Welcome Back!

Welcome back!

I’m sure your week thus far has been filled with the sounds of laughter and school buses. It’s back to school time, welcome back!

Typically the first Friday of the first full week results in a dull Friday night coupled with sleep and Netflix. Many teachers are already tired and it’s just the first week. As you get back into your routine, establish norms and procedures, why not create some for yourself?

In a profession like this one, it’s important to avoid burn out. One of the best ways to do that is to establish boundaries between school and work. Start small, but consider one day each week that an hour earlier or later will suit your schedule. Use this extra time to complete tasks and plan. By adding this hour, time is created to complete tasks instead of taking them home.

In addition to leaving work at work, make time for the things you enjoy. I consider myself to be a “Master Crafter”, so I make time for those things. They help to alleviate stress and avoid boredom. There’s an abundance of videos on YouTube about any craft or hobby out there. I recently taught myself to knit and make candy apples from YouTube.

Lastly, make exercise a priority. Exercise is a stress reliever and natural immune booster. You can’t do your best, when you’re not feeling your best. Regular exercise also improves sleep.

As the year progresses, remember to be kind to your students and to yourself.

Got Visuals?

Got Visuals?

According to the Visual Teaching Alliance, 65% of the population are visual learners yet 80% of instruction is delivered orally. How this new generation relies on videos became more powerful to me after a conversation with a beloved 5 year old. About a week ago, I was cleaning up at my grandmother’s house and the 5 year old asked me about a patterned pillow on the couch. I told him that I made it. Immediately he asked, “How?”. I replied that I used a sewing machine to sew it, he politely asked if I could teach him. Right after he asked if I could teach him to sew, he said, “Let me see a video.” At the ripe old age of 5, he knows there’s probably a video available that will show him how to do this task.

As teachers, it’s important to use what appeals to students. This is definitely the YouTube generation, so start there. Within YouTube teachers can annotate videos. Start by adding videos to your YouTube channel. Next visit the YouTube channel manager. Then click the down arrow next to the video you would like to edit and click the annotation button (should be on the right). Lastly remember to click apply changes. A great way to utilize this and get feedback is to add the video to a Google Form along with comprehension questions. New features in Google Forms allow teachers to build in a self grading quiz.

Often times teachers struggle with students losing notes (especially if you teach adolescents), YouTube is a great way to provide an at home resource. Using your YouTube channel to create a few minutes of video summarizing what happened in class provides at home assistance and a reference for parents. This is helpful for students and parents.

EdPuzzle allows teachers to take a video and record their own voice explaining the videos. In addition to editing the videos, questions can also be added. These great features are free.

If you tried Zaption and loved it, EdPuzzle is a great alternative to that. The Zaption platform will shut down on September 30, 2016 make sure to save your resources.

 

Here are just a few ways to integrate video into lessons. The opportunities extend far beyond this to include students making instructional videos or using videos for reflection to show what they've learned.

Before You Kiss Summer Goodbye...

Before You Kiss Summer Goodbye

As summer 2016 comes to a close, this is the ideal time to reflect on last year and set goals. In the next few weeks superintendents, instructional directors, and principals will inform you of their vision for 2016-2017. What about the visions you have for yourself? Here are just a few ideas as you prepare to return to your classroom:

Toot Your Own Horn

Encourage yourself! Look at your credentials. Give yourself credit for everything you’ve done up to this point. You are the content expert and you have knowledge to offer to your students. You are creative and bubbling over with great ideas. Too often we don’t give ourselves credit for our accomplishments.

Just A Few Things

Try  just ONE new thing. Yes just one. Choose one thing that you want to try. If you are in a Google district, try just one new tool. Perhaps you haven’t tried using a Google Form, try it, perfect it, and then move on to something else. There will be several ideas presented during professional development sessions at the beginning of the year, choose one to implement.

Positive Infusions ONLY

Everyone encounters “Energy Vampires”. Every workplace has them lurking around, they are easily recognized by their complaints. Spend less time with these people, they suck the life out of everyone they encounter.

Avoid starting the year with what you’ve heard about a student or cringing when you realize the older sibling was a challenge. Don’t begin imagining situations with parents that have been difficult in the past...before you even encounter them. Start off with a new ice breaker and make those connections that set the tone for the year. Resist the temptation to change the date on those lesson plans, consider new ways to teach those standards students typically struggle with.

Lastly, enjoy your last few days off, rest and spend time with those you love. Do something for yourself. Give yourself permission to have a good time. The first day of school is closer than it appears.

Google Forms for the Classroom

Have You Tried the NEW Google Forms?

It’s the middle of summer and the thoughts of your fall classes are just beginning to creep into your mind. Adding Google Forms to your back to school routine is definitely the way to start the year off organized.

Here are some practical ways to easily collect some information:

Open House & Orientation

During Open House and/or orientation, set up a form to collect parent information. The report can be used as documentation of parent visits and creates a current database for teachers. By adding a line for email addresses, teachers can easily set up a group to send out information throughout the school year.

Interest Inventories

There’s no better way to start the school year than to build relationships with students. Google Forms easily collect student information. Some great information to collect includes: birthdays, information about preferences for notes and learning, reactions to anger or being sad, and general stressors. For example, after sending home a student inventory one year I learned that one of my students liked being able to explain their side of the story. In other words, regardless of right or wrong, this student liked closure. That year resulted in significantly less discipline problems.

Provide Immediate Feedback

Google Forms now has a built in quiz feature, no add-ons needed.  Simply click on the gear for settings and it will be automatically changed to a quiz. There is an option for grades automatically to be sent to respondents via email. With each quiz, reports are automatically generated that allow teachers to analyze students answers. Quick and easy formative assessment with a grade. It doesn’t get any easier than this.

Technology isn’t a substitute for the magic teachers bring to the classroom, but it definitely saves time when compared to traditional practices.

Move 'em Forward with Formative

With the establishment of Student Learning Objectives (SLO's in the state of South Carolina), personalized learning is moving to the forefront. Technology is an awesome tool that presents countless options to assist with data collection on students.

According to San Diego State University professors Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey, "checking for understanding is the link between teaching and learning...". To support student learning these two well established professors believe that checks for understanding should take place every 5 to 10 minutes.

This is a great place to pause because that sounds terribly overwhelming. However, technology put the critical information you need at your finger tips. Here's a great tool: www.goformative.com

Formative is an easy to use website that works with android devices as well as iPads. Teachers can create assessments with multiple choice questions, open ended responses, and there's even space for students to show their work with math problems.The teacher dashboard allows teachers to create folders and separate assessments by topic or simply create a folder for each class. The process to enroll your students is seamless. Simply create your class and have students join with the code. Assessments can also be assigned without the create of a class through a shared link. Class setup is required in order for students to see results, guests will not see their feedback.

The "live results" option on the dashboard displays student results. Correct answers can be entered or teachers can simply use this informally to check for understanding. New features that increase functionality with Google Classroom and a few other changes are on the way. It's free so it won't cost you anything to go Formative.

Go Digital

Personalized learning is a hot topic in the world of education reform. Students come in every year with different attitudes, backgrounds, and abilities. The days of teaching utilizing one strategy at a time are a thing of the past. 

As more districts take on 1:1 initiatives and students are have more access to technology, I dare you to use it! 

Go digital with a digital portfolio. Here are 2 tools that are free to use:

The first is Google sites. Sites is one of the Google Apps visit: sites.google.com. If Google Apps for Education (GAFE) is utilized, there will be unlimited storage space available when compared to a personal gmail account. Sites can be created by the students with very limited knowledge of website building or HTML. Once students have built their site, with one click the site can be shared via a link. This is also a great way to share student work with students. With one activity, the game was changed, while increasing engagement and allowing students some range to express what they learned. 

The second tool is Seesaw. Seesaw is an app that keeps all data together by class. Teachers can simply create a class, use a class code for students to join, and students can upload media. Students can record themselves explaining the lesson, take pictures, or create a blog post. Seesaw also has new features with seesaw plus. The new features include a new formative assessment tool.

 Use the QR code below to check it out. 

Intentional Interventions

As teachers we all consider what we want students to learn over the course of a unit, a lesson, a week; but how often do we consider what we want them to learn today? How do you know what they learned at the end of a class period?

When the word intervention is considered on its own, it means to come between. During teaching, in the midst of learning, teachers must intervene and interrupt the process when students just aren’t getting it. Although technology isn’t a substitute for good teaching, it sure is a great aide to a good teacher.

Seesaw is a cool app that allows students to document learning. It also has a free blogging platform for each class. Seesaw is free and students as young as kindergarten can use independently.

Tell you more, sure! As the teacher, any artifact can be uploaded and students can reflect verbally, yes a recording, to explain what they learned. This is helpful for ESL/ESOL, special needs, and those students that are a little shy. Often students can show or tell better than written expression, but the blogging platform is a great way to improve and reinforce writing skills.

The feature that’s most useful is the parental involvement. Parents can join and view their student’s journal. The teacher and the parent now have a running journal of student’s progress throughout the school year.

web.seesaw.me/