Notebooking, Teaching, and Technology

  I ran across this clever idea on Twitter for using Google Forms to have students complete a paint-by-number picture by answering questions.  Brad Dale posted the directions and a video on his blog which was very easy to follow.  Since we are so close to Halloween I tried it using a couple of Halloween paint-by-number pictures. I used third grade multiplication word problems, at the request of one of the teachers, who saw my re-tweet on Twitter.  I've included links to both Google Forms I made. You will be forced to make a copy but from there you can edit the questions if you would like.  - Pumpkin Picture (click to link) - Witch Picture (click to link)  Here were a couple of my thoughts as I completing this activity: - The paint-by-number website only offers a max of nine colors. Which means only nine questions on the form. I would have liked the option for more questions. I made a note to look for more detailed options on other sites.  - The pai...

Flipgrid is one of my new favorite tech tools for collecting responses from students. It allows the user to set up a question or topic that students then answer using video. Think of it as a video messaging board. There is a free (limited) educators account but it has enough features that one can easily use it with students without having to upgrade to a paid account (for a step-by-step guide to setting up your account and creating your first topic you can flip through my Google Slideshow above or click directly on this link ). I've seen our teachers using it in a variety of different ways: - Asking students an "exit" slip type question - Asking students to record their response to a literary prompt. - Having students respond to a prompt about how to keep schools safe (this was on the "walk out" day) - One teacher had students draw political cartoons and hold them up to the camera and explain their drawing. Flipgrid offers a variety of suggestions ...

I have been working as a ClassFlow Ambassador this year which means I have been getting a lot of practice using the site to make lessons! I have been working with some of the teachers in my district helping with test prep. I just finished putting together a series of five "lessons" that are designed to be test prep practice for our third graders. Each "lesson" has 12 test like questions which gives students practice in subtraction with regrouping, rounding, multiplication, measurement, and fractions. All together there are 60 practice questions. The reason for this push is that our state will be going to mandatory computerized state testing next year with the option to begin this year. We took that option (as we are a 1:1 district). These "lessons" (I am putting quotes around them because they are more practice then lesson...but the system calls them lessons) are designed to expose students to computerized test questions in math. ClassFlow is free...

This poster was up in the hallway of one of the schools I go to. I thought it was pretty cool. Student's get to sign their name in one of the numbers once they have mastered that specific fact. The banner is in the younger hallways as well with 1-10. The poster was made using one of the school's colored poster maker (Staples might be able to make it as well if you don't have a poster maker).  Here is the link to the adobe files of the numbers (1-12 and 1-10). 

Day 6 The 12 Days of Christmas – Math Lesson Students listen to the 12 Days of Christmas - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF1xcKW2e-g (you can use the YouTube Downloader so you don’t have to stream it live). I am not going to lie...this is probably one of my least favorite Christmas songs (it goes on FOREVER) but I liked the math lesson. I've been booked to do this with a third grade class next week but instead of doing the tech integration below (with an Excel spreadsheet) we are going to be using calculators. The teacher and I think that introducing Excel to 3rd graders with this project would be a little difficult.  Printable lyrics can be found on the following site - http://www.chiff.com/home_life/holiday/christmas/12-days-lyrics.htm Students figure out how many items are in the song using the lyrics sheet. Then they calculate the cost of all the items in the song. Lesson plan with forms can be found on the following site – http://www.nsa.gov/aca...

I happen to be in the computer lab and saw our awesome media specialist teaching a third grade class how to read tables and charts (while at the same time introducing students to the website www.factmonster.com - a child friend research site). She had the children pull up First in US Cities  from the site and gave them a series of questions that could be answered by reading the table. It was a fun lesson and gave students some good practice reading tables and charts prior to their state testing. I went through the science section of the almanac and under weather there were several tables and charts from  wind chill to lightning deaths that could be used as part of a science classroom which would easily allow the integration of technology and math (especially if you have children compare the data).

I liked this start of year math activity. It was done with 3rd graders. Student's learned how to measure their height using the floor tiles in the classroom. They then traced themselves on bulletin board paper and measured aspects of their cut out - waist, arms, neck, head, etc. The cut outs were then put out in the hall and made great wall decorations for our open house.