 Welcome everyone to the Learning Loop Podcast where we provide powerful insights and trends into education. I'm Chris, your host. Today's special guest is Jennifer, a first grade teacher in California and a newly published author. Today we'll be talking about how CESA enables deeper learning and facilitates strong teacher practices in the classroom. You're going to want to listen in because this is a Can't Miss episode. Jennifer, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me, Chris. Of course, we are so excited. We just know that your expertise in this field is so powerful and I'm so excited to hear all of your amazing answers. We'll start off with kind of a generic one, one that just kind of sets the stage around technology in classrooms. What role does technology play in your instructional approach and how do you really think about effectively integrating it in your classroom? Great question. So, as a primary grade teacher, we're all about technology, balancing how much we're on technology. However, it's really essential to include technology. A lot of times I'll think about how I use it and I want to use it in a way that is really focusing on the pedagogy and meeting the needs of my students while also giving them a voice. I don't want them just doing busy work on technology that's the same thing as a worksheet to me. So when I think of technology, I really am trying to think of, okay, how is this going to make learning better? How is it going to give my students more voice and showing what they learn and how is it going to be making things more accessible for them? It's amazing. That's really, you're speaking to like passing the baton to students, letting them really just own a lot of that learning. I'm sure even your first grade students are recognizing that and starting to feel that empowerment in your classroom. It's amazing, especially using CESA obviously because it's so easy to just embed more student choice in the activities, which automatically increases their engagement and learning. Yeah, so good, so good. You led right into my next question here. Speaking more about CESA, how has CESA specifically made an impact in your classroom or in your teaching practices? This could be an episode all on its own, I feel like that question. Just even thinking about, I've been using CESA since almost the beginning, about eight years I've been on CESA, pretty much it was my second year teaching that I started using it. It has changed so much. First of all, just with honestly even just connecting families and really bringing them into the classroom, that alone, just having that ability to be able to do everything in one place, letting students share. In fact, today we were doing an activity that talked about like, how are we communicators because that's one of our learner profiles being in an IB school and a lot of the kids said, oh, we use CESA to communicate to our families to show them what we're learning and it was just amazing because it's true before using that, it was a lot harder to show families really truly what we were learning without having them physically in school. Right there, that family connection and really showing that we're a team and working together. The other just amazing things are, I love CESA's microphone tool, Ben, Coxwell and I were always talking when we present together that the most magical button on CESA is the microphone because anytime we can get our students to add their voice to what they're doing, it's just magical, especially when we're thinking about just like English language learners, too, and meeting those speaking and listening standards and just making learning so much more accessible for them. But it has changed everything. Like how I do things, first grade, I know a lot of teachers do calendar time and pretty much have eliminated calendar time because I do a whole morning message thing on CESA or I get students doing different things on that. I don't do homework anymore just because they can do so much with CESA in class. And so it has completely changed everything, honestly. I could do a whole episode on this. We could talk all about the changes in all the different areas. So amazing, so amazing. If if you had to potentially ask your students this question, like what would be their favorite thing that they would say about CESA? I think one of the favorite things that they would say is how much choice they get and how they show their learning. So it's really interesting to me, like even just with simple, like if we're going to draw something, they can choose if they want to use the tools on CESA to draw or if they want to draw on paper and take a picture of it. No matter what activity we're doing, whether it's something super simple or something that's more intense and more of a project, they have choice throughout the whole thing. And I think they love that. That's probably their number one thing. For sure, for sure. And it speaks to the way that you're really emphasizing your classroom within CESA and how you really are empowering them to choose the tools they want and allow them to just use all of the CESA multi-modal tools to express what they're starting to understand and learn through that. So I think it's you're speaking to that powerful play between you understand what the platform can provide and balancing that with what your students are craving and really what's best for students learning in that. So that's that's an awesome balance and awesome testimonial to hear how you're really striking that. They also just another thing they love. They love the recording and moving things at the same time. So if we're doing anything in math, especially where they have to manipulate, like use manipulatives, they love getting to record and do that, even doing phonics things, recording and sounding at words. They love seeing how something like that then becomes a movie that they created. So that's also something that they just love doing. They ask me to do that all the time. So fun, so fun. I remember hearing some testimonials of that where students then would say at the end, like, don't forget to like and subscribe, like they're YouTube stars or something like that. But 100 percent, the students and they just really love that. They they they feel that publishing and sharing that out, that authentic audience they have with it. Such a powerful space inside of CESA. And CESA has the like button and everything ready to go. They sure did in the comments. Same thing. I want to keep diving into CESA a little bit, but spin it a little bit more into like instructional practices. So if you had a student who might be disengaging from learning or who might just need a little bit of a boost, what kind of things have you found to be helpful that you do inside of CESA to really re-engage that student? You know, I'm thinking right away right now on one of the things that's often not engaging for students is phonics instruction. A lot of us, a lot of times we do like the different phony mapping journals and a lot of my students will get completely disengaged during that time. And so I kind of thought to myself, how can I make this more engaging and honestly also focusing more on critical thinking rather than me just telling the students the sound? How can I really involve some critical thinking? Because if we spark their curiosity and we don't just tell them things, they're going to be more engaged. And so what I started doing actually is like, say we're going to learn about the long eye with the silent E pattern. I won't tell them that. I will just show them like a slide in CESA, for example, I'll just have a page in CESA where I have different emojis or different pictures of things that all have the long eye sound. And I just ask the kids like, hey, when you see this picture, what do you think? What sound do you think we're going to be learning about? And so they start to like look at the pictures and think about it and see what they have in common. And the first several times we do this, it's not as easy, right? Because they've never done it before. But all of them are engaged because they all want to solve the puzzle, right? Rather than me just saying, hey, we're learning about long eye this week, where five kids might not be listening to me. If I actually am asking them to tell me the pattern, they're automatically more engaged. And then after we find the pattern, then on the next page we have like an emoji that's hidden. And we start to use the eraser in CESA because it's hidden just by using the pen tool. We just cover the emoji with the pen tool. And I start to erase it. This is like all during instruction. So the kids are sitting on the carpet with me. And or they have their phoneme journals because I am required to use those. But now I'm doing it in a more engaging way. And I start to erase the emoji and I have these kids again, start guessing. What do you think it is? What pattern does it have to have? What sound are we looking for? And so they'll start guessing and then I will erase it and we'll see who was right. And then we sound out the word and write it and do this whole animation with it. So I'm still teaching, but I'm using a lot of the CESA tools to engage the kids and get them finding the answers and them telling me, rather than me just saying, oh, the word is a bike. Let's all sound that out. Instead, they have to be looking for clues and think about what it could be. And anytime we can get students to do actually more of the thinking, they're going to be more engaged. Absolutely. And not only more engaged, I would also say they're going to remember it more and enjoy that experience as they go just because they were the ones who came up with the idea more or less. You know, they kind of figured out how to get there. So that's amazing. I'd love that testimonial and doing scratch and reveals like you were talking about are probably my favorite ways to engage students as well. Super, super fun. I think you just do little parts and you really make them think, hmm, what could this be? And tying it into the phonics, it just makes it more engaging. And I've seen huge changes in just, even my students who don't like writing the letters as much, especially, you know, students with different disabilities that that's a kind of a hard thing for them, knowing like that they're getting to do this on CESA after. Because after we do it in our journals, they put their journals away and now they get to go and again, animate it. They get to move the emoji and sound out the word and all that. Then they're more likely to do it because they know they get to do something really fun with it after they learn. So, so fun. I want to ask you another question just on differentiating instruction there because we're on the track of how do we support all of our learners? What are some of your go-to ways? You can share like two or three strategies that you use CESA to differentiate your instruction for those students. Probably the number one thing that I do is I do a lot of what CESA allows you to have like so many voice recordings on one page and then you get lots of pages, right? So a lot of times, let's say I'm doing something that I know some students might be struggling with, especially like parts of speech. If we're doing like nouns, verbs and adjectives and then they have to use them in a sentence, I just add a little voice box that says if you need help, click here basically and it clicks, they can click and listen and it will resay, remember a noun is a person, place or thing. An adjective is a word that describes and so that right there just having that be there for students who do need it, that's probably my number one. The second thing is I don't always assign the same activity to all my students. So especially like you said, I'm a newly published author, one of the things we talk about is math reps a lot and I don't always assign the same math reps because some of my students are mastering all those standards earlier than others. So then I might give some of my students a completely different one than another one but they're still working on first grade standards but they're working on different standards they need help with. So assigning different activities for my different students and I haven't figured out the best way to group them like so I can quickly assign but one thing I do that does help me is I just add like a little emoji or color to the end of their name like a purple or a green square or something. So I just know, okay, all those kids are gonna get this activity, all those kids will get this activity so I can kind of do it a little quicker. Those are probably my two favorite ways to differentiate is adding voice for helpful hints I like to call them or assigning different activities to meet the different needs of my students especially if I'm doing fluency reads, things like that I'll assign the fluency passage at that group's level rather than just the whole class getting the same thing. Absolutely, amazing, amazing. And I would also say that, as you talked about all those hints and all those tips that come with it all those are just the intuitive parts of CSAS that go. So I think that you've naturally picked up on the design and the purposefulness of CSAS and how that really has been built to try to marry what teachers are looking for to support all their students as they go into their classrooms. We have two more questions left and I'm gonna ask you now a question which is our loopy question. This is just a silly question we ask all of our guests here. So if you could switch places with any animal for a day any animal even if it's an extinct animal which animal would it be? It would be a shark because you can go and explore like the deepest parts of the ocean that no one can see and you'd be safe. So probably I'd probably be like I'd probably be like the biggest shark in the world even if it's a big thing. My students would know the name of it like a mega something. And I would do that because I would just think it would be so cool to explore something no one's ever explored before but knowing that you're safe to do so. Amazing, amazing. That's such a good answer. And I probably would agree with you because I love to be in the ocean and exploring that. So super, super great insight there. And like I said, top of the food chain so nothing's gonna be taking you out. I would be safe, yeah. Cause I don't like to do that cause I'm scared of sharks. So if I was one, then I wouldn't have to be afraid. Me too. Awesome. But we're gonna ask just one more question here as we start to close up our episode. If there's someone listening, they heard all these amazing tips. How does this person who's like maybe brand new to Seesaw, how do they get to this point when they're like you? They're like a Jennifer Dean who's just killing it. They wanna be a published author someday maybe or they're working on it. What kind of things would you tell them to start with in Seesaw so they can get to that deep implementation like that you have? I would say start small and don't put too much pressure on yourself. Start with the activities that you are already finding in the library that Seesaw provides, whether it's the community library or if you're a Seesaw for schools member and you have access to Seesaw's library. Just start with some of their stuff and explore. Don't be afraid to play. That's another thing, right? I tell my students all the time like, hey, I have not tried this before. It might not work. If it does though, I mean to learn and I'm gonna figure that out. But I would always say like that. Start small, start with what's already there. And then as you feel like you're getting comfortable or as you see your students getting comfortable, then start trying something new. One thing I always tell people is honestly, just start by taking pictures of what you're already doing or having your students take pictures and just recording. Just getting them to add some voice to it because that's not that much change for you. And then as you are like, okay, I got that down. The kids got that down. Now think about what tool you wanna embed next. Maybe you wanna try drawing and recording. So start small, use the library. It's amazing. There's lots of great stuff in there. And then don't be afraid to make mistakes and learn from those mistakes just like we tell our students, right? Absolutely, so good. My favorite thing you said there was when you see your students getting comfortable with the platform. I think that's such a great insight and one that is allowing students to travel on that journey with Seesaw with you and just giving them exactly what they need in your classroom as you start to coach them through technology and through the rest of their years. Love it. Chances are the students will pick up on it even quicker than you can and they will start to be ready for the next thing which will then make you ready for the next thing. So just go with it. Go with the flow and just keep trying things out. Absolutely, absolutely. Well, we're gonna close things down. Jennifer, I just wanna say thank you so much for being here. I know that you're incredibly busy, not only teaching but also getting ready to launch this book. We are beyond excited for you and beyond excited that you joined us here today to share your expertise. Thank you, thank you so much. Thank you again for having me.