Above the Line in Elementary

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...

As we all know - if it is a hassle to get something set up... we are probably not going to use it very often. That has been the case with the green screen in my classroom. Previously the fabric was folded and stored in a plastic tote and if we wanted to use it for a class project, we had to clear out an area in the classroom and pin up the green fabric. It was a pain, therefore it didn't happen very often. To solve this problem, I created a Green Screen curtain that can easily be pulled out when a student has a project they want to use. I used some heavy duty wire (previously it hang across my classroom as a work display wire but the fire marshal made me take it down). I also had this package of clips from IKEA that slide along the wire. The clips stay on the wire, but the fabric can still be easily taken down if it is needed somewhere else on campus. The curtain slides into this corner of my classroom so it is out of the way, but easily accessible. I have t...