Using iPads at BMS Station in Grade 6

I recently visited three Grade 6 classes using iPads at Barrington Middle School Station Campus and found students engaged in a variety of learning activities in language arts, science, and social studies. The language arts students of Mary Palarz were working on writing with language variety. Students had recently begun using the app Notability for writing and were both typing writing examples and then using Notability’s highlighting features to label parts of speech. Adam Musolf’s science students began the class period by consulting online graphs and charts and then made inferences based upon the data. Students then used iPads in small groups to discuss a lesson on the thermal properties of a liquid and they reported their findings to the class. Finally, social studies teacher Nita Hunter began her class by showing an original instructional video that she created to explain to her students how to label various map features of ancient Egypt using Notability. Throughout the mapping lesson, students also used the online tool, TodaysMeet (todaysmeet.com) to discuss why the various geographical features may have led to the settlements depicted on the map.