Notebooking, Teaching, and Technology

On my news feed at the beginning of the month StoryLine Online posted that a new book was added to their growing library of videos where celebrities read books online. This one is called As Fast As Words Could Fly written by Pamela M. Tuck and read by Dule Hill. The video tells the story of Mason Steel, a young African-American boy living in the south during the civil rights movement, who supports his activist father with the help of a typewriting in the fight for racial equality and ending segregation. According to the press release the video comes with supplemental activity guides for both home and school, aimed at students in 3rd - 5th grades. Since February is Black History month it would make an excellent read aloud (that you don't actually have to read aloud) in the classroom.

Super excited to find out an educational article I wrote was published today in eschoolnews.com . The article was inspired by a training class I conducted during our district's summer institute. As a mom of a boy I am well versed in getting my own child to read using sneaky and underhanded ways and this article highlights a few of those I think would work in the classroom. The article was not a paying article...more of a contribution to the world of educational articles. Even though I write this blog and our district's newsletter (both of which I love to do!) it is nice to be published outside something I somewhat control. I hope you enjoy!

This week, Friday, January 20th, Donald Trump will be sworn in as our new President. Many teachers across the nation will be showing the event live in their classroom. Unfortunately while teachers are tuning in students may tune out. I developed a "Word Search" strategy that I modified from a teacher on how to engage students while listening to speeches and public addresses. Prior to the speech ask students what kinds of words they think might come up in the President's speech. Brainstorm 10-20 words and then make a list (i.e. future, working together, hope, jobs). Have them try and think like the President. What might he say to try to motivate Americans from all levels and backgrounds? Have students copy that list on a piece of paper. During the speech have them listen carefully and put a check next to any word that the President uses that is on the list. If he uses it it more then once the word gets checked again. Note any words that seem to come up a lot t...

Exciting Technology Upgrade #1 - Google Classroom This week Google Classroom announced that they have added a way to assign work to individuals, or groups of students, within Classroom. This is a HUGE deal, as it has been an issue of complaint not only in our district but also in the Classroom community forms. They have a couple of other upgrades as well (but this is the one that made the teachers I work with jump for joy!). You can read about the updates  HERE . What we would love Google Classroom to add is an inking feature for our touch screen tablet users (that would be users in grades 6-12 this year and 3-5 next year). Right now our 3-5 users have iPads and Google Classroom allows students to open assignments and use the inking tool to write on documents with their finger (very handy!). However this isn't a feature available on our touch screen tablets. The Classroom developers do allow for teacher feedback and I definitely submitted the suggestion (and asked a...

I made one of these foldables years ago when I was in the classroom and thought I would give it another try. Normally under the last flap it reads "list the titles of X amount of books you will read this year" but I thought that would be difficult for children who aren't sitting around with a list of book titles they are dying to read. So instead I used the "7" to indicate the amount of months left before school starts in August. Under that flap I am encouraging students to set a goal of reading one chapter book a month. Of course I would love for students to read more then that but I thought it was a "doable" goal, particularly for the reluctant readers. I uploaded the foldable to the ClassFlow Marketplace . If you aren't a member you will need to make a free account. The foldable packet comes with two different layouts. One is better for three hole punching and keeping in a binder. The other is better if you plan to hang the foldab...

Join millions of classrooms around the world December 5 - 11 as they celebrate and highlight an hour of code in the classroom. To find out more go to the Hour of Code website at h ttps://hourofcode.com/us There are a lot of free resources across multiple grade levels as well on the code.org website. Last year, in many of our schools, the Hour of Code was worked into students computer lab specials rotation but I have also seen it worked into science lab times, as well as during math blocks. Recently I found out about a website dedicated to helping schools host a Family Code Night . You can sign up for a free family code night event kit on their site and use that as a tech night focus. Since the Hour of Code runs in December consider combining it with a holiday night with families (getting the PTO involved to serve cookies and hot chocolate). At a recent conference, I heard of one school hosting a Tech the Halls night where teachers decorated the halls with a technology th...

When I was in the classroom about the first of the year we would all get an email from the principal letting us know that we were making too many copies and using up too much paper.  This message appears universal as most of my teacher friends from other schools would get the same email from their administrators.  Some schools, at that point, would put a limitation on the amount of copies you can make per month on the fancy programmable copier machines....and then you would have to ask other teachers on your team with lower copier counts to make copies for you until the first of the month kicked in (I always felt it was really unfair that your unused copies don't roll over to the next month!). Now that each student has a device in our district there has been a greater push for teachers to go paperless (as much as possible) but a lot of teachers don't know where to start.  I met with one of those teachers a few weeks ago and recommended she put together ...