One of the most engaging activities I've ever participated in is a #MysterySkype. I've facilitated several Mystery Skypes in both 5th and 2nd grades since last year and in every case the students have been engaged and focused. They've cheered when they made a good guess and groaned when they realized their question was off-base. In fact, we just participated in one this past week where neither class wanted it to end, even after an hour of back and forth! Students also realized how...
Monday, March 30, 2015
Tuesday, March 24, 2015
Edmodo Part 17: Grading discussions and comments
This post is the next in a series of posts to help schools and teachers that I work with get started with Edmodo.
Edmodo is a powerful tool for engaging students in meaningful conversations. Posting and commenting are easy tasks for both teachers and students. Sometimes as a teacher, you still need to draw a grade from the discussion. Assignments and quizzes have grading functions built...
Monday, March 23, 2015
CommonLit: enriching clasroom discussions
I recently read about a new website that has a lot of great potential for enriching classroom discussions. CommonLit is a site that creates thematic discussion questions to use with upper elementary and secondary students. These questions are paired with interesting texts that are free to download.
Here's a basic rundown of how it works. As a teacher you select a discussion theme such as America,...
Thursday, March 19, 2015
MysterySkype - where have you been?
I just discovered a really neat tool for displaying states or countries where your students have visited with during a MysterySkype. The website amCharts is used for creating stunning charts of any flavor, but also has free state and country maps. I quickly created one below to show the states that I've Skyped with.
Create your own visited states map or check out the JavaScript Charts.
var...
Tuesday, March 3, 2015
SBAC: It's not about the tools
I presented to my middle school today. The topic I was given was about the SBAC and technology. I was the last in a series of presentations by each of the departments. Each department addressed ways they are using technology to prepare their kids for the SBAC, usually by formatting their assessments or instruction to mimic the SBAC question formats.
Because they focused on tools, I focused on concerns teachers have with the format and structure of the SBAC, as well as the advantages this...
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