Digital Gallery Walk

Matt Miller (Ditch That Textbook) shares an easy way to integrate movement into digital activities.  Please see his blog post here.

Feedback with Google Classroom

Kasey Bell (Shake Up Learning) recently shared four ways to improve your feedback in Google Classroom.  You can click here for her post. I think one of the most effective tips is to delay the grade until the students have read and responded to your comments.

Looking for Kindness ideas?

TeachersFirst highlights a series of Kindness website.  Please click here for the highlights.

Screencastify

I’ve been playing around with this application and it is probably the easiest screen recording app I’ve used. Matt Miller (from Ditch That Textbook fame) recently shared a slew of ideas on how you could use Screencastify with your students.

More Scrambled SOS

Spotlight On Strategies: Change It Up! Scrambled Please

Welcome to a special SOS Top Ten series called Change It Up. For years you’ve told us the best part of the SOS is their adaptability for use across grade levels and content areas.

In this series, we take tried and true Spotlight on Strategies (CDN Version) instructional ideas and share ways to adjust or adapt for your classroom.

We’d love to know what your favorite adaptations are; visit the DEN Online Community to share more ideas!

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Change It Up:

Strategy: Scrambled Please (CDN Version)

Big idea: Provide students with a fun and challenging way to sequence ideas, 

events, or steps.

Materials: copies of any text that progresses in sequential order (e.g., reading 

passages, speeches, historical documents, mathematical or scientific 

processes) with the last paragraph(s) of your chosen text removed 

and cut into pieces.

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In language arts…

… ask students to analyze and put into sequence excerpts of a text or 

video transcript they are studying.

… have students practice using sequence words such as first, next, and 

last as they put portions of a text into the correct order.

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In mathematics…

…. ask students to view a media selection that introduces problem-solving 

strategies and then provide them with a multiple-step word problem that 

has been cut apart. Ask students to work with a partner to reorder the 

problem and then see if they can correctly solve it.

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In science…

…introduce students to a new unit of study by giving them steps of a 

science experiment that have been scrambled. Ask them to work 

together to read, analyze, and put the steps of the experiment into the correct order.

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In social studies…

…assess what students have learned about a period in history 

by asking them to first watch a related video segment and then 

correctly sequence the events.

Stanley Black and Decker Virtual Field Trip

Want a STEAM virtual field trip that is sure to inspire?  Register for this behind the scenes tour on Thursday, March 28 at 1 pm.  The date or time doesn’t work for you? All these event are archived and you can view on demand!  Please click here for additional information. Sponsored by Discovery Education.

ReadWorks and Illustrated Ebooks

ReadWorks has been a long time favorite of mine (I love to use their passages in many of my escape rooms) and now there is more to love.  Richard Byrne posted today about the new illustrated Ebooks available in ReadWorks. Please click here to read his post.

Move to the top in STREAM

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While I saw this post from Alice Keeler earlier in the week- the application

has just rolled out to our site today.  Now, in Google Classroom, you can

move things up in STREAM (just click on the 3 dots on the right and select

move to top!).

Linking in Google Slides

In keeping with the Choose Your Own Adventure stories, Matt Miller has shared his plans for linking Google Slides.  Please see his blog post here on Ditch that Textbook.

Choose your own adventure story

Richard Bryne recently shared a blog post using Google slides (and the feature that allows you to link to other slides in the story) to create choose your own adventure tales.  His complete post is here.

And the Number is...

Rediscover SOS: The Number Is (CDN Version)

Description: This strategy encourages students to become more aware of the mathematics that they encounter in their daily lives. Students become engaged in listening and watching for numbers in a pre-selected video segment and then use those numbers to generate mathematical word problems.

Materials: Students will need a video segment, paper, something to write with.

>>See the full strategy (CDN)

Adaptations and Extensions:

1. DEN Friend Emily Fagan likes using this strategy across many different content areas. She uses it:
• in Social Studies to have students better understand the American Revolution by looking for numbers related to the number of colonies, jobs, and land areas
• in science to have students dig into biomes and habitats through the numbers found in media that discusses temperature, climate, and world zones
• in language arts, specifically the novel Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, she has students determine the number of miles the main character walks, discover the number of weeks it takes for a broken leg to heal, etc.
2. Use Discovery Education media that contains numerical data about a topic, such as the solar system, and use SOS Pause and Play (CDN Version) to help students understand how to actively listen for numerical data. With each pause, ask students to curate their data in a chart. After playing the media, have them compute totals or averages for the data they’ve collected.

edWeb announces 14 new webinars

edWeb.net has been a longtime favorite- and their scope seems to be expanding.  Here’s

a list of their latest webinars- and everything is free.   From SEl, to students on the

spectrum, to science and  ELL- you will find something that sparks your interest.

Not the best time for you?  Sign up and then watch the archived version.  After a

short quiz, you will get a PD certificate.  Join their community to get updates on new

offerings.

Black History Ideas for the classroom

National Geographic recently shared several ideas for Black History Month in your classroom.  Please click here to read the post.

The Good and the Bad of Storybird

The Good news- they are added many new features.  The bad news?

Teacher/student accounts will only be free for 2 weeks.  Want to read

their entire notice- please click here.  Any material from this year will

be available on the previous site until June 1.  Below is a summary of

the Teacher changes:

STORYBIRD FOR EDUCATORS - FAQ

What remains the same:

• Teachers may organize classes. Students may join a teacher’s class by using the class passcode.
• Students may sign in with Google.

What’s been added:

• Teachers can import a class from Google Classroom.
• Education Standards based on the Common Core have been added to courses.
• Updated teacher’s guides and worksheets will be able download for each course.
• You can add more than one teacher per class.
• A student can join different classes at the same time.

What will change:

• Teachers (and their students) will receive the same 15-day free trial as all members.
• When teacher adds a student into a class, an email is required for the student.
• Students under 13 must use a parent email; students over 13 may use their own email.
• Existing students will be required to provide an email and date of birth.

#CelebrateWithDE – Presidents’ Day

From Discovery Education

On the third Monday in February, we honor all U.S. presidents on Presidents’ Day. The day was introduced to honor George Washington and grew to honor all presidents and earn that apostrophe after the s. This year, we invite you to celebrate by going all the way back to the day’s beginnings to study Washington – along with another long-ago honoree, Lincoln – and then consider how they might have handled presidential communications with modern technology.  Click here for more content information.

Looking for STEM resources?

TeachersFirst has a collection on STEM resources in this week’s featured sites.  You can find them here.

Guess Who (The Presidents Day Edition)

This is a guest post from Caileigh Fazzini (SMS).

Today my students engaged in a President's Day Guess Who game.

I created the Guess Who using a template from The Techie Teacher  

I transferred the template to Google Drawing so my students could use a

red x to cross out the presidents that did not fit the description.  

I shared the Drawing with my students and sat them near a partner. Each

partner copy and pasted a president in the top right corner of the drawing.

That was their chosen president. They played Guess Who with the red xs to

eliminate the options that could not be their opponents president.

Students were able to use physical descriptions such as black and white,

tie colors, hair styles, etc.

For older students, they can guess achievements/failures of the presidents.

My students had a lot of fun trying to figure out their partner's choice

and said they learned a few new presidents that they have not heard of previously.

Digital Citizenship- the Top 10

Here’s a new SOS top ten from Discovery Education - and this time the focus is on digital citizenship.  Many of my favorites are included in this package.

Printing your Google Classroom Roster

Alice Keeler (and her nephew) have produced a Chrome extension to easily export your roster from Google Classroom to a spreadsheet.  Just visit her link or read the complete post here.

Having all the students answer on one spreadsheet

You start with this spreadsheet:

Go ahead and enter the names in the first column (you don't need

email addresses since you can share this as edit in Google Classroom).

Then go ahead and create a template- what do you want the students to have?

It doesn't have to be an image (as in my example) you could provide questions

or prompts.

Once you run the Roster Template, this is is what you get:

You will get a tab for each student complete with the drawing you shared.  

While I used a fairly simple one, you could ask the students to expand their

thoughts. I think this would be great to use for younger learners.

For complete directions (as well as a copy of the first spreadsheet), please

see Alice Keeler’s blog post here.

Talking Hearts

Today I visited a class of young learners and we created a video for Valentine’s Day card.  Here is sample created to show them the finished product. We used ChatterPIX to record their voice and then combined everything into an iMovie.

Writing prompts from the NYT

Looking for some new writing prompts to help your students connect their lives with

literary themes? Try this list from the New York Times.

Exit Tickets

If you are thinking of using exit tickets online, you might want to explore the

Google Templates (you will find it in Forms under the education tab).

For Sayreville educators, you might want to watch the TEQ Online webinar titled Redesigning Exit Tickets.  This half-hour session gives a nice overview of how and why exit tickets are useful and demonstrates 4 options (Google Forms, Padlet, Socrative, and Plickers). You can locate the webinar either on the Course Calendar (was live on 1/28) or using the search function. If you need access to your TEQ account, please contact me.

Changing the color

Fran Maye shared a tweet from Katie Nieves about Daltonize- this is a chrome extension.  It will allow you to change the color to represent different vision issues. Here you can view your graphics as some of your students might see them.

Google Slides in Transition

Alice Keeler shares her step by step directions for adding a transition in Google Slides.  While there aren’t as many options as in PowerPoint, you can still add movement to your work.

What does toilet water have to do with nuclear power?

Want to know?  Check out the Navigating Nuclear Virtual Field Trip on demand with Discovery Education to find the answer!

Black History Resources

PBS has shared a list of curated Black History resources here.

Read Aloud Day and Skype

This is a guest post from Donna MacDonald.  Along with her fellow ASI teachers

(Barbara Coyle, Ruth-Anne Sokol, and Dana Leto), they recently skyped with an

author.

The SUES ASI language arts teachers participated in the World Read Aloud Day

with author Nancy Churnin during two class periods. She read the book

The William Hoy Story, is about a baseball player from the 1800s who is deaf.

Because William could not hear the umpires, he asked them to use hand signals.  

Baseball as we know it today has been influenced by William Hoy and his need to

communicate on the field.

Nancy Churnin has asked our students to write to the National Baseball Hall of Fame

to convince the election committee to have him inducted in 2020. After sharing this

book with all of our classes, we will ask students to write persuasive letters, and

hopefully be instrumental in having William Hoy inducted.

Students were very excited about meeting the author via Skype. They shared

information with classmates and their teacher.  Students have been asking to

follow up with the letter writing, which will be done in about a week. And, the

author has asked if we will Skype with her again.  

Here the students are learning to sign the word person.