Making things all caps (or not)

While you may be familiar with some of the formatting options in Google, did you know you can easily change the text to ALL CAPS?  Or all lowercase?  Or Just Capitalize The First Letter Of Each Word?  In her blog post here, Alice Keeler explains it all!

Learn that grammar!

Looking for something (other than SchoolHouse Rock) to make grammar fun?  Explore the new Cram Jam channel in Discovery Education.  This channel is geared for 2-6 grades.

Support for science (all grades!)

PBS has shared their recent science resources and there is something for all grades!  From exploring the scientific method with sloths to elephant surveys, there is something for everyone.

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

These 17 goals, adopted by the United Nations, are designed to make a better (and sustainable) life for all people.  TeachersFirst has curated resources (for all grade levels) to help you teach these goals.

Never too early for a virtual field trip!

Discovery Education recently shared their upcoming virtual field trips here.  You can get a brief description of the event as well as the grade level.  If the timing doesn’t work for you, all virtual field trips are recorded and available on demand in Discovery Education.

Forms into Presentations

 

Looking for a way to incorporate live feedback into your presentations? While there are several polling tools, the easiest way might be to embed the question responses (from Google Forms) into your Google Slide.  CottenTechCoach has shared a brief video that will walk you through the process.

If a picture is worth 1000 words,

Then you will love these 145 pictures prompts from the New York Times. You can use them for a variety of writing activities.

Drag and Drop in Google Slides

 Kasey Bell shared her how-to steps for creating drag and drop activities in Google Slides.  For more information, please see here post here.  Here is her video:

National Park Resources

One of the benefits of TeachersFirst is their feature-curated sites.  This summer, they shared this one focused on National Parks.  This might be useful in your social studies classes.

Google Forms Update

Finally, formatting has come to Google Forms.  Here’s the official update:

In addition to new options for styling fonts, rich text formatting is now available in Google Forms, enabling you to customize and add emphasis to your forms. This highly requested feature allows you to use bolding, underlining, italicizing, hyperlinks, and lists in titles, question titles, and descriptions. 

Here is a sample:

Want even more fonts? See this post from Alice Keeler.

New Webinars at TeachersFirst

TeachersFirst has posted their upcoming evening webinars.  They will provide professional development credit.  One of my favorite things is the hands-on component.  But I may be biased since I will be presenting at some of them!)

• 9 free virtual workshops!

• Learn new instructional strategies from experienced edtech coaches.

• Get hands-on practice with engaging tech tools.

• Invest in your skills. 

• REGISTER NOW >>

New to Google Sheets?

If you are looking to get started in Google sheets, Alice Keeler has the post for you. She will walk you through the steps as well as classroom suggestions.

Kami Updates

If you haven’t logged into Kami in a while, you will notice some updates.  Please see their blog post here for all the updates.

Back to School with Storyboardthat

Storyboardthat has a wide variety of back-to-school activities.  You can browse by grade level and content.  If you need assistance, please see your media specialist to set up classes and accounts.

Hispanic Heritage Month in Kami

Kami has several templates to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month!

Deaf Awareness Month

What would Deaf Awareness month be with sign language resources?  TeachersFirst has curated several sites for you here.  I found using hand signals in the classroom (no, I wasn’t using ASL but we created our own) was an effective communication tool.  In hindsight, I should have the learned the “real” words!

NEW in Discovery Education

 

While we were off in the summer, many applications update their platforms.  That is true for Discovery Education (remember- sign in with Google).  Here’s a short list of their latest updates:

• A new Explore page: Looking for inspiration? Our new Explore page lets you browse by subject, then offers personalized suggestions based on your activity in DE, grade levels, and more.

• New content partners: We are very excited about our latest partnerships with Sesame Workshop for PK-2, Minecraft: Education Edition, and Marzano Academies!

• Studio updates: From new fonts to animated buttons, Studio offers a quicker workflow and a few other fun tweaks that will make lesson building easy, creative, and engaging.   

• A brand-new Student Experience: Your students will see a new interface designed to build agency and promote time on task. No more excuses for incomplete assignments!   

• A redesigned My Classrooms: we've completely overhauled the My Classrooms section in DE, giving you a much more intuitive interface to easily navigate classes, assignments, and students. 

• Quiz Library: Have you tried the Quiz Library yet? Each month we continue to add more pre-built quizzes aligned to DE content to save you time and effort in assessing student progress.

Rather see the video? Click here for the video update.

Sketch and Tell Eduprotocal

So what’s an EduProtocal?  This concept (developed by Jon Corippo and Marlena Hebern) uses a framework (or process or routine) to teach a lesson. Once the students learn the protocol, you can swap out the content for a new lesson. I recently joined Mrs. Visone’s second grade class for our first EduProtocal lesson.

The students learn the protocol (or process)- in this case, we did a Sketch (where they had a few minutes to draw) and Tell (again, a few minutes to write after brief partner discussions) about their  favorite frozen dessert.  After a quick review, we did it again (this is part of the Eduprotocal strategy- repetition) where they completed the activity describing their talent.   Mrs. Visone shared their work (via a document camera). Please see the samples above.  Next week when I visit, we are going to complete another “fun”( i.e.,low content load) Sketch and Tell before we move to classroom content.  While we completed this one on paper,we might move completing this using Google Slides.

If you are interested in EduProtocals (Thins Slides, CyberSandwhich, Fast and Curious, and Math Reps are a few of my favorites), I’ve started a Wakelet with resources.  If you are in district, reach out - I would love visit your class.

Back to School with Literature (from PBS)

PBS recently shared this newsletter with literature resources- from Daniel Tiger to A Raisin in the Sun (with Ben Franklin and the Bronte sisters in between).  Something for everyone!

It’s all in how you react

Matt Miller  (Ditch that Textbook) recently shared this post in his email.  With his permission, I’m sharing it here.   Sometimes it is hard to control everything but you can control your reaction.

We didn't see it until we made it halfway down the driveway.

My family and I. In the minivan. We stopped with our mouths hanging open.

Toilet paper. Everywhere. All over the trees out by the road.

What had happened? After we were in bed, they snuck into the driveway. (Didn't alert the dogs somehow. I partly blame the dogs for this.)

They used 15 packages of toilet paper. I counted. Twelve rolls each. At $2.75 each, they spent $41.25 on this stunt.

It was all over the place. I saw toilet paper as high as 30 feet up. Some got it past the first line of leaves and branches into the woods somehow. 

Rolls on the grass. Plastic packaging strewn about. Everywhere!

👨🏻‍🦲 My first thought: "Our yard is a mess! How will I clean this up?" (I take a lot of pride in my yard.)

👩‍👧‍👦 My kids' reaction: "Who did it? We have to get to the bottom of this!"

👩🏻 My wife's first reaction: "Oh my goodness. (Thinking ...) Yay! They like us!"

The reaction of my wife, a teacher in our local school district, was really my reaction, too. In our community, you don't really toilet paper houses of people you don't like. It's a practical joke or prank you pull on people you do like.

Speaking of reactions, here's the conclusion I came to while I cleaned toilet paper out of my trees that day ...

You can't control what happens to you. 

But you can control how you react.

And our reactions say something about us -- to our students, to our family, to our community.

• A student misbehaves and we lash out >>> That relationship is broken, perhaps forever

• A student misbehaves and we show grace >>> That student may see us differently

• A student misbehaves and we come alongside to help >>> A relationship is forged

Sure, school is about learning stuff ... about content and new skills and standards.

But it's also about learning how to be a human being. How to navigate relationships. How to deal with conflict. How to act when we make a mistake.

We might teach students more with our reactions than we do with our lessons.

FYI: I wrote about my efforts to connect with students in my own classroom in my book Ditch That Textbook. Several of the short, quickly digestible chapters are about that. Check it out if you're interested!

Next time you're ready to lash out, take a breath and ask yourself ...

"What do I want to communicate with my reaction?"

-- Matt

Ideas for building community

Here’s an article from the New York Time Learning Network for getting-to-know-you activities in your classroom.

Sesame Street comes to Discovery Education

Discovery Education now is hosting Sesame Street with the following channels: Feelings Time, Letter Time, Number World, and Celebrations!

Check out these new channels!

What’s new in September in Discovery Education

Here’s the newsletter from Discovery Education with the September highlights. It includes Constitution Day, Hispanic Heritage Month as well as new ready-to-use activities.

Skype a scientist

I recently saw a blog post about this program which connect students (of all grade levels) with scientists.  And the best part (since timing seems to be everything) is you can watch previous sessions on their YouTube channel.  To view the program (and check out their fall offerings) please visit their site here.

Here is one of their videos from last school year:

Time Saving Tips from Kami

 Kami recently shared this teacher video with suggestions for classroom teachers:

The NYT Learning Network

Image from the New York Times

The New York Times provides a great variety of classroom resources- and no newspaper subscription is required.  Here is a blog post outlining their material. It is geared to middle and high school students but you can adapt some for younger learners.  My favorites are the picture prompts and the word of the day!

Back to school with PBS

PBS has shared a wide variety of classroom resources for younger learners - here’s a screenshot with the topics:

There are posters, videos, as well as printouts.

Even though we were not in school in August…

 

We can still celebrate Artists!  Here is a list of curated sites from TeachersFirst.   It includes museums as well as artist-specific sites.

How to build classroom community

Matt Miller (Ditch that Textbook) recently shared this blog post with 20 easy suggestions. Which one was your favorite?

New year, new goals with BrainPOP

 

Welcome back to BrainPOP.  Log into your account and search for Goal Setting.  You will see Pause points, Challenges, and other learning options.