Creating (and Organizing) your Jamboards

 

In her post here, Alice Keeler  walks you the Jamboard creation process.

Make your own eye chart

 

Eric Curts (Control Alt Achieve) recently shared this blog post and template so you can create your own eye chart. Please click here to read.

EfficienTEACH

Isn’t this what we all want?  To work better and smarter!  Matt Miller now has a new website- EfficienTEACH filled with resources and ideas for your classroom.

New PBS Resources for US History

 

New from PBS

The U.S. History Collection, accessible through PBS LearningMedia,

pre-colonial history to the present and draws on public television’s

extensive archive of documentaries. For example, a section on American

imperialism in the years before World War I includes clips from the 1997

American Experience film on Hawaii’s last monarch, Liliuokalani, while

a section on the 20th century Space Race features an American Experience

scene about Ed Dwight, the nation’s first Black astronaut trainee whose

career was undercut by racism….”

TEACHFLIX

 

Here’s the latest project from Matt Miller (Ditch that Textbook)- a curated set of classroom videos.  While still in its infancy, TEACHFLIX has a wide variety of content- check it out here.

New to the Socratic seminar?

John Spencer recently share this blog post which includes step-by-step directions for several types of Socratic seminars.   I didn’t realize there were so many options and that the fishbowl was one of them!

Robots and Kahoot!

 

!

Amazon has partnered with Kahoot to provide several virtual field trips focusing on robotics!  Perfect for those future engineers. There are sessions for both elementary and secondary classes.  Please click the link here to get started.

Make those Science words shine !

Here is an interesting collection of Science root words.  Not only will they help your students, but perhaps your students can create their own! I found this on Eric Curts' blog (Control Alt Achieve).

Stick Figure Hamlet

 

In a recent TeachersFirst post on comics, I ran across Stick Figure Hamlet (please see image above).   Here is the TeachersFirst review.  Not only would this help students understand the Bard, but maybe it would motivate your students to create their own comics.

Publish your own magazine!

Ever think of using Google Slides to have your students create a magazine?  Ernest Gonzales did and shared his ideas (as well as the Google template) in this blog post. Think of the options- this could be a travel publication or use it as a portfolio for your students!

Clean up your bookmark bar

This short article from Alice Keeler will help you organize and clean up your bookmark bar.  She walks you through the steps from creation to cleanup!

If you love Sketch and Tell,

Then you will love this Halloween template from John R. Sowash. Your students can crave their own pumpkins in Google Slides and share their details.   This could be an easy way to migrate your students from the paper version of Sketch and Tell to the online version.

Shortcuts to start a new doc(or form or slide)

Need a new doc? Slides? Form?  You can use the url shortcuts shown here to quickly create a new Google application.

Growing Media Literacy

In this article from Middle Web, the authors (McCusker, Irvan, and Driscoll) share six techniques to help students develop media literacy.  From lateral reading, and understanding bias, to understanding the power of images, they outline practical steps to help our students. 

Interactive Lessons

Matt Miller (from Ditch that Textbook fame) recently shared a list of interactive lesson sites.  The Smithsonian and PBS ones are my favorites.  Please check out his blog post here.

Templates for your Jamboard

Alice Keeler recently shared 5 templates (all free for you to copy) that you can use in Jamboard. She includes classroom suggestions and prompts. You can see all of them in her post here.

Join the mission- Globetracker is live!

TeachersFirst offers a free online Global adventure-it’s an overview:

Globetracker 2022-2023 Mission will kick off on September 25, 2022. Please read all about this unique opportunity and come back after September 25th to participate with your students.

Globetracker's Mission, an episodic story in blog-style format, takes students in grades 2-6 on a journey around the world to learn standards-based geography, landforms, and map skills in an engaging, interactive context.

If a picture is worth 1000 words,

Then a graph must be worth a million!  In this application from the New York Times Learning Site, you can challenge your students to collect climate data from this graph.  Please click here for the details.

More Halloween Ideas

From what attracts folks to pumpkin spice (or not) to the supernatural in Shakespeare to part of a pumpkin- PBS has something for all grades in this latest newsletter.  Don’t forget to check out the Spooky Scavenger Hunt!

Halloween Poetry from Kasey Bell

Kasey Bell recently reshared her magnetic Halloween Poetry.  You can read the directions and get the template here.

Halloween from Eric Curts

Eric Curts shares several Halloween activities in his blog post here  There are rebus stories, Google slides with jack o'lanterns, and Halloween drag-and-drop poetry.

Math and Skittles- perfect together!

Eric Curts has recently shared a self-checking Google Sheet activity with Skittles.  It covers estimating, counting, graphing, and more!  Please click here for his post.

Hispanic Heritage Month from PBS

There is something here for all grade levels from PBS. Please see their resources here.

PBS and Engineering

PBS recently shared some Engineering activities - who can argue with roller coasters, smores, and pushing plushies on the ice!  These three activities can be found here.

Prompts for personal narrative

Here from the New York Times Learning Channel is a list of 445 prompts for middle and high school students.

NASA and Insects

                                    Image from NASA

Looking for a design lesson for your students?  NASA has shared a complete lesson to encourage your students to create a robotic insect.  It is geared to grades 3-5 but I think you could modify it for other grade levels.

No tech ideas from Matt Miller

Matt Miller (Ditch that Textbook) recently shared this no tech ideas via email:

Here are some of my faves. (Would love if you replied with one of your

favorite no-tech ideas, too ...)

1. The "add and pass" activity (how-to article)

Every student has a sheet of paper. They start writing a story. Then, after

about a minute, they pass the paper to the person behind/next to/in front

of them. Keep adding and passing! With a couple turns left, I'll tell them to

start wrapping the story up. Add some movement by keeping papers on the

same desks. Students move from desk to desk instead.

2. Row wars (how-to article)

Students form teams of three or four. Teammates sit in a row (column) of desks. I give the front person a paper with five questions (teams of four: seven questions). Then calamity ensues. First person answers a question -- any question -- and passes it behind them. The next person continues. The back person answers and passes it up. When all questions are finished, the front person puts the paper on a chair at the front of the room. Points are awarded for correct answers and the fastest finishers.

3. Trashketball (how-to article)

I'd take this review game over Kahoot! any day of the week! (I first played this when I was a middle schooler.) Put an empty trash can on the floor. Add lines for one point, two points, and three points. Assemble students into three teams. Ask everyone a question. A correct answer gets your team a shot at the basket to add more points. All of my wacky rules and "lifelines" are in the how-to article. I also like whiteboard jigsaw sketchnotes (where groups of students sketch details about parts of a chapter on their part of the whiteboard) and rotating conversations (two circles of students -- inner and outer -- and students rotate to the next student to answer each question).

Resources for Character Education

Here is a new list of resources from TeachersFirst for the upcoming Character Education week.

It’s all in the layout!

Storyboardthat has developed a new layout option- Books!  Here’s a sample:

If you are interested in using Storyboardthat with your students, please contact your media specialist.

New in Discovery Education

 If you haven’t been to Discovery Education in a while, you might want to test out these newer sites.

• DEmystified: Join DE on our endless journey to DEmystify the wonders of our world.  

• Vooks: Enjoy this collection of storybooks brought to life through animation and voice narration.  

• Arcademics: Boost learning and engagement with skill-building multiplayer math and ELA games.   

• PhET Interactive Simulations: These simulations bring math and science concepts to life in a game-like environment.  

• News and Current Events: Follow emerging stories from around the globe.    

• Early Learning Channel: Jump start your young learner’s knowledge and skills.  

Adding emojis to Google Docs

For additional information, please see this site.