Buncee has been an incredible digital program, supporting me with teaching my kindergarten ESL (English as a Second Language) students’ vocabulary and writing skills. Buncee assists me in helping them to build language, and in engaging my young students. I enjoy creating digital writing prompts that I can personalize and develop to support the many levels of learners in my class.
The brilliant thing about Buncee is that all of my kindergarten ESL students can succeed and accomplish the writing task. There is no need to ask Mrs. Gardner a question like, “How do I write?” or, “What do I do?” They are able to complete the task using all of the scaffolds built into the one engaging digital task viewed on their iPad.
In a single digital writing prompt Buncee, I am able to add clipart, text, audio, animation, and video as support that align with (and integrates) our social studies and science content vocabulary, as well as language arts foundational skills. If my students are not able to read the question, they answer pencil to paper and watch or listen to a recorded video of me reading the question. I use Buncee’s stickers (think: clipart) to give students a visual representation of vocabulary words. They can also hear the words being read aloud by tapping on them.
Once I create a digital writing prompt on Buncee, I link it to a QR code. When students go to the vocabulary center they are either asked to take a paper QR code that they can glue into their writing notebook, or they get a teacher created writing answer sheet that has the code printed on it. Then they scan the code to view the Buncee prompt on their iPad. Because the Buncee writing prompt is linked to a QR code, students are able to continue the learning at home. They can scan the code with a device at home, and read/explain their answers to their parents!
Below are some example of my writing prompts along with the writing answer sheets. Students answer the prompt in their writing notebook, they illustrate their work, log on to Seesaw, take a picture of their finished work, and record themselves reading their writing. This gives my students a chance to practice all of the language domains: reading, writing, speaking, and listening. You can also see student work samples on Seesaw – “I can write a sentence,” and “I will help the environment.“
Katie Gardner is a National Board Certified Kindergarten ESL Teacher in Salisbury, North Carolina. You can follow her on find her on Twitter as @gardnerkb1.
