We are thrilled to announce the browser or web-based version of Activity Spot for students to use on Chromebooks, Macs and PCs. As more schools implement Chromebooks in the classroom, teachers and students have been asking about a Chromebook version of our student app and we’re happy to provide this first version of one.
How to use the web-app
When you assign activities to your students, your student will:
Enter his or her student specific access code to interact with the activities assigned. Student codes are available in the “Setup Classroom” section of the ActivityCircle website.
For a quick look at this browser-based student app, we prepared a few “demo” student codes for you.
The engaging activities you see on the web app using these access codes were created by inspiring teacher-authors Cathy Hink, Margaret Greco, Emily Kissner and Kathy Burdick.
If you have any questions regarding using the app, contact us at folks@frolyc.com.
You can create an activity on Frolyc to send pictures to student app. Students can view the picture, create annotations on it, can label it, can draw and write over it. With such an activity, you could
In Science, you could send diagrams to students for labeling.
In Engineering, you could send a machine for students to label the parts.
In Math, you could send photographs of worksheets that you already have, for them to work on.
In ELA, ask them to label pictures using nouns and adjectives or write sentences describing the picture.
I am sure you can think of plenty more ideas!
Here are the mechanics of how to create such an activity:
1. In the authoring interface, choose “Drawing” activity type.
2. Click on the image and search for an image that you want to use. You can also upload one that you already have.
3. Write a question or prompt accompanying the picture.
4. Publish the activity to the catalog and preview it to see how it would appear in student view.
5. Here is an example of a student’s response for the example activity we just created.
We are excited to announce new feature updates to Activity Spot v1.0!
1. Revealing Answers
Student: “What are the possible answers to this question? I can’t learn from this because its not telling me what I am doing wrong. Give me some instant feedback.”
If your students are saying this, then we have addressed this. All activities with answer key now has an “animated reveal”! Students can see what the answers are, learn and improve.
2. Saving progress within an activity
Student: "Common Core wants me to go back & forth from text to questions. I need to be able to look at text or watch a video yet again before answering. Those PARCC & SBAC tests need me to do that. How do I use Activity Spot to prepare for those?“
Here is another student request that has been addressed. Students can now navigate back and forth between answering questions and reading text or watching video and then get back to answering. Activity Spot saves progress within an activity, saving student work as they navigate between the many activity pages.
3. Partial Credit
Student: "What! I got a score of 0 because I missed one answer?!”
If your students felt this way, then this has been fixed as well. All activities including concept maps, sequencing & cause-effect organizers now have partial credit. Give your Ss that little motivation to reach perfect score in small steps.
4. Auto-save open ended answers
Student: “I typed my answer… I did. Not sure why you are not seeing it”
It was frustrating to type an entire passage and lose it because you forgot to touch “Save”. Now, with “auto-save” teachers instantly see Ss writing even if students forget to touch that “Save” button.
5. Power Vocabulary Using Clues In Word Search
This brandnew feature was asked for by High school science teacher and technology coach Sweta Patel. She wanted to let her students learn and practice academic vocabulary alongside other contextual activities. This is also a powerful & super fun way to build academic vocabulary in any subject area. Click here to read details on this feature.
We are excited to present a new feature in Activity Spot’s word search!
You may now specify definitions, clues or hints to vocabulary words, giving students the challenge to not just find the words but to deduce the word before locating it on the grid. Use this feature to make vocabulary learning more fun and challenging.
Here are some activities we have put together to highlight this feature. Try these activities out and then create your very own. What you create can be aligned with your current lessons. Make it contextual and fun.
Be sure to update your version of Activity Spot to v1.0 to enable this feature.
Using different texts across Lexile bands and using activities that address different skills, you can effectively implement Depth Of Knowledge (DoK) in your ELA instruction.
The Center for College & Career Readiness emphasizes this:
In essence: To master “complexity”, one needs to understand, recall and apply.
The “Nutcracker” activity on Frolyc demonstrates to you how to implement DoK in ELA keeping this key idea in mind.
1. Present text along with video.
This specific text for the Nutcracker is at Lexile band 460.
2. Pose questions addressing DoK-1 & DoK- 2
For DoK-1, pose simple questions that make students recall information from text, understand the meanings of words in text, see how the words relate to each other etc.
In multiple choice quiz, you can address DoK-2. Here, students have to associate information that they already know to the current context. E.g. genre of the text that they just read.
3. Analyzing & organizing information - DoK 2
Analyzing and organizing information may fall in DoK level 2 based on the information presented.
Presenting information read in a different format like drawing, addresses Dok-2 as well:
4. Writing for DoK-3
Writing short passages while quoting details from text is a DoK level 3 skill.
In conclusion, activities in Frolyc can be designed to address different Depth of Knowledge levels giving students a lot of practice in developing their skills using varied content.
Teachers assign students an activity a day. Students work on their assigned activity in the comfort of their home environment. Teacher reviews their work as and when the assignment is completed. How cool is that?
We are hearing positive feedback from teachers who are doing this. Parents love it because kiddos are now reading & writing on iPad and not just playing games.
Would you like to try? Here are the steps to get you going:
Assign each student an activity.
Give each student their unique student access code. You can find this code for each student within each classroom details page on frolyc.com
If students don’t have Wi-Fi at home, make sure they “sync” their activity data at school over school Wi-Fi.
Students open Activity Spot on their iPad(s) at home and interact.
You review their performance and responses on your Frolyc reporting dashboard. You will see updates as and when their responses are submitted.
Life as an entrepreneur involves tons of decision making. For each decision, you have some information and you need to make your best call given this. Now, each day involves 100s of such decisions. Decision making is a tough mental skill. It is energy-consuming and can lead to mental fatigue.
I was thinking about this and wanted to see what other professions also called for decision making as a core skill in "vast quantities". Some that come to mind - President of USA (or leader of any country), CEO of a company… and then maybe a teacher? And then I came across this info-graphic.
While the number - 1500 may not be scientifically derived, it is indeed true that in the “fiefdom” of a classroom, the CEO, aka teacher has to make decisions all the time. Some may be planned, but for the most part the decisions are impromptu.
Teaching is inherently a creative profession. Successful teachers create or find learning material to achieve student learning outcomes in relevant, engaging and inspiring ways.
We interviewed a teacher-author Emily Kissner to understand why she creates activities on Frolyc for her students & how she uses them in her class.
Emily: I love to see students learning and engaged, and I like to offer them choices in reading and writing. By creating activities, I can make sure that I am addressing student needs and even interests while aligning the content to the learning objectives I have for them and the standards I need to meet.
How do you use Frolyc & Activity Spot iPad app?
Emily: Frolyc allows me to publish my activities to iPad in real-time. So, I can tailor the activities according to my lesson schedules.
I can gather together texts and videos on a topic and design questions and open-ended responses that guide students into higher level thinking. I can also give students who need more time with a concept the opportunity to revisit and review important ideas.
Q: How many iPads do you have & how do you use it?
Emily: I have 2 iPads…and kids usually use them in pairs. I use them during classroom transitions, independent reading time, arrival and departure. Now that it’s become a routine, kids are asking to use it!
Q: How do students react to your activities?
Emily: They love it. Here is a specific example. We were discussing oceans in class & I had created an activity on oceans. The activity involved writing. Most kids need a lot of help when it comes to writing. One kid in my class wrote much more on the device than he ever does in class! I was just amazed at the depth of his response and how it verges on the poetic. Here is his response:
I have noticed that my students especially like it when I add things that we’ve already covered in class. For example, we watched the “Prepositions” video in class…students are choosing to access that activity and try it out again because they like the song so much!
Q: What advice do you have for teachers starting to use Activity Spot?
Emily: Think of how Activity Spot can solve problems in your classroom. A student who is not engaged during independent reading time, a student who already knows a great deal of content, a student who did poorly on a recent assessment, a topic that kids were really excited about but that you just can’t spend much time on.
Do you have students with many different abilities? Frolyc (teacher interface) & Activity Spot (student interface) together make a high-interest tool to fill in gaps, teach new concepts, and stretch students to reach new levels.
Struggling students: For struggling readers, Frolyc can be a high-interest tool. These students light up when I offer them the iPad to use during arrival and dismissal times. They choose from activities that I have selected for them and engage with different kinds of texts. They like to have the opportunity to listen to text read aloud, and appreciate the videos as another way to gain information.
These are some of the favorite activities for struggling readers:
Advanced students: Frolyc offers a way for advanced students to move ahead, as well! In fact, activities on Frolyc can show these readers complex text and ideas. Of course, advanced fourth graders like to explore videos and different texts as well!
Assigning different activities for different students is easy! I like to give kids a variety of choices in addition to our regular classwork activities.
What are your favorite activities to use to help students of all ability levels?
In order for students to talk meaningfully about characters, they need to be able to identify and support character traits. This is often easier said than done! However, there are some easy things that reading teachers can do to help students learn about character traits. Here are my favorites:
Activity Spot works well for helping students to find and support character traits! Here are some activities that I have created. But don’t stop here–add some of your own activities for your students.
Expand students’ word knowledge: In the activity Character Traits, students read about five different character traits. Then, they use these character traits to write about characters.
Use embedded questions: The activity Thomas and the Teapot includes embedded questions to help students think about character traits throughout the story. For students who are still building reading stamina, these kinds of questions are wonderful for chunking a story.
Teach the difference between traits and emotions: The activity Character Traits and Emotions explains how traits are different from emotions.
What other activities can you create to help students learn about character traits?
