Dogs In Need

Sample Poster created by Clare

Students in Heather House's 5th grade class at Franklin Elementary wanted to help out some forgotten puppies by creating posters to help them get adopted from the Humane Society in Wichita, KS.  After students read a story in their Treasures book about a girl who relied on a therapy dog to help her function, they wanted to help dogs out in some way. The students began by researching 3 different breeds of dogs that were available for adoption from the Humane Society and create a chart to easily organize their research. 

Once their research was done, students selected their favorite breed  and then went to Big Huge Lab's Motivator tool to create their poster. This web-based tool easily creates a poster for you in several simple steps. Students used it to motivate someone in the community to adopt one of the puppies waiting for their forever home. The posters were then posted around the community in hopes that they would be rescued. The posters were also taken to the Humane Society and displayed in their front window.

Image taken by Jenny Gridley

In speaking to the Humane Society representative we learned that the marketing department wanted to take what Heather's class had done and make it into a competition for schools in the area. The students were excited to hear that their idea was well received and might be made into a yearly activity.

Parent-Teacher Conferences

 I don't know about your school but both of my schools are gearing up for conferences this month. This made me start thinking about how I could help my teachers have smoother conferences. Here are a few ideas I plan to share with them, see if they will work for you:

• Use this google form or this form to help schedule conferences with parents. 
• Do a student lead conference with this Smartboard Template or this PowerPoint template.
• Have soft music playing in the background to help create a soothing, calm environment.
• Have parents use the technology in your classroom in an interactive way (i.e a Smartboard activity, a Google survey)

Fall Is Coming...isn't It?

image provided by seemann

After one of the HOTTEST, DRIEST summers I can remember in the Midwest we are ready for Fall. Football games, drinking cider, pumpkin picking, cool breezes and comfortable weather are all things I look forward to in the Fall (especially this fall). I also always enjoyed doing Autumn based activities with my students. Here are some resources that will help you & your students explore all the wonder of this wonderful season.

Solving Math Word Problems:
Challenge students to solve  word problems based on the pictures and information on the Pumpkinfest Winners Web page (using the wayback machine). Here are some sample questions:

• How much more did Gary Burke's winning pumpkin (1998) weigh than the pumpkin grown by Harry Willemse (2000)? (130 pounds)
• How much more did Gary Burke's pumpkin weigh than the one grown by Andrew Papez? (172 pounds)
• How many pounds did five winning pumpkins between 1998 and 2002 weigh altogether? (4,949.5 pounds)
• In 2000, how much heavier was Harry Willemse's pumpkin than the squash grown by Dave McCallum? (19 pounds)

If you want to go totally paperless, create a Google Form for student to submit their answers.

Editing Practice:
A great way to teach students how to use Track Changes in Microsoft Word by having them copy and paste the following article  in a Word document (or Google Doc) & use Track Changes to find the 10 mistakes in the document.

Science/Photosynthesis:Students read this article about Why Leaves Change Color then have the students take a poll that you create using Poll Junkie using the questions here about the article.  Poll Junkie is a great polling site that allows you to create polls without registering. Students could also take this article into a Word document (or Google Doc) & use track changes (or comments) to allow students to make connects to the text (text to text, text to self, text to world).


Making a Word Cloud:
Having students think about Fall & what the associate with this season. In pairs have students use Wordle or Tagxedo to create World Clouds. If students type their list of words in Microsoft Word or notepad they can check their spelling & have a copy of it. This is helpful a glitch takes out their work on the web or if they create their cloud and don't like it.  As an extension, students could use this word clouds to write a story or poem about fall.


Ideas adapted from Education World

Another School Year for the Books

provided by: ppdigital

Well another school year is about to begin and I wanted to share some tools that will make your classroom more interactive & engaging.

Mathwire.com Is a great math site that has back to school activities that will help you & your students get to know each other while reviewing math standards. They have also posted problem solving activities & daily math routines to help you integrate math more easily in your classroom.

21 Ideas for 1st Day of School  This site as 21 ideas for you to use in your classroom to help break the ice on those first days. I really liked the 2 Truths 1 Lie (but I prefer to call it 2 Truths & a Fib) for the older kids & Kindergarten Color Helpers for the little ones.

10 Guiding Principles for the Beginning of the Year  This article from Teacher Vision reviews 10 things that will make for a successful school  year for you.

Classroom Management Ideas  This blog is created by Principal Kendrick who offers simple advice to teachers that will help them create a successful community in their classroom. He highlights information from the editors at Education World with tips for taking attendance, motivating students and rewarding good behavior. 

Tammy Worcester's Tech Site This site has a plethora of awesome resources & ideas for incorporating technology into your classroom. I want to share a couple right now. The first one is the All About Me Scavenger Hunt for 3-12 grade. This activity uses the power of the internet & the ability of your students to search for answers about themselves that they might not have known. I also love her blog, Technology Time Savers it's just what the name implies...tools that will help you save time. Some tools she showcases are Delicious, Fir.ly & File Dropper. 


I hope that these sites will help make the 2011-2012 school year the best yet!!!

Search Stories of Kansas

Fourth-grade teacher Sheri Cook reviews a Search Story created by one of her students.
Photo by Susan Arensman

 I wanted to share with you an activity that one of my TRC (Technology Rich Classroom) teachers did with her students. The students are learning about Kansas and reviewing how to identify main idea and details of a story or article. She had the students create Google Search Stories about different aspects of Kansas.

Google Search Stories are videos that are created by putting in search phrases to create your search video. You can have up to 7 searches in your video, you will also be able to add music to your video. It's a very quick way to tell a story or in this case give information about a state.

To check out Mrs. Cook's students Search Stories, click here to go to her YouTube Channel. Enjoy!

State Assessment Prep already?

image by gcouros

It's that time of year again, state assessment prep....I hate this time of year and I know you do too but it's part of teaching (hopefully not forever). However, like the quote above states, you've got to change up how you are doing something if you want different results. That made we want to share some tips I have had success with over the years when preparing my students for the state assessment.  I hope they help you out too.

I recommend starting by reviewing the KCA tutorial with students, best way to do this is giving them practice CETE tests via the TestBuilder throughout the year. If you haven't started doing that, it's never too late.

·          

     Test prep strategies:

o   Scanning Practice 

o   Critical Reader

·         Reading Activities:

o  Time for Kids Article & the highlighter tool in Word

o   Review questions from stories in TFK with the Quiz document

o   Labette County Resources by Grade level  then subject 

o   Reading Comprehension activities 

o   Reading Matrix Comprehension Beginner Practice

o   Reading Matrix Comprehension Intermediate Practice

o   Reading Matrix Comprehension Advanced Practice
Reading online text

§  Story with Questions

§  Reading text online

§  Story (Grade 5) with Questions

o   Reading Lessons 

o   Fact/Opinion

o   Drawing Conclusions

o   Main Idea 

o   Author’s Purpose

§  matching game 

§  Author"s Purpose & Point of View Practice

o   Activity Search based on Content Area  
o   Practice Assessment, 4th grade
    Sequence Assessment  

·         Math Activities:

o   Great site to practice reading math problems online 

o   Basic Calculator practice site http://www.math.com/students/calculators/source/basic.htm

o   Labette County Resources by Grade level then subject 

o   Math Operations practice

o   Practice Assessment
   4^th grade
  3-5th grade

o   Brain Teasers
    3^rd grade

     4th grade 
    5^th grade 

o   Online tools

Illuminations Math tools

Graph Creator

3^rd grade 

4th grade

5^th grade 

o   Math games based on Kansas standards
Math Lessons

A Little Embarrassed, But Still Sharing Cool Tools

I am a little embarrassed that I haven't posted a blog until now but I do have a great excuse, her name is Maeve Elizabeth Gridley and she came into this wonderful world on Oct. 13th. We just love her and enjoy being her parents, we count our blessings every day.

Ok, enough about that lets get down to business. I have several tools I want to share with you:

Tempinbox is a site that allows you to create a temporary email address to help you avoid spam but I am suggesting that my teachers use it as a way to create student accounts that the teacher can manage for those web2.0 tools that make you have an email address to use them.

 OpenClipArt is a site that is full of free clip art for anyone to use anywhere free of copyright rules. YEAH! I love this site for my teachers and their students to use without having to worry about copyright violations.

Stixy is a site similar to WallWisher that allows you to create an online spot for collaboration. I have seen teachers use this site to share web resources with students, as well as photos and documents. You don't have to have an account to post to a stixy page but you do need one to create a stixy.

Googlios is another tool from Google (hope that is a little obvious due to the name) I am sharing it with apprehension because I haven't use it yet. It is Googles version of a digital portfolio, and I think it has potential but I am not sure that it's worth the work at the elementary level. Here are some examples of college students using it.

Hope you found at least one tool you hadn't heard of before and can use in your classroom tomorrow.