Above the Line in Elementary

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 fri...

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...