Activity 7: Assessments

I use Socrative as a classroom review tool for roots, prefixes, and suffixes. Here's a copy of one of my quizzes (I don't know how to embed a live quiz from Socrative):

Socrative is a good tool for very concrete information and factual assessment. It also allows for the teacher to ask an open-ended question to which the students reply, which can then be saved to email and printed out. I've used to this to assess knowledge of paragraph and complete sentences. I will continue to use Socrative throughout the year; kids like it.

PollEverywhere seems like a fun tool to get quick responses for things and start discussions. I might use it for Do Now!s at the beginning of the period. I usually had kids write Do Now!s in a notebook, but what fun is that?

My Poll: What was your favorite part about summer?

Activity 6: Google Classroom

Beyond reporting PLC information, this is my first experience with Google Classroom. I can see myself using Google Classroom in small intervention classes in order to get use to the format and grading procedures, but I can't imagine jumping right into working with 140 students from five classes and having success; thank the gods we are not being forced to. However, with a small class, I like how everything is compartmentalized and easy to track. However, the nature of an intervention class is to have students move around quite a bit, so would it be difficult to add and subtract students, however they might be transferring. I do, however, like that I can hold them accountable online and that I need to keep these kids engaged however I can. So... I see the possibility and have had a little fun with the word however--however you feel about that.

 

Activity 5: Apps, Extensions, and Add-Ons

I've been using the Note Board Extension for about a year now. I use it to take notes and make lists for whatever I need to do. I like that it's available on all of my devices that I'm logged into. I also use this to keep track of my school passwords and other sites that are not necessary to keep completely secure.

As for the rest of the apps, extensions, and add-ons, there's a ton of potential, but I can also see spending too much time trying to incorporate "fads" that may not be worth trying to learn. These things give me anxiety. What if I spend an entire school year teaching students how to download, use, and share information using these tools only to realize that it was a mere distraction? What if what I change to is not as beneficial as what I do now?

Robert Frost wrote: "...why abandon a belief/ Merely because it ceases to be true./ Cling to it long enough, and not a doubt/ It will turn true again, for so it goes." 

I know many of these are powerful tools, but for my own sanity, and, hopefully, the benefit of my students, I'm going to focus mostly on how students get information, how students create information, and helpful ways that I can provide feedback. Anything else I will leave by the wayside until proof demonstrates effectiveness.

Activity 4: Google Suite

Google Drive is great because everything can be made available from any device that has access to the internet. Since I began teaching at Chip, I've been keeping all of my files on Drive. It's a great tool for the classroom because you can link projects and guidelines onto a web page and students/parents can access it at anytime. One drawback for me so far has been that I often forget to share the docs after posting and parents end up requesting access (I wish there was a prompt that came up when linking files). Parents also need to get use to this technology because many still email to request forms as opposed to going online and finding it for themselves; one of my goals is to streamline my web page this fall. 

Here is a presentation that I updated to use with Reader's Workshop in the fall.

Basic Literary Terms

Week 3: Screencasting

Here's my first attempt at using Snagit, which I've never used before. This video is a great example of why we should rehearse and script our work before turning in a project. This is not related to a lesson, but it is something I would show kids to evaluate and make suggestions for improvement; sometimes are bad examples help improve student work.

I love using screencasts and the idea of flipping lessons (I'm not ready for a flipped classroom), but I was not happy with Snagit. I don't know if I completely missed it, but where is the pause button? I like screencasts that allow me to pause and bring up new pages or images. Without that pause button, I feel that the only thing I would use Snagit for is to explain simple images or to narrate a PowerPoint, which is all my screencast for this assignment it.

Engagement: Pear Deck

Pear Deck is one of the online tools that I'm excited to use next year with a classroom set of chrome books. I've posted the beginning of a Pear Deck presentation that I'd use for short stories under "Useful Links." Each year I feel that, at least in ELA, we cover some of the same material that previous years have covered. Using Pear Deck as an online formative assessment, I hope to be able to gauge what students already know and what we truly need to cover. Plus, the presentations can be made available for review outside of the classroom.

Using Blogs in Education

Aside from having access from any where, blogs can benefit the classroom by providing authentic opportunities for students to respond to one another and have his or her voice her outside of the classroom and beyond the teacher. Additionally, students need to learn to communicate well in writing because future jobs will require communication with people around the world. In my opinion, which I admittedly read somewhere and don't remember the source, classroom education is outdated, but by integrating technology and blogs, classrooms can take on a larger presence in a student's life and become more engaging while increasing the potential for applying to future real-world situations. Classroom /class blogs have the potential to create safe-zones for students to posture real-world interactions while making mistakes and gaining confidence.

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Here's a video that explains various points of view in fiction. It's a useful video because different classes speak about point of view in different ways; it's a concept that visual aids support tremendously. An extension to this video, which would require students to use the information, is to use a blog for students to submit reviews of story and explain the point of view. Each student, for example, might be required to review a book on an assigned week, submit the post to a blog page for other students to read, and they would have the video to review if they needed extra help.  Plus, other students could read the same book and add responses to posts. It's an authentic activity that allows for student interaction through a monitored medium.