Notebooking, Teaching, and Technology

My newest obsession is having students use Google forms to create "choose your own adventure" stories. The idea was brought up by another tech coach in the department and we had a fifth grade teacher try it with her class. Here is a link to the start of one story a student started. The teacher started with the kids trying to write their own stories but they weren't making much sense so she switched gears and had them choose common stories or fairy tales to turn into "choose your own adventure" stories and that seemed to go much better. My goal is to try one on my own this summer to showcase to teachers who want to try it. There are several "how to" videos on YouTube that I will be using to get started. I embedded one above which I thought provided a nice quick overview.  

April is National Poetry Month. I use to love teaching about poetry but like most teachers I typically covered the same types of poems all the time. A few years ago I ran into a "new" (to me) type of poetry called Blackout Poetry created by Austin Kleon (there are several videos of him creating poems on YouTube) and I wanted to give it a try. The idea is to "find" words within other peoples writing and create a poem using the words that are already on the paper (and blacking out the words you don't need). If you do a Google search most people use newspapers (and we did too).  As a class we had created "found" poems using cut outs from magazines so I thought this would be a nice, and different, extension of that activity. I was wrong. :) It didn't go as planned.  In hindsight what I thought was going to be easy was a little to abstract for children (fourth graders). On the plus side they took the project to mean summarize the...

Quizlet is beta testing a new game feature called Quizlet Live. For those unfamiliar with quizlet it is  a free website that allows you to create word decks that you can turn into flashcards and then play with them in various game modes.  You can search for existing word decks or create your own. Quizlet Live (their newest game) is an in-class, team-based learning game based on any Quizlet study set. Students are randomly paired into teams of 3-4 students to race against other tea ms. Each team must work together to clear their boards, but wrong answers reset progress to zero. the first team to match all 12 terms correctly in a row wins. I have used this in several classrooms and different training environments and everyone (students and teachers) have enjoyed the group gaming element and folks get really competitive.  Since it is in beta testing mode you have to request access by emailing -  beta@quizlet.com . You need to indicate what y...

Google Chrome extensions have become a hot topic in our district...mainly because we have had some students using certain extensions to try and get around our servers :). We shut off access to the google web store for students but we are promoting the use for teachers.  Quite possibly my favorite extension is the the URL Shortener. The extension becomes added to your Google Chrome task bar and when you click it you can immediately get a shortened URL and a QR code. It is quick and easy and makes making a QR code for a specific site so much easier.  The two pictures above show what it looks like on your task bar (picture #1) and how to install it (picture #2). 

Happy Leap Day!!! Above is a really good video that explains what a leap year is. Even though it was made in 2012 I thought the information was good and worth showing to a class. I particularly like it in relation to our fourth grade astronomy standards.

This came across my Facebook feed and if I still taught 4th grade I would definitely be signing up. Apparently Mattel has a Speedometry set for free for 4th grade teachers that helps to teach math and science skills using hot wheels. What?!?! How awesome is that?!?! The set includes lesson plans to help teachers integrate hot wheels into the curriculum. If you are interested you can sign up for your free kit here -  http://www.hotwheels.com/en-us/speedometry.html .

Check out the Berry College Bald Eagle Cam at  http://www.berry.edu/eaglecam/ It is super addictive! I love showing it to children and having them make observations in the nest. Right now there is a little chick under the eagle and students get excited when the eagle moves and they can catch a glimpse of it. They are less thrilled with the dead fish and squirrels but it does reinforce the food chain :).