On-line Curriculum...The New Frontier.

Next year the sixth grade language arts and social studies teachers in the Snoqualmie Valley will be using a new curriculum. After reviewing it, one of the features that struck me the most is it's online component; it seems to have endless avenues to engage students in reading, writing, and critical thinking. Not has curriculum gone digital, the makers of curriculum are forced to make their content interactive. Technology is moving fast, at times it seems overwhelming, however, the beat of the tech drum will continue on. As a teacher we have to learn to dance, or be in danger of being "out of touch" with our pupils. With that said, I do plan to continue to incorporate paperback novels, if only for nostalgic purposes.    

Book Trailers



Has anyone ever done student book trailers?  I was thinking of trying to create an assignment next year that incorporates having students create a book trailer in video format.  The idea is for students to read a book and create a book trailer video on the book...kinda like a review.  I'm wondering if there are any good apps available that would be useful and also wondering if for 6th grade, this might be better done in small groups.  Please chime in on thoughts...would this be something we could do at the end of the year with our literature circles maybe?

E-Readers





Teacher seeking wisdom...please comment.


With our new LA curriculum adoption and the novels that will be needed to go along with it, I am wondering if E-Readers would be worth looking into?  I'm not one that enjoys reading on an electronic device, but I know most of my students have books on their phones or other electronic devices.  Not sure if it would save money in the long run or not...but am wondering if we made it a requirement for each student to have as a middle school student, would it reduce costs for book purchases in the long run and also be more user friendly for the student?
Just wondering....

Articles of the Week

I found a great website that provides an article of the week for middle school students. The articles are presented in two formats, PDF and MS Word. When in the MS Word format, you are able to manipulate the documents to fit your needs and specialize it for your school/class. I have found the articles to be interesting and beneficial to kids teaching skills such as citing evidence, annotating, distinguishing between fact and opinion, among a myriad of others skills. In addition, there is an entire archive of articles to choose from as well as a new one every week.

Another option for giving one of these assignments is to copy and paste it from the MS Word or upload it into Google Docs so all students can access it.

Here is the website for your reference:

http://vms.vale.k12.or.us/articles-week

Skyward Assignments and Tests

In reading Dyame's post regarding using Google Forms as quizzes,  it got me thinking about trying this on Skyward. The appeal of creating a test or assignment that students can complete anywhere, anytime is almost too hard to pass up. In addition to this, from my understanding, Skyward grades the assignment! One of my major obstacles as an educator is finding enough time to thoughtfully and purposefully grade all of the assignments that students turn in, and do it in a timely manner that is of the utmost benefit to students. In creating assignments through this avenue, some simpler grading could be done via Skyward and more efforts could be given to grading written work. If anyone has tried this, I would love to hear your feedback.

Cheers,
Amanda Bee

Text Messaging

As most of you know I am also coach here at Chief Kanim. The other day, there were some players who did not show up to practice. I asked the players who were present to give me the missing players cell phone numbers.

I texted the missing players, and within seconds they responded with their apologies, and that they would be joining us for practice shortly.

In reflection I realized it was a powerful tool, and quite immediate. What is the protocol for writing, or responding to a student text message? Is there language for this? Just curious.

Hardware to support tech

One of the biggest issues I have in class is students doing work on Chromebooks but not having the capabilities to print the document.  Not that all documents need printing, as most of my assigned work can done online, but there are times when I want students to have a paper copy in front of them.   However, because our Chromebooks don't have access to wireless printers, paper copies in a class room are not possible.  I would hope that somewhere in our district's tech budget there is room for some upgrades to our classroom printers so that our students can print hard copies when needed. 

Anyone have thoughts are ideas to get around this until then?   

Edmodo re-visited

I started off the school year really  using Edmodo for all my assignments, especially for those who are absent.   I had a student teacher during the fall quarter and fell out of practice during that time and I noticed that when I don't post to got to Edmodo and I have gotten less accomplished from my students.   I will be starting again, now that my student teacher is gone, to use this as a good access point for my students.  I know it is simple in the realm of technology, but I can easily wrap my head around it.   I do wish there was a way to duplicate a post for all my classes instead of having to re-write for each class period.  Just extra steps.

AcvtivBoard and ActivInspire

Throughout my teaching career, I have used ActivInspire and the ActiveBoard to create, track, and implement lesson plans. It is a simple tool to use and the kids enjoy the colorful images that give them direction the minute the walk in the door.

ActivInspire provides a fun way for kids to get involved in group and guided lessons, as it allows them to do examples in front of the class using technology. I have found that student become very engaged in these kinds of lessons and it can even make grammar fun. It also provides an avenue for group or individual presentations that are created with technologies such as PowerPoint or Google Docs.

From an educators point of view, it makes lessons created in a previous year easily accessible. I have all of my Flipcharts saved in folders that are ready to use, so it takes away a portion of planning stress. Having said this, it also allows an easy way to share lessons with collegues.

If you haven't tried using this in your classroom, I highly recommend it.

Google Docs vs MS Office

We have a curriculum project that is in Publisher and after several attempts to transfer the document into Google Docs for students to work on, we were unsuccessful.  This led to large scale (37 students) confusion on how to upload a document from the internet, save it to their SVSD user share and work on it from there.  Students have come to rely on Google Docs and have very little familiarity with other programs.  At the end of the project, I have conflicting thoughts as to whether I would do the project next year at all.  If there was a way to transfer the Publisher document to Google Docs for students to work on it...I'd be willing to give it another try.  I guess another way to address this would be to recreate the document in another form that is Google Drive friendly....anyone know of one?

Google Forms as Quizzes

At the beginning of this school year Janice Wintermeyer (8th Grade CKMS L.A.) taught me how to use Google forms to create quizzes. At first, the quizzes worked beautifully, however, after a couple of weeks my students learned to use the right click define feature. If you right click a word while using a Google program while using Chrome as your search engine application it will define the word for you. As these quizzes were supposed to be "vocabulary quizzes" there was an obvious conflict.

All was not lost. I learned the program well enough and my students were familiar with the application that I have been able to use it to create other quizzes.

One of the best features to Google Forms is the add-on function, where there are several features that you can add to the survey, such as an auto-grade function...awesome.