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Copy your QR code and place it right on the Padlet board for kids to scan. No printing necessary!

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Here's a collaborative board about pumpkins

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EpicPals Collaborative Reading Project- Grades 1-4

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EpicPals Collaborative Reading Project- Grades 1-4

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Looking for a previous month or post about #EpicPals, click here

The current year's EpicPals Padlet boards and Google documents will remain active and accessible from Sept to June so feel free to go back and grab any of the Google docs from the current school year for your students to access at anytime. The Google docs will be closed at some point in July to be updated for the upcoming school year.

Here's what you need to know....

First, decide how you want to use the project with your class. Many have used this project as a way to challenge their higher level readers or as part of a guided reading group, or even as a weekly whole group read-aloud and then have students leave their own comments on the Padlet.
Next, print off the Google doc with the book choices and QR codes. You can also access the books on Epic by searching for the month's EpicPals collection by typing in "EpicPals" in the search bar. Click on the current month's collection to make a copy and assign it to your students. There is a separate collection for both the primary and intermediate collection so you can assign them to specific students.
Spend a little bit of time modeling how to use the QR codes to get to the Padlet boards and how to leave a quality response. (Remind your students to only leave their first names and state abbreviation on their Padlet posts.)

To access the month's Google Doc click on the #EpicPals image at the top of this page. Y ou will be able to choose from a primary or an intermediate version depending on the reading abilities of your kiddos. Both are located on the same Google doc. Print off the version(s) that works best for your classroom.

When students are done reading the book selection, they will scan the coordinating QR code on their sheet which will take them to a Padlet board specific for the book they read. If you'd rather push this sheet out to your students on your blog, Google Classroom, etc, the url's shown are clickable and linked to the boards as well so please make a copy of the doc before sending it out to your kiddos if you go this route.

If using iPads, download a QR reader app. I've found I-nigma to be the best one out there. It's free and does not contain any ads AND when your students scan the codes it takes them directly to the Padlet boards instead of accessing through the QR app.

As your students begin to post on the Padlet boards, please don't be overly concerned about spelling. This is meant to be a place where kiddos can read and respond to text authentically. I do check the boards about once a week to double check content and any questionable phonetic spelling. (The links to these boards are not public or searchable- you must have the link to access them). Emojis are all the rage with our youngers right now and while I don't mind emojis on the posts, please have a discussion with your students about using them sparingly and in context of their post not just for the sake of seeing how many they can use. Poop emojis will be deleted from posts.

How students should respond on the boards?

That's really up to you. What's best for your learners? Are you learning about text-to-self connections, character traits, retelling, summarizing or simply writing complete sentences to share your favorite part? Be creative, utilize the boards to match your learning objectives. Feel free to have your students include images or screenshots or create and upload video reflections- the sky's the limit. Most important, have fun with this! I will at times put a question on the Padlet for students to think about but these are simply springboards if needed and are NOT required.

If you have access to any of the books in another format, feel free to utilize it. Books do not have to be read on Epic although I will say my class is so completely engaged when using Epic now that they have the ability to also earn badges for reading (using iOs devices). Gamification is a wonderful motivator and engagement factor!

Do we have to do all of the books and do we have to do them in order?

No, you can do any or all of the books and there is no particular order. Let your students' interest gauge where they start. Again, make this fit your schedule and your learners.

Have fun! If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to get in touch with me.
You can email me at sjmalchow@pulaskischools.org

*You can also contact Bobbie Hopkins with any questions regarding the intermediate version. You can reach her on Twitter as well @bhopteacher

If you've not used Epic Kids Books, it is for educators- so run, don't walk, to check it out!! If you're interested in learning how to set up individual student accounts, click here to access some screen shots that will help you through the process.

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Looking for a previous month or post about #EpicPals, click here The current year's EpicPals Padlet boards and Google documents will remain active and accessible from Sept to June so feel free to go back and grab any of the Google docs from the current school year for your students to access at anytime.

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Create links, add photos and post videos to leave for your substitute to provide students. Include a video of you giving directions so there’s no miscommunication

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Find and save recipes, parenting hacks, style inspiration and other ideas to try.

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Everyone has a voice in the conversation when using Padlet

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#WEMTA16 PicCollage,Padlet,and Skitch Oh My!

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Padlet, Pic Collage, and Skitch Oh My! Sara Malchow Open up Pandora for pre-session music. Login to Padlet ahead of session. Present from bitly link for ease of clicking on links and large screen #WEMTA16 Presentation Link: bit.ly/MalchowWEMTA

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Padlet is one of my favorite collaborative web tools to use with students that I have used for years. I love how versatile it is and how one can access a Padlet wall on laptops, Chromebooks, iPads and Android devices! If you are not familiar with Padlet then click HERE.

This week I helped a 5th grade class incorporate technology into their novel study groups. The teacher wanted to use Padlet for each team to gather ideas and brainstorm the events that they read about each day. I mentioned how anyone can MAKE a background for a Padlet wall to help students organize their digital sticky notes. She was so excited about this possibility! I whipped up these graphic organizers for the teacher to choose from each week and I wanted to share them with YOU:

We ended up making four different Padlet walls--one for each novel study group. Thank goodness for the remake feature that allowed us to quickly and easily make four different walls! Press the button once and BOOM the new board pops up in your dashboard.

Once the students worked together on their individual devices to add their ideas to the graphic organizer, the teacher printed the wall, deleted the post-its and uploaded a different graphic organizer for the next assignment. That way she didn't have to keep recreating 4 different walls each time. Honestly, creating a wall takes NO time and she may have spent more time deleting the post-its. However, this worked for her because she didn't have to print out different QR Codes to get to the new Padlet walls (for those who were using iPads) and didn't have to post new urls in her Google Classroom.

Note: We learned the hard way. The sticky notes will appear in different locations on the graphic organizers IF the students use different devices but work on the same board. Therefore, we had one group use iPads while the other three groups used their Chromebooks.

Here is a quick video tutorial I created to show how you can upload these graphic organizers to be the background of a Padlet wall:

Note: As I indicate in the video, you will most likely need to expand your browser window so the graphic organizer doesn't appear cut off.

I created these graphic organizers in PowerPoint and saved them as a jpeg. I did have to play with the formatting a bit. After a little trial and error, I finally had the size that fit perfectly on the Padlet wall. Give it a try!

Other ideas for customized Padlet wall activities include:

Having students label a diagram (parts of a cell, parts of a plant, layers of the Earth, maps, etc.)

Digital Board Game

Sorts (words, shapes, math sentences, etc.)

Exit Cards

Graphing

What are some other ways we could customize Padlet activities for our students? Leave your ideas in the comments!

UPDATE: Since this post was written, Padlet has had a major facelift! If you are having trouble moving your sticky notes, go to the three dotted icon in the upper right hand corner and click Change Format. Select the green Canvas option. This will allow you to move the stickies anywhere on your screen.

If the graphic organizers are not fitting to your screen then you can try zooming out of your browser or dragging the corner of your browser until it comes through. Several people have contacted me about this issue and I have passed on the information to Padlet and hoping to hear back soon!

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How to Customize Padlet Walls: Plus FREE Graphic Organizers!

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This blog is intended to give helpful tips and tricks for incorporating technology into your classroom.

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KWL background,etc

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I've written about Padlet a lot over the years because of its flexibility to fit into a lot of classroom situations. One of the ways that you can use Padlet is to have students collaboratively create multimedia KWL (Know, Want, Learn) charts. To provide students with guidance on where to place their notes, I use a custom background on Padlet. The background is a just a screenshot of a three column page that I make in Google Documents (any other document program will work just as well) that is uploaded to Padlet. Screenshots of the process are included below.

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How to Add Custom Columns to Padlet Walls

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I've written about Padlet a lot over the years because of its flexibility to fit into a lot of classroom situations. One of the ways that you can use Padlet is to have students collaboratively create multimedia KWL (Know, Want, Learn) charts.

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Easily able to embed pics and videos to answer questions

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Use as a comprehension tool, I wonder...prior to a field trip

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After we were finished building our nest and learning about owls we headed to the pumpkin field. Each of us picked our own pumpkin to take home.

When we got back to school we created another padlet wall and shared some of the things we learned. Here's our second padlet of the day.

Have you ever been to the Surrey Nature Centre? If you get a chance we recommend you go.

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After we were finished building our nest and learning about owls we headed to the pumpkin field. Each of us picked our own pumpkin to take home. When we got back to school we created another padlet wall and shared some of the things we learned. Here's our second padlet of the day.

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A Collaborative Padlet board of classroom ideas by teachers!

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A Collaborative Padlet board of classroom ideas by teachers!

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There's something here for everyone!

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Collaborative board with a class in another school

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Collaborative board with a class in another school

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This is a collaborative book recommendation board between my class, the other 4 1st grades in my building and our Canadian buddy class.

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Five Ways to Use Padlet in Class | Education World

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Classroom uses for this free, online “virtual wall” are endless, but these ideas will get you started.

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32 Interesting Ways to use Padlet in the Classroom

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32 Interesting Ways to use Padlet in the Classroom

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Higher Ed Tech Tutorials    Padlet for YouTube

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This afternoon at the Texas Library Association's annual conference I gave a short presentation about backchannels and informal assessment. Some of you may have seen the Padlet wall that I posted here for a few hours as a part of that presentation. During the presentation I mentioned three ways to use Padlet in schools. Those ways are described below.

Using Padlet as a KWL chart:
Padlet can be used to create a KWL chart that students can contribute to anonymously (or not anonymously if you want them to sign-in). Create a wall, make it public, and ask students to share what they know and what they want to know about a topic. If you allow anonymous posting you might get contributions from shy students who might not otherwise speak-up in class. Of course, if you allow anonymous commenting you should have a conversation with your students about what an appropriate comment looks like. (You could also turn on moderation and approve all notes before they appear). Padlet works well when projected on an interactive whiteboard.

Using Padlet for group research:
A couple of years ago I showed my special education students a short (18 minutes) video about cultural changes that took place in the US during the 1920's. After the video we discussed what they saw. Then I had students search online for other examples of cultural change in the 1920's. When they found examples they put them onto a Wallwisher wall that I projected onto a wall in my classroom. The wall started with just text being added to the wall and quickly progressed to YouTube videos being added to the wall. Once every student had added a video to the wall we stopped, watched the videos, and discussed them.

Using Padlet as a showcase of your students' work:
If your students are creating digital portfolios, creating slideshows, or producing videos you could use Padlet to display all of your students' best work on one page. Create the wall, call it something like "my best work this year," and have your students post links to their works.

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Three Good Ways to Use Padlet In Your School

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This afternoon at the Texas Library Association's annual conference I gave a short presentation about backchannels and informal assessment. Some of you may have seen the Padlet wall that I posted here for a few hours as a part of that presentation. During the presentation I mentioned three ways to use Padlet in schools.