear. But what about the downsides of this ancient medium? Endless printing cycles. Lack of searchability. A desk stacked to the roof with essays and sheets to mark. It's these frustrations and a determination to streamline the classroom that have led many educators to trade in their pen for a stylus, and begin embracing the the brave new world of digital annotation."

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