Notebooking, Teaching, and Technology

A big "Thank You" to all the wonderful middle/high math and science teachers in yesterday's workshop. I was pretty nervous..I've never presented to math teachers or high school teachers. Everybody was so great - even though I forgot things I needed in my car and forgot to ask if anyone had questions at the end! I loved the enthusiasm for notebooking and was happy to hear several people were already using them in the classroom. (Shout out to Helen for her packaging tape idea over one of my notebook covers that is tearing after so many workshop showings). I particularly loved that they all got together for a group photo at the end :) - I am such a huge picture taker.  Thank you again!....and I expect to see my blogger counter go up ;)

Several years ago (2011) I took a class as part of a master's program at the University of South Carolina. One of the papers I helped write was about notebooking in the classroom. The professor remembered the paper/presentation (which in itself is amazing considering how many students she must see) and asked if I would introduce notebooking at a workshop she and a colleague were doing this summer. I was even offered a small stipend for my part in the workshop (so now I can say I'm a paid notebooking consultant :) The workshop was for middle/high school science and math teachers. I put together a modified PowerPoint presentation aimed at this group and uploaded it HERE to share with the group and anyone else is interested.

My favorite purchase I made last school year were these Easy Lunch Boxes . I was looking for a bento style lunch box that I could use to help put healthy lunches together (it is a goal of mine...sigh!). In my search I found these. I had a gift certificate to Amazon so I purchased a set...along with the little "mini dipper" containers (a friend gave me her silicon cupcake holders that she doesn't use..so I pretty much have everything in the first picture above). I love love love them (and that is saying a lot for me to wax poetic about lunch containers!). I even wrote a review on Amazon (which I don't normally do). What makes them different from other compartment containers? They are deeper...so wraps, salads, cut up anything fit in easily (right now I have a salad in mine for tomorrow with dressing and cut up fruit). They don't warp in the dishwasher at all. I like having all the compartment options (I'm a snacker so that works for me). The "mini d...

I saw these two signs while in a school and I liked them both. They came from the school's guidance counselor. The first required that a student be able to mentally check off a list before they report bullying. I liked this because children often throw the word "bullying" out without really knowing how it is defined. The list she has posted helps (I didn't see the form that students were to fill in but it is on my list to find the next time I visit the school).  I thought this could be used in a classroom - particularly at the beginning of the year when talking about bullying. The second made me laugh. I saw it in a kindergarten room and asked the teacher about it. She said the school's guidance counselor came and taught her little ones about the importance of people's "personal space". They had to demonstrate that they understood the concept of "personal space" to get the certificate. I loved the idea as a guidance lesson...so I th...

Here is my new favorite tech program - PowToon . It is a free animated video presentation tool that is very easy to use. I used it with groups of 5th graders who made a group presentation on the need for after school clubs at their school - see their full presentation HERE . I was so impressed with the student's work that I went home and made a "commercial" for our tech department as a way of playing with the site (the cat thing in the commercial is a running joke with our team so I had to work it in). A couple of things...the website requires Flash so it can not be used on iPads (which was a bit of a problem because we have a 1:1 iPad program in our 3-5 classrooms). When we used it we booked the computer lab and used a few student laptops. The free version is limited but not so much so that it was debilitating. You can't download but you can work around it by uploading it to YouTube (an option under the free version) and then using a YouTube downloader to ...

I saw this "flextangle" activity on Facebook and thought I could modify it for academic content. In the example I choose WW2 (primarily because I recently worked with a Social Studies teacher and her standards were fresh on my mind). It was pretty easy. The student would need to come up with 12 short facts about a topic and be able to illustrate it somehow (my illustrations range from good to poor but I was able to depict my thinking so really that is all that mattered). It could work with science as well as social studies. The end product is pretty small size wise which is why I recommend short facts. A teacher friend of mine posted that - they actually demonstrate the math concepts of frieze patterns, reflection, rotation, and translation (here I was thinking they were just "cool" :). The original post I took the idea from can be found HERE . This is also where you go to get the instructions for putting it together and the pattern.  If yo...

Kahoot! is my new favorite tech tool. It is a free online question response system that allows you to create game based reviews or polls. It works with any 1:1 or web based BYOD device.  What I like is that I don't have to make any questions if I don't want to. There are literally thousands of Kahoots you can search in their data base, from science to ELA.  The kids LOVE playing it. Teachers would register at getkahoot.com but students would go to kahoot.it to play. You the teacher would push out the kahoot you want students to play and they would register with the provided pin. They would then register their name and the game would begin. FYI - You can also have a large number of players so if you needed to combine classes or wanted to do a faculty wide kahoot you could. DRAWBACKS 1. The questions and answers DO NOT show up on the students device (only the four color answer grid - see first picture above). This makes it hard for children in the b...