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Showing posts from 2017

Fall Cue 2017 - Day One

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I'm back for another conference of connecting, learning, and being inspired! Fall CUE is held every year at American Canyon High School in Napa County. Recently, areas surrounding American Canyon have experienced much devastation due to wildfires. Thie high school was even used as an emergency shelter for evacuees a matter of weeks ago. It feels good to be here supporting the Napa community and being with other teachers that are passionate about moving into the future and bringing our best to our students. Opening Keynote - Brad Montague, creator of Kid President @thebradmontague I did not arrive early enough to get a ticket to sit in the theater, so I was in the cafeteria with the other overflow participants. I'm glad that those in the theater were sharing on Twitter! How might we be more child-like in order to become better grownups? Live like possibilitarians. Find joy in the ordinary. #fallcue #cue pic.twitter.com/MLNj1Whhsh — Jody Green (@peerless

Math Around the Room - Scavenger Hunts

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One of my favorite strategies to use in my math class is "Math Around the Room" My students refer to these activities as scavenger hunts. This strategy works best when reviewing a concept in which most students can work independently. I usually have at least one or two scavenger hunts per unit that we are working on. I use this strategy mostly with Math, but the idea can be transferred to any content area. I start by having the students create a recording sheet by folding a piece of plain white paper into eighths. The students number the sections 1-8 on the front and 9-16 on the back. The first time they do this it takes some time and can be a math lesson by itself with lots of good math vocabulary (lines of symmetry, fractions, equal parts etc...). Once the students do this two or three times it is a breeze. Now, when I have a scavenger hunt planned, the students enter the classroom, see the neon pieces of paper around the room, and immediately start preparing their

2017 End-Of-The-School Year Gifts

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I like to send my students home for the summer with a special gift to help them remember the school year. In the past, I gave each student a DVD with copies of all the video and photos I had collected throughout the year. This year, I wanted to do something different. A fellow teacher friend posted a word cloud project on Facebook, and I instantly knew what I wanted to do! Summer Writing Journals! I created a Google Form in which there were 33 questions. Each question was just the name of one student in the class, and a short answer response option. I instructed the students to think about one good word to describe each student in the class. We discussed examples and did some brainstorming, then I had the students access the form in our Google Classroom. Once the students completed the form, I had a list of 33 words for each student that were unique and special. I used those lists of words to create a star shaped word cloud that was unique for each student. I used the site:  http

My Teaching Tree

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Yesterday was the last day of school!  While I am looking forward to a change of pace over the summer months, I will miss the students that I have spent the past nine months with.  Since my first year of teaching, I have always been a tad emotional on the last day of school. When I began my teaching career, I wanted to create something that I could carry with my throughout my years in education to remember all of my students.  I found the perfect inspiration on Pinterest!  A thumbprint teaching tree. after 6 years of teaching I painted this canvas at the end of my first year, and each year I have my students add their thumbprint to the tree painting.  Each color represents a different class.  On the back of the canvas, I created a guide so I can remember which color goes with each year. I look forward to seeing this tree grow the more years I spend in the classroom. after 4 years of teaching! after 2 years of teaching keeping track of all the classes

Response to Literature with Sketchnotes and Thinglink

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Teacher: Kerry Phillips, SF Bay Area ( @phillips4kids ) Grade: Fourth Content Area: Reading / Social Studies Traditional Lesson Idea: Provide worksheets with comprehension questions to correspond to a class novel. Web 2.0 tools used in redesigned lesson:   Summarized big events in Patty Reed's Doll📘= #sketchnotes 🎨(teacher created or student drawn) we'll interact w/ on @ThingLink @MtDiabloUSD pic.twitter.com/NK4Yay3xoK — Kerry Phillips (@phillips4kids) March 27, 2017 Kerry is an amazing artist and uses the whiteboard in her classroom to create large scale sketchnotes as her students are reading a class novel. If you are not familiar with the concept of Sketchnotes, visit Kathy Schrock's Guide to Everything . She has a whole page dedicated to sketchnotes in education. Sylvia Duckworth is another noted sketchnoter that is a "must-follow" on twitter This is a picture of the class whiteboard after they finished reading Pa

History Report Video Project

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Are you tired of reading 30+ essays designed to assess your students' understanding of history when the essays are either written by parents or collections of facts copied out of old textbooks? I was!  Do you think worksheets help your students remember what they learned? I don't! I wanted my students to be more engaged in history, and take their understanding of the content deeper, so now I have them work together to create videos. After previewing the "California! Here We Come!" chapter in our textbook, which focuses on the migration of Americans to California during the 1840s, students select a topic they are interested in learning more about. To create my student groups, I had my student reply on a simple Google Form indicating what topic they are most interested. Once I have all the student requests, I create the groups. I like using this private form because students have to reply based on their interest, not based on what their friends w

CUE BOLD Symposium, 2017 - DAY 2

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Day 2 of the CUE BOLD Symposium - May 7, 2017 SESSION 1: Lesson Makers Panel with Jeremiah Ruesh , Trisha Sanchez , Sean Ziebarth I lucked out being the only attendee at this panel session, which meant I got a private lesson building session with three amazing teachers! The half hour zoomed by as we discussed how to incorporate the IRON CHEF collaborative slide deck model while teaching the four regions of CA. This will be a great lesson for the beginning of the school year. SESSION 2: Hyperdoc your Maps With Place-Based Storytelling with Lisa Highfill Presentation Resources AMAZING! Lisa shared a lesson plan on how to deliver a biography report on a map. Instead of just filling our a biography outline with the who, what, when, where, and why... students can identify 5 major events that happened in a person's life, research them, and share information and research on a map. Her teaching philosophy is all about developing wonder and curiosity in children.

CUE BOLD Symposium, 2017 - DAY 1

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Day 1 of the CUE BOLD Symposium - May 6, 2017   This was the first ever, CUE BOLD (Blended and Online Lesson Design) Symposium. I was excited to attend this conference to meet some of the instructors from the CUE Innovative Educator Certificate Program. The format of the symposium was very fast paced. Sessions were only 30 minutes long, and all of the lead teachers were presenting full lesson plans following Madeline Hunter's Lesson Design Model while incorporating technology and blended learning opportunities. I wouldn't recommend this conference for someone that is new to technology. Many tools were presented in the lesson ideas, but not explicitly taught, which would have been frustrating for individuals new to education technology. I was fortunate to attend with a great group of teachers from my district. Proud to see so many @MtDiabloUSD Ts at #CUEBOLD today. Amazing learning and community building here. pic.twitter.com/3PtmTUodHn — Shauna Hawes (@ShaunaH

Moving Math Class Online

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I previously shared my Round Robbin strategy for working on word problems  HERE My participation in the Leading Edge, Online and Blended Learning Certificate program forced me to consider how to transfer this type of lesson to a solely online classroom environment. The basic strategy that I use in the classroom is to divide the students into small groups and have them rotate through a series of word problem stations to collaborate on problem-solving.  Instead of using paper and pencil, and having students physically move around the room, the word problems could be presented in a Google Slideshow. Each team members would select one slide for which they would be responsible.  Here is an example of a slide deck set up with word problems Word Problem Slide Deck Example By using a Google slide deck, students can work collaboratively even if they are not all in the same room. They can leave comments for their group members.  The slide deck page allows students

Celebrating Failure

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I came across this video on Business Insider, and It made me think about how I celebrate failure with my students. In this video, SPANX CEO, Sara Blakely, talks about how she learned about failure at a young age from her father. How amazing would it be if all our students (and fellow teachers) could learn this important lesson? This video makes me think about how I can celebrate failures in my classroom. I already have a poster in my room that says "FAIL = First Attempt In Learning," but could I actually high-five a student for a "failure?" Would it help my students develop a growth mindset and learn to take risks? What are your thoughts? Would you implement a "celebration of failure" atmosphere in your classroom? How do you think you students would respond to it?

Fourth Graders on the Move with Google Maps

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I got this great idea when I attended the the Google Geo Educator Institute last July. I scratched the surface of the suite of Google Geo tools by using My Maps last year, but I have learned about so many more features and how to enhance student learning using these amazing tools. When my students return from spring break, I plan for my class to maintain a shared map of all the places they visit. This can be accomplished by creating a  Google Form  and then importing the data collected on the form to a "MyMap". Students will complete the form indicating where they went and why they went to a particular location. Once students add entries to the form, the data can be collected in a Google sheet and that sheet can be imported into a Google Map where pins will automatically be dropped on each location. Check out this video to see how to import data from a Google sheet into a Google Map. My mind was blown! All the data that the students enter in the form is viewabl

Round Robin - Math Around the Room

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Another strategy that I use in my Math class that promotes teamwork, problem-solving, and collaborative conversations is what I call a "Round-Robin."  It is fairly simple, but it gets the students up out of their desks and working together to solve story problems. I divide my class into six teams (about 4-5 students each) and each student creates their own recording sheet by folding a plain sheet of white paper into thirds. The first time they do this it takes some time and explicit instruction, but after a few times, students can create their recording sheet quickly and with little direction. I put two copies of the story problems in plastic sheet protectors at each table group. Students begin working on solving the problem together in the appropriate section on their recording sheet. To ensure equal participation, all students must complete a recording sheet, and the group does not know which sheet I will collect from each group to be awarded points. Students are