Top Five Tech Gadgets for the Classroom

Top Five Tech Gadget for the Classroom

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I presented at the Silicon Valley Computer Using Educators Teach Through Technology professional development today, so if you’re here by way of my “Best Tech Practices for Long Term English Language Learners” presentation…welcome!

The resources for my presentation can be found here. I talked about all of the ways I attempt to make sure my students are always speaking, listening, reading, and writing in the classroom. While preparing for today’s presentation, I realized that it would be good for me to share some of the gadgets I use in my classroom. I’m sharing my top five tech gadgets for my classroom. Let’s get started!

  1. USB Microphones, $22 each

These microphones are a fairly recent purchase, and I’m so glad I decided to buy them. The mics are great for

  • Chromebooks, laptops, and other computers
  • students to record audio (discussion questions, group talking, think alouds)
  • Vocaroo, screencasts, and any other audio recording site

2. Lapel Microphones, $6.50 for Three

I purchased these lapel mics nearly two years ago for my students to record screencasts and lessons they created using Explain Everything. See students’ work here. Lapel mics can be used with and for

3.  Android Tablet$54.99

This is another fairly new purchase. A parent and I are working with groups of girls to create apps for Technovation’s coding challenge. The girls use MIT’s App Inventor, and they need a way to test their apps. We received a grant from Philanthropic Ventures Foundation to purchase the devices, and I ended up purchasing two more for my classroom. Full disclosure: if you’re used to an iPad, it’ll take some time to get used to the tablet. But, hey! At $55 a pop, these little things aren’t too shabby. I’ve found them to be great for:

  • ScratchJr.
  • testing MIT App Inventor apps.
  • reading (ereaders/reading apps).
  • reading, writing, speaking, and listening centers for two to three students.

Click through to see the final two items! Continue reading

6th Graders’ Plot Projects

plot-1

One of our 6th grade standards requires students to explain how a story’s plot unfolds and reaches a resolution. We have been working on explaining how an author uses indirect characterization to reveal a character’s personality. This week we revisited plot, and students had to retell the main events in Bud, Not Buddy and explain the plot in their own way. Finally, students had to reflect on their project and choose a theme to represent the text; they had to also make sure they could find textual evidence to support their theme.

Here’s the document I shared with students:

Continue reading

How to Use Google Play for Education

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I love using Chromebooks in my classroom, and over the past three years, I’ve been enhancing my instruction with all of the education applications made available in the Google Play store.

In years past I had to send a help desk ticket to our technology department when I wanted certain apps to be added to my students’ Chrome accounts, but not this year! If your school district has enabled Google Play EDU for students, you can skip the middle man, and send apps straight to your students!

Check out this tutorial to find out more about Google Play for EDU and how you can send apps to your students. If you’re already using Google Play for Education, you have to tell me your favorite apps!

Use Google Slides for Classroom Book Talks

Google Slides Book Talk

Earlier in the school year I was trying to figure out a way to have my students talk about the books they were reading without having to crank out a hum-drum book report every month.

I decided to use Google Slides. Students were able to provide a brief synopsis about the book on a slide, and then they could read classmates’ slides and leave comments. I was floored by how enthusiastic my students were about their Book Talks! I had students asking if they could talk about more than one book, and many of my students continue to use the Book Talk slides to find new books to read.

Here is a YouTube video I created for my students to explain how to fill out their slides:

Book Talk

Tips, Tricks, and Ideas:

  1. Have students claim their slides–in waves: I made the mistake of saying, “Okay, everyone! Claim your slide!” Uh, no. Not a good idea! There were multiple students typing on slides, and it was kind of a train wreck. When I presented the slides to my 3rd, 5th, and 6th periods, I had students select their slides in groups of four.
  2. When leaving comments, use the + to tag people:  The + will allow students to add peers’ names to the comments and this will alert the added individual by email that they have a new comment to read.
  3. Allow students to insert and make their own videos: Students can insert videos from YouTube (ex: trailers for books made into movies), or insert videos of them talking about the book.
  4. Students can create collages using Google Draw: My students really love Google Draw, and we’ve used Draw to create collages. Students can create collages about their books (a couple of images, quotes, thematic topics/thematic statement) and insert them onto their slides.

How to Get Started:

  1. Create a new Google Slides project and title it.
  2. You can set it up like I did (see the video), or you can just have one slide with directions and students can add their own slides. If you opt to do the latter,  them trick number one (above) won’t be necessary.
  3. Share the link  to the slide deck with your students via email or Google Classroom.

Happy Book Talking!

Toy Tales: A Green Screen Project

GreenScreen3

Way back in late September and early October, my students got their first experience with DoInk’s Green Screen app. I mentioned here that the kids read Jim Murphy’s informational text, “The Great Fire”, and talked about a project they were going to complete, but I never posted an update about the project!

The Task: After reading Jim Murphy’s text, students had to use toys and DoInk’s Green Screen App to create a video summary of the text.

The Technology:

  1. iPads: students used the DoInk Green Screen, iMovie, Explain Everything, Google Classroom, and Google Drive apps
  2. Chromebooks: students used the Chromebooks to access Google Classroom for their assignments and to write their script. They worked on their script with their group, and Google Docs allowed them to work on the script simultaneously

GreenScreen4

The Materials:

  1. Through DonorsChoose, I was able to secure funding to purchase this chroma key, or green screen, backdrop and stand.
  2. I purchased about 15 tri-fold Elmer’s cardboard project display boards for $1 each at Dollar Tree, and my husband and I spent about two to three hours on a Saturday spray painting the boards various colors. The DoInk Green Screen app let’s students film on any color background.
  3. I also found green folders, construction paper, and wrapping paper at Dollar Tree. I was also able to purchase several green muslin backgrounds on Amazon. through DonorsChoose.
  4. I went to multiple thrift stores over the course of two weeks and purchased as many different types of toys as possible; buying the toys was easy. Sanitizing everything was another story! Students brought in their own Lincoln Logs, Legos, Barbies, and other toys.

GreenScreen6

The Time Frame:

  1. Whewph! From start to finish this took about ten class periods.  I have four ELA classes, and my smallest class has 27 students (my largest had 35 at the time of the project). I encouraged students to work in groups, but I did have four or five students per class period who really wanted to work alone.

Troubleshooting:

I always tell my students, “There’s one of me, and over 30 of you!” We follow the 3B4T rule in class: use your brain, browse the web, ask three buddies, then ask the teacher!

I also created tutorials for FAQs, and created a Hyperdoc with links to YouTube videos for students to watch.

Hyperdoc
Here are a few of videos from the project:

It was a great experience! Now, it’s almost time for round two; stay tuned!

The Great Fire, Inferences, and Theme…Oh My!

The Great Fire by Jim Murphy

It was another busy week in all of Mrs. Leonardo’s sixth grade classes! Let’s take a look at what students learned:

The Great Fire by Jim Murphy

 

The Great Fire Concept Map

Building Prior Knowledge

Monday:  We started preparing to read Jim Murphy’s excerpt, The Great Fire. Students learned the importance of activating prior knowledge, and we discussed the differences between the connotation and the denotation of a word. We then typed connotations for the term devastation after watching videos about wildfires. This was an important topic of discussion because of California’s current drought and the wildfires raging across California (read about how to help victims of these fires here).

Middle School Students Annotate the Text

IMG_1443

IMG_1444

Tuesday: We set a purpose for reading The Great Fire; I introduced students to annotating the text, and we discussed the characteristics of informational text. The student sample above shows annotations after we read the text a total of three times. The before reading portion on the back page is the student’s thoughts from day one. Before reading the text, we read paragraphs one and six in order to build background knowledge.

Making Inferences

 

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Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday: Students learned how to infer by using clues in the text. This particular lesson spanned across three days because some students knew what inferences were, but they didn’t know how to infer. Some admitted that they had no idea what an inference was. Wednesday was spent learning about inferences and how to infer, Thursday was spent practicing how to infer, and Friday was devoted to finding themes within specific paragraphs of The Great Fire.

We’re preparing to write a summary of The Great Fire, then students will create videos in iMovie about the great Chicago fire using toys and green screen! We spent the last half of Friday getting to know the green screen app!

Do Ink Green Screen

Do Ink Green Screen

Do Ink Green Screen

Do Ink Green Screen

I spent some time updating my YouTube channel this weekend; you can get all of the details here.

This week we will be wrapping up our reading, writing a summary, and preparing to get the ball rolling with our green screen project. More details to come!

Google Summit and Student Work

Krause Center for Innovation Los Altos Hills Summit 2015

A couple of weeks ago, RCSD‘s staff development department sent out an email to all district teachers about an upcoming optional professional development day at Krause Center for InnovationRedwood City Education Foundation was going to make it possible for at least 10 teachers to attend the mini Google Summit event; I went to the larger Google Summit event at Gunn High School in Palo Alto two years ago, so I knew I had to make sure to be at the KCI event. The catch? Teachers had to apply for a chance to go.

As soon as I got home from our staff meeting, I typed up my answers, submitted them, and waited. A few days later I got an email and it said, “CONGRATULATIONS! YOU GET TO GO TO GOOGLE SUMMIT!” Woohoo! I enjoy learning about new ways to enhance my teaching, so I was excited to learn about new computer applications, ways to better my workflow (and my students’ workflow), and how to enhance student learning through my current blended learning model.

Yesterday (Saturday) I spent the entire day at Krause Center for Innovation learning about ways to use Google Apps for Education in the classroom. In the next few days I plan to implement a few new strategies, and I’ll write about the new sites I learned about, too.

Thank you, Redwood City Education Foundation!

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Last week I introduced students to answering text-dependent questions using evidence from the text. This seemed to be a difficult task for many students because they wanted to write their answers using their opinions and thoughts.

I had an evidenced based poster I created last year, but when I went to look for it on my computer, I couldn’t find it! I ended up finding this poster on Teachers Pay Teachers, and while it isn’t the best way for students to write with evidence, it helped many students last week.

Show Evidence in Your Writing

This week I am sharing Carlos’s work. Carlos did a great job using evidence to answer text-dependent questions. On Friday students watched CNN Student News and typed answers to three questions answered in the newscast. Carlos did a great job answering question number three.

Carlos, thank you for your effort!

Critical Thinking The Drive-In Movies by Gary Soto

CNN Student News