Hi friends! I have been INSANELY busy over here with the beginning of year SIX! My kiddos came back last week and I don’t think my head has stopped spinning since!
I am here to talk about how I use my absolute FAVORITE app in the classroom!!!
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| Shout out to Glitter Meets Glue for this insanely cute Insta icon!!! |
I absolutely LOVE Instagram. It is my favorite form of social media, mainly because it is so easy to post, comment, and scroll through your Instagram feed. No reading long posts, no taking hours to WRITE a post, and of course a great way to connect with others!
I use this in my personal life as well as the teacher blogging world. And last year, I started using it in my classroom as well!!
Having a classroom Instagram account has been a huge hit with the parents AND my students. I am able to quickly and easily share photos and videos without having to print or e-mail them. Parents can easily view them anytime they want and can sit down with their child to see what they were up to at school that day! In Special Education, we sometimes have students that can’t communicate fun things they did at school, so this is just another tool to help parents start talking with their children about those fun activities. Plus, it is WAY awesome to post video clips of my students starting to READ! 🙂
So, how do I go about this? We can’t just be posting photos and videos of our munchkins all over the web! Well, I start with a simple permission slip at Open House that gives parents all the information and requires them to agree that it is OK for me to post photos on the app. Here is what this years permission slip looked like:
Pretty easy! As the permission slip says, the account is obviously a PRIVATE account. I will only accept parents/guardians and I must be able to tell that it is their account. Otherwise, I will not accept the followers.
Once I get all of these back, I’m ready to start posting! I typically post pictures a few times per week and make sure to get all of my students in photos or videos. Many of my students get a kick out of me pulling up the Instagram on our Interwrite Board as well and love to see themselves hard at work.
Another NEW thing I am doing this year is an Instagram board in our classroom. As I said, all of my students LOVE seeing the pictures of themselves, so why not start an Insta “app” right there in my classroom?! As I take pictures, I will be printing them off and “posting them” to the board! As the year goes on, we will see the board grow. I am SUPER excited about this and know that all of my students will get a real kick out of it! This is what it looks like to start:
Again, shout out to Glitter Meets Glue for the adorable app icon! I printed it poster size for my bulletin board and couldn’t be more excited about how it looks! Hopefully by the end of the school year, this board will be FULL of great memories!
Do you use Instagram in your classroom? If not, try it out this year! I promise you AND your parents will love it!
