Above the Line in Elementary

I teach fourth grade in California which means I teach all about California history and geography. Traditionally my students have completed a research report on the four regions of California as a way to practice research, notetaking, and expository writing skills while covering the Social Studies standards. We would finish our unit by sculpting and painting salt-flour dough maps. traditional research report - not too exciting messy and disconnected from the content I wanted my students to understand about each region I realized this project needed a redesign. Enter Google Classroom and Google MyMaps! To begin the research portion of the project, I provided a note-taking guide and a HyperDoc that outlined the whole project. We used a combination of online sources and our textbook.  Rough drafts were typed in a Google Doc that was assigned in Google Classroom. We worked on writing and editing our expository paragraphs in the Google Doc and this became the co

Session 5 - Lesson Builder's Fair: A BOLD Approach to Lesson Design, Jon Corippo & Lindsey Blass BOLD Lesson design is rooted in Madeline Hunter's 7-step Lesson Plan model. Jon talks about how to use the various steps of traditional, good lesson design (anticipatory set, guided practice, check for understanding etc...) and how to adapt them using new technology. This allows students to be the ones doing most of the work, not the teacher. Thanks to technology, we are no longer needed to deliver content or lecture to students. We can design activities that provide students with opportunities for higher level thinking. Jon Corippo regarding assessment: "Closure is not a test, it is another rep of what we already do." Madeline Hunter's Lesson plan steps: Anticipatory Set Objective/Purpose Instructional Input Modeling Check for Understanding Guided Practice Independent Practice Closure These steps can be remixed - change the order and/or amount,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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