Back on Track (hopefully)

The beginning of the year has quickly, though not quietly slipped away from me. I have a challenging class this year that keeps me on my toes at all times and in a matter of seconds, they can completely sidetrack my thoughts so that nothing gets accomplished!

It wasn't necessarily such a bad thing that I haven't blogged in a while. Even though I haven't put words to computer screen lately, I have still been using technology with my kids. More so than ever. Even though my school has some updated technology, we still seem to be lagging behind, especially in hardware, and that has made my job a little more difficult. I've had some of those problems solved, such as receiving a new computer for my SmartBoard and some ways around needing district money to do some projects online (since they have none, and neither do I:)
Another good thing about being silent in the blogosphere, is that I've learned some lessons by actually using the technology with the kids that I may not have thought of if I had just posted it as a "cool idea".

So what is the best thing I've used so far this year? It has to be ClassDojo. This is a great way to keep track of student behavior and until they are done with Beta testing, it is FREE for teachers who sign up now!

The basic idea of ClassDojo is this. You put your kids' names into the site, and it assigns little monster avatars for each student. Then, you can give the kids either positive or negative points for behaviors that you see in the classroom. Here's an example of what my class board looks like:

The things I really like about ClassDojo:
1. My kids love it. They ask to have their "Monsters" put up on the board.
2. It has created some level of self control for several of my kids with serious behavior issues. I find them making better choices when they notice that their point total has slipped into the negative. In my room, that means no Friday reward time.
3. I can print out a PDF of the kids behavior for the month. I can also email that PDF to parents very easily, so they can see where their child has excelled or struggled when it comes to behavior. I try to do this at the end of every month.
4. If you have a smart phone, it works as a remote! I can be working at my desk, observe a behavior, touch the button on my phone, and it appears on the screen. I can also use it on
5. Even if you don't have a SmartBoard or other way of projecting it, just keeping it up on your computer can help you keep track of behavior and report it to parents.
6. You can choose to add your own behaviors to the list, or delete some of the default ones, therefore making it really easy to make it appropriate to your classroom.

Check it out! It may help you keep your sanity during the month of December--Lol!

Things I'm trying #1

On the topic of things I am trying with my kids, last week I tried giving a spelling test using a Google Docs Form and then grading it with Flubaroo.
Ok, before you stop reading because you have no idea what I just said, let me break it down for you.
Google Docs is a way for you to share documents and collaborate on them. You can create word processing documents as well as spreadsheets and presentations similar to PowerPoint. You can create a document by creating a Google account, and then click on documents at the top of your email page. Play around with it. You can create documents for school and they are automatically saved in your account...no hard drive storage space required.
One of those types of documents you can make is a form. This can be shared online and filled in by anyone you choose. I put it on a web page for my kids to access. My form looked like this:

Then I read the spelling words and had the kids minimize the window after they typed in the words (The high-tech method of hiding your paper?)
When the kids submit their form, it looks like this on my spreadsheet:

The top row is the key that I typed in. There are some blanks because we ran into some glitches, but all but one kid had all of the words on the spreadsheet, just not necessarily in the same row:) Then I used an add-on called Flubaroo (I have no idea how the creators came up with that name, but I like it). When it ran, it gave me percentages for each kid in about 20 seconds! That's a timesaver!!!
If you are interested in trying this, I'd love to help you! The kids really liked doing it and I didn't have to spend precious minutes trying to decide if that letter was an "a" or an "o"!

Cleaning up YouTube

Showing a video from YouTube on the projector or SmartBoard can be a very interesting way to introduce or explain a concept. Sometimes, though, it can end up being a distraction because the kids get so involved in the related videos that show up along the side. Another problem is that the comments that show up underneath the video can occasionally be inappropriate. This can be solved by installing an add-on called A Cleaner YouTube to either Firefox or Chrome browsers. (It is not available for Internet Explorer, but there may be others that are out there that will work on that one) By downloading this program, you can eliminate all of the extra clutter on the YouTube site. No comments. No suggested videos. Just clean white background surrounding your video.
When you have the program installed, your main YouTube page will look like this…

And when you are showing a video, it will look like this…

Much better.

YouTube is a wonderful resource for all kinds of information. And the kids love it! This is something that will make it even more effective in your classroom!

Taking revenge on the seating chart...among other tricks

Making seating charts or choosing groups for students to work in can be time consuming. I’ve spent a lot of time in the past pulling my numbers out of my number jar and organizing new groups. Now that I’ve discovered Super Teacher Tools, this can be done much more quickly.
The first thing this site will ask you do to do is to create a class list. Then they will email you a link to that list. Click on the link. Once the list has been created, you can do a number of things. To make a seating chart, click on “Tools” and then the seating chart icon.

You have to click “shuffle names” for the names to appear on the desks. Then, the thing that makes this different than other seating charts I’ve seen, is the ability to rearrange the desks to match the configuration of your room. To change the names without changing the arrangement you’ve made, just click the redo button. The names will switch around randomly. Then the whole thing can be printed out!
I like the idea of using random group generator when I need to put the kids into groups quickly. They can’t complain when the computer does it (well I guess they could, but I’ll just blame the computer!)
Try some of the other tools on this site and share how you used them!

Make your own posters

This flood-induced four day weekend gave me time to spend doing research on various educational and/or technology topics. I discovered a online behavior management system, a way to structure my language arts time, and many other interesting things. But, I am absolutely in love with the site Block Posters!
On this site, you can design your own posters in a program like Microsoft Publisher, save them as an image file and the site will create a PDF for you that you can piece together. I created this poster as a standard 8.5 X 11 inch sign, and Block Posters turned it into this...

This is perfect for those objectives that you want to display, and wish you had a poster that said exactly what you want it to. This could be done for reading vocabulary, daily routines, or creating your own diagrams for science. I'm planning on making one for volcanoes!

Happy poster making! And here's to a dryer week in south central PA!

Why Technology Can Be Your Friend--Reason #1

You don't have to lug a plan book back and forth between home and school.

Since I am generally broke, I don’t like to recommend anything that’s going to cost you money to use it, but this is one of very few exceptions that I am going to make.
Last year, I had checked out the plan book available at www.planbook.com, and quite honestly, I wasn’t overly impressed. But a year has passed, the program has been updated, and now I am completely in love with it.
Planbook.com offers an online lesson plan book. Besides the fact that you can access it anywhere, there are many other benefits to this program.
• It can be set up to work on our six day cycle, and you can put your specials in at the time that you have them, even if the time is different every day.
• There are templates that can be added, so if you want to put things that you do every day in that subject, you don’t have to constantly retype it.
• It has a spot available in each subject for the lesson, homework, notes, and standards, if you want to use them. I use the notes section for a list of materials I need for that class. Each of these can also be hidden if you don’t want to see them for some reason. I hid everything but the notes section one day when I had a huge amount of science materials that I needed to have available, so when I printed the plan, all I saw was the materials lists.
• You can print them if you want. I’m just saving mine as PDF files and saving them in a folder with all the plans, so if admin wants to see them, there they are!
• The Pennsylvania standards are pre-loaded into the program. All you have to do is click on the one you want and hit apply.
• MY FAVORITE FEATURE… Bump! Bump is a way of moving all the lessons forward if you can’t teach the lesson you had planned for that day. You can bump them up anywhere from one to ten days! The same goes for extending a lesson if you don’t get it done. No more erasing and moving things around.

Here’s what it looks like with some lessons in.

The site gives you a 30 day free trial, and if you decide to buy it, it is only $9.95 for the year! That's less than a regular plan book costs and saves your erasers!

Focusing Myself for the Year.

Well, my first two posts on this blog did not really have much to do with technology in the elementary classroom, but I think they show where I am coming from this school year. It’s most important to me this year to develop a love for reading in my students while also increasing their reading skills. It is my belief that an overemphasis on testing has led our students to believe that reading has no connection to their real life. Very few fifth graders seem excited about books anymore. They are so used to just reading short, random passages and answering questions about them, that the idea of reading something longer is scary. It’s like they’re afraid that at the end of the book there will be a hideous monster that jumps out at them and threatens to eat them if they don’t answer questions about it.
My other goal this year is I to treat my students as the “digital natives” that they are by using technology whenever possible. Not using technology just for the sake of using it, but integrating it seamlessly into my lessons to help reach my students reach their goals. We spent a lot of time in the computer lab this first week. Some things we did worked well, and some did not. Instead of seeing it as a failure, we looked at it as a way to practice skills like copy/paste, typing website addresses, and saving to the home folder (even though it didn’t work).
What are your goals for the year? How can you make them happen?
The next post? …tech. I promise. :)

Reading

Ok. This is not technology based, but it helped me get a little more focused as I prepare for the first "real" week of school next week.



After reading the book "Readicide: How Schools are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It" this summer, I became more determined to return to the premise that reading is what makes a child a better reader. The more they practice reading things that they like, the better they will become. I want each of my kids to be able to give their own Three Words about reading by the end of the school year.

I started teaching in 1991. No one knew it at the time, but the children being born around that time in history would see the world in a whole new way. Children born beginning in the late 1980s are now known as the “Digital Natives.”  They have never known life without computers and other digital technology.

 The first third graders I taught, for the most part, did not have computers at home. My school was one of the few elementary schools that did have a computer lab, but I was one of only few teachers who would even take my kids in there. Computers were then nothing a fun extra. Now they are an integral part of our students’ lives. And somewhere along the line, as a result of that technology, the kids that came into my classroom changed.

It was a slow change, like watching grass grow. If you don’t pay attention to your yard, one day you turn around and the grass is a foot high. We haven’t been paying attention. Over the past 15 years or so when we should have been noticing the changes in the students we were teaching, we have been paying way too much attention to standards, testing, and politics. The kids that will walk into my classroom two weeks from now need a different teacher than my first group of 3^rd graders.

Before this summer, I had never heard the term “Digital Natives”. Now, it’s my goal to be the different teacher that the digital natives need.