Notebooking, Teaching, and Technology

I ran across this One Word Challenge on line last year and really liked the concept. The project/challenge is based on a book that explains how focusing on "one word" for the year helps to simplify what we really want to accomplish. In all fairness I haven't read the book but I did buy the student version of it. It is a picture book meant to be read to students at the beginning of the school year so I am not sure it would work for a new calendar year.  The word I chose this year is "Notice". The idea is to "notice" more of the small things I tend to overlook. It is a reminder to myself that positive things, ideas, and actions don't always come in "big" sweeping moments.  Last year I chose "Focus" and ordered an Etsy washer bracelet that I wore most of the year to help me remember. Etsy has fancier bracelets if that is something that appeals to you.  I thought the overall idea of choosing "one word" would make a goo...

  A co-worker and I are working with students the week before our holiday break to create these fun tacky book character holiday shirts.  I've seen and created  origami shirts in the past and hadn't really thought of them recently until I saw this cool video on how to make a GIANT origami shirt.  I liked the idea of creating a tacky holiday shirt but needed to make the project a bit more academic. My co-worker, a former ELA teacher, suggested adding book character elements in addition to the holiday elements and having students explain their choices in writing. It was such a genius idea that we made a couple of samples. We plan to work with a class so we brainstormed the requirements as we created the shirts. Students would need to work in pairs to complete the folding of the shirt. The instructor in the video did it by herself, and I tried, but it was really nice to have a second pair of hands. While we were working we thought students should be paired together by...

 Need a fun digital writing prompt for St. Patrick's day? Try this "If I had a pot of Gold" activity. The fun, and techie part, requires students to take a picture of themselves, use the site remove.bg to remove the background and edit around the face, and then layer it within the hat and beard clipart.  To encourage more writing and detail I made the "pot of gold" cursed so that in order to get what you want you have to do something nice with the some of the gold and tell me what and why. Here are some student samples from a fifth grade class: I didn't do this with the group I worked with but you can have them add in their Leprechaun name using this name generator I found online.   In the "If I had a pot of gold" template ( CLICK HERE TO OPEN ) I have an instructional video on the first slide and some "good" and "bad" writing samples ( CLICK HERE TO OPEN LINK TO VIDEO ONLY ). IMPORTANT NOTE:  You will need to make a copy of bo...

  I saw this activity on Julie Smith's  The Techie Teacher blog  and I thought it was a super cute digital St. Patrick's Day writing activity.  I created a video for students to watch  walking them through how to complete the activity independently to add to Julie Smith's shamrock template . If you are a GAFE district you will need to make a copy of the video in your Drive before assigning to students. Students in our district are restricted from opening/viewing resources shared outside our domain and I am assuming others are the same.  Since our district uses Google Classroom I created a model assignment showing teacher's how I might set it up for users.  If you have your students complete one I would love to hear how it went. You can comment below or tag me on Twitter @atechcoachlife .

  I put together a full day of Thanksgiving themed activities  (click to link...you will be forced to make a copy) into a single editable Google slideshow for students. It was designed for self-contained 4th and 5th grade classes. Third grade teachers would need to review and possibly modify. There are 12 activities. I made sure that each activity had an accountability piece. I used a variety of free programs, as well as ones we have available to us in our district.  1. Create a Six Word Story based on a Thanksgiving image. I linked a video from Discovery Education explaining what a six word story is (we have a DE subscription). There are some six word story videos on YouTube that could replace the Discovery Education resource or a teacher could simply explain and model the process. 2. Read a short Thanksgiving fiction piece in ReadWorks (free to educators) and respond to the question set. 3. Mystery Picture Math - Thanksgiving Word Problems (I created it in Google Sheets...

This activity draws upon an earlier post I made about creating sensory figures for Black History Month using Google Drawings. This activity is a little less "techy" but still a fun way to teach, or reinforce, summary skills from the perspective of the main character (in this case a leprechaun). I used the book "How to Catch a Leprechaun" by Adam Wallace. Epic has the book, which you can read whole group...or assign to students. Epic offers a free educators accoun t so definitely check them out! The book can also be found as a read aloud on YouTube . There are some directed drawing videos on YouTube that I used to complete the drawing. - How to Draw a Cartoon Leprechaun - How to Draw a Pot of Gold This activity can be done whole group, or assigned through Google Classroom for students to do independently. If done whole group I would read the book twice, once for fun, and once to find the "sensory" sentences. You can have students pair up t...

Last month I wrote that I like to spruce up my Google Classroom headers once a month. My "classroom" is mainly populated with teachers attending training but I'd like to think one creative soul in the room might think changing out headers routinely would be fun for students and give them something to look forward to.  I wish Google didn't put a dark overlay on the original picture. Sigh. One teacher on Twitter did remind me that I can leave feedback about Google Classroom using the question mark icon. She said if maybe enough people suggested that the dark overlay be removed they (Google) might listen. So every time I go into my classroom I suggest it. Please help me out, if you think of it, and make a similar suggestion in order to bounce the request up the line.  If you like this March/St. Patrick's Day template you can find it linked  HERE . It comes complete with instructions so you can just replace my image with yours.  I cut off the "Happy St....

Earlier in the month I wrote about making Black History Month Sensory Poster with Google Drawings. I did the activity with third grade students and they did such a good job (a few of their projects are featured above). The students were able to follow along with my video tutorial and the teacher and I were just there for technical help. My favorite part of the day was one of the students, when packing up, said "That was way more fun than we normally have in ELA." 🤣 To be clear, I think he was talking about putting the project together tech wise and not the researching and writing part. The hardest part, obviously, was getting the students to put in quality facts in their graphic organizers . Like most student projects some were good and some needed extra help and guidance. Another teacher, also third grade, tried it on his own with his student and they did it together as a group and he had them put in three sensory facts vs. the five or six on ...

I like to spruce up my Google Classroom headers once a month. My "classroom" is mainly populated with teachers attending training but I'd like to think one creative soul in the room might think changing out headers routinely would be fun for students and give them something to look forward to. If you like this template you can find it linked HERE . It comes complete with instructions so you can just replace my images with yours. If you decide to get creative outside the template please share! You can post in the comments or on Twitter. You can tag me @atechcoachlife .

I have a class of third graders who has invited me help them with their Black History digital sensory figures next month and I am excited to try it. After meeting with teacher we came up with a game plan. Since this is supposed to be a fairly quick project (not taking weeks) so we decide to use the Itty Bitty Bios in Epic as their research tool. The books are quick reads and "should" give students enough information to fill out their graphic organizer . Epic is an online digital library which has a FREE component for teachers and media specialists. You (and students) are able to use the online library as long as it is at school or in the library. It is not to be used at home unless students have a paid account. For more information about their FREE educator account CLICK HERE . I put together an Epic collection of biographies for the project. This is the link to the collection that the teacher will assign to her Epic class - https://www.getepic.com/app/user-co...

Last year (2018) I randomly ran across a 12 Days of Twitter Challenge about the same time I was getting into Sketchnoting . One of the teachers/tech coaches I follow Wanda Terral , an early sketchnote adopter, challenged folks to sketchnote their responses to the challenge. I was trying to sketchnote digitally and so I took on the challenge. Sadly I did not complete it. Sketchnoting digitally took up a lot more time then just paper and pencil.  I was using Kami as my online sketchpad...even though it isn't its intended use...it had all the tools I needed for use on my tablet.  Fast forward to December this year (2019) and the challenge came up on my Twitter feed again. The challenges seem to be run by different folks on Twitter but more or less have the same components.  This year I decided to use paper and pencil and sketch out simple vs. elaborate responses. I did it while watching TV at night with my husband and moved days ahead with my responses. I...

Sorry for the overload of holiday ideas. We have one more week of school here in South Carolina (which involved a hurricane makeup day) and teachers are looking for creative ways to keep students engaged. This idea of making emoji book trailers came from working with staff at Whale Branch Elementary School. Their Literacy Coach wanted to have every teacher in the school record a book trailer. The idea was to share one a week (Friday) on the morning news but she needed help planning and recording staff.  We met up to record our sample trailers and to discus the project and potential pitfalls. Initially I think we were both thinking of recording the teachers using the green screen but for a school wide project that would have been a lot of work. I was also thinking of the teachers who would refuse because they ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY don't want to be recorded.  That is when Flipgrid popped back on my radar. It fell off my radar last year when Microsoft took it over ...

This AWESOME idea came from Abby Schiferl on Twitter . She had her students design snowflakes using Google Drawings, which in itself is fun but she brought in her Silhouette machine and used it to cut out their designs (which I though was pretty cool). She works in a computer lab but this could easily translate into the classroom. I reached out to her on Twitter and asked how they designed the snowflakes in Drawings and she sent me a link to a YouTube video they used as the inspiration for this project. I tried designing it this morning (see picture above). It was fairly easy, although I had to restart it several times because I messed up the final closing of the shape. I would tell students that they will mess up...but to me that is part of the process. Purposely I used my mouse track pad instead of an actual mouse to rate the difficulty level for students (who don't have external mouses) and it wasn't too bad. Definitely doable. I loved the Silhouette aspect of be...

I saw this post on Twitter on how to use Flipgrid to personalize gifts and it got me thinking about how I can use the idea this holiday season. Flipgrid is a FREE video response system for students (which has a lot of cool features). If you aren't using it definitely check it out (it works with tablets as well as iPads). I would also highly recommend following them on Twitter  for ideas and short tutorials. Have students record a personalized message to a family member on Flipgrid. To add a twist have them use the emoji features to cover their face until the end ( my video 👇). This requires that students pre-plan their message on paper (which I liked better than doing a straight recording...but if you are short on time a straight recording would work). Students can use the "notes" feature to type their message so it doesn't look like they are reading from a piece of paper. In the teacher admin area of Flipgrid you can print out QR codes to ...

Try this “ Where in the World is Santa Going Next ” geography activity where students have to enter in specific longitude and latitude coordinates in Google Earth to find Santa's next stop ( answer key ). If you have students who don't celebrate the holiday I created a separate sheet (same activity) just leaving out references to Santa ( answer key ). Google Earth has come a long way from being a program you have to download to being able to launch in Google Chrome. Once students get into Google Earth they will need to click on “Launch Earth in Chrome” and it may take a few seconds to load (mine took about 30 seconds). Once they have it loaded they can use the search bar to type, or cut and paste, the coordinates. I found it useful to have students search the school or their address in order to play with the tools before starting the activity.

Most digital reading options. Newsela , Readworks , Epic , and DOGOnews all have ways to filter content for the holiday season (these are all either free or have free components that would work in the classroom). Ask students to filter by "Christmas" or "Holiday" to find funny, inspirational, thoughtful, and informational reading pieces specifically geared for this time of year. Students can give you summaries and note any common themes between reading passages, as well as make personal connections. Pair a holiday article with a summarizing lesson that I modified from the Read, Write, Think website years ago called: Get the Gist: A Summarizing Activity for Any Content Area . I created a Google Document that you can assign students in Google Classroom (or you can export it as a Word document). You will need to make a copy of it before you assign. Simply click on "file" and "make a copy" or click on "file" "download"...