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The Popplet is a simple tool that allows the user to make graphic organizers based on the content that they are learning. In the classroom, students can combine ideas and concepts that they are learning into a visual that compares the information.
I chose the Popplet organizer because it allows you change colors of each block, add text, pictures, and even draw things. I would incorporate the graphic visual organizer by having students make a graphic organizer based on the information that they learn from the multimedia lesson.

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Kahoot! is a multimedia tool that is centered around student-learning in the classroom. Students can log-on through a tablet or cell phone or laptop and answer questions about a subject in a game like atmosphere. It tests the student's knowledge and understanding of what is covered in class.

Here's a description of the multimedia tool:
"Kahoot! allows teachers to introduce gaming elements in their classroom in order to engage students and grab their attention. The app enables them to create presentation, quizzes, and collaborate on each new lesson. Students can take part by checking out the presentations on a shared screen, or using their own smartphones, tablets, or laptops. Works best for groups." (elearningindustry.com)

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Kahoot! | Learning Games | Make Learning Awesome!

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Kahoot! is a game-based platform that makes learning awesome for millions of people all over the world. Sign up to create and play fun quiz games!

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Broderick, Thomas. (2017, March 2). How to Engage a Classroom of Diverse Learners. Retrieved from https://teach.com/blog/how-to-engage-a-classroom-of-diverse-learners/

Bartee, Rachel. (2016, May 25). 12 Aid Tools For Digital Classrooms. Retrieved from https://elearningindustry.com/12-tools-for-digital-classrooms

Nelson, Karen. (2018, May 23). 62 Great Critical Thinking Questions. Retrieved from https://www.weareteachers.com/critical-thinking-questions/

Secondary School Sampled Projects. Retrieved from http://learningnetwork.setbc.org/pblresource/2017/01/20/resources-and-projects-from-high-tech-high/

Staff Class to the Past: Time Travel Through U.S. History. Retrieved from https://www.hightechhigh.org/htmcv/project/staff-class-past-time-travel-u-s-history/

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I chose the Padlet as a resource because I like the different options it gave as far as a what type of layout I wanted, and it seemed easy to use. Just the other day I attended a workshop about using technology in the classroom and Padlet was one of the resources. I thought that this would be a good resource for my Autism students to use and for us to communicate as a class.

Pros: (1) Easy to use and make  (2) There are many options for layouts and add-ons such as links, Google, drawings. pics, videos to liven up your Padlet.
Cons: (1) With so many options, it's tough to pick exactly how you want your Padlet to look.

I have used Newsela before with my Intensive Behavior Support class. They didn't like it at first but the more we did it they more they got used to it. I like that students can pick the subject that interests them. As a class, students can read the same subject but at their reading level which allows them (no matter the reading level) to be able to be involved in class discussions. I like that teachers can see the student's progress or lack there of via a chart. The teacher can adjust the reading level of the student's based on their progress. Also, students can take a quiz to test their knowledge.

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The diverse learners in this classroom would be students that are along the Autism Spectrum. Though we would work on social skills a lot, students are taking general education classes and need to practice their reading comprehension skills. I have attached an article that gives a short lesson on how to engage a classroom of diverse learners.

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For some people, the term 'diverse learners' conjures the image of students who are learning disabled. Yet for a teacher, this image is an outmoded mindset. Every student has strengths and weaknesses. Every student has her own way of learning. Most importantly, every student has her own way of best expressing what she has learned.

At first, differentiating instruction to engage every student seems like an impossible task. Yet there are small changes every teacher can make to help students become successful learners. In this article are advice and examples teachers of all subjects and grade levels can use.

Engage All Learning Styles in Every Lesson

Before discussing an example, let us review the three main learning styles.

Auditory: Auditory learners learn best through listening and/or conversation.

Visual: Auditory learners learn best through reading, writing, and/or visual aids.

Kinesthetic: Kinesthetic learners learn best while moving and/or touching a stimulus related to the lesson.

Now let us explore a sample lesson that engages all three learning styles. The goal of this lesson is to teach students about what immigrants experienced arriving at Ellis Island.

1. The teacher provides a brief oral introduction to the day's lesson: students will learn about immigrants' Ellis Island experience by going through a simulation of Ellis Island. (The oral introduction engages auditory learners.)

2. Students receive an immigrant card and have a few minutes to learn their name, age, where they are from, if they are traveling alone or with a 'family member' in the class, and if they have any diseases. (Holding the card engages kinesthetic learners, while reading engages visual learners.)

3. The class goes into the hall where stations are set up. Other teachers (or parent volunteers) act as the customs agent and medical doctor. The agent asks the immigrants questions while the doctor checks the eyes, mouth, and hair for signs of disease. (The conversation engages auditory learners. The physical set up of the activity engages visual learners. Finally, the movement engages kinesthetic learners.)

4. Based on their replies and/or diseases, students are sent to medical quarantine or a waiting room for the boat ride to New York City. While sitting, they compose a brief essay/reflection on their experience. (Writing engages visual learners.)

5. Finally, the class returns to the classroom where there is a discussion about the activity. (Students sharing their reflections aloud reinforces the learning for auditory learners, while standing up to speak does the same for kinesthetic learners.)

In summary, as long as a lesson has a visual component, and auditory component, and a kinesthetic component, a teacher is likely to engage a greater percentage of her students than just by lecturing.

Scaffolding Instruction & Activities

All students, even high-achieving ones, have roadblocks between them and academic success. Sometimes these roadblocks are things which a teacher can do little about. (Ex: A student has a poor home life.) Yet when it comes to most students' roadblocks, a teacher has many tools to help convince students that academic success is possible.

One tool is scaffolding instruction & activities for the whole class. In a nutshell, scaffolding is giving students just a little bit of hidden help to teach them both the material and academic skills. To go in-depth with scaffolding, let us discuss note taking.

Imagine a motivated student who knows nothing about taking good notes. She will likely write down everything the teacher says, but will not be able to determine the importance of what she has written down. Also, the notes will have no organization to help her study later.

One scaffolding solution is guided notes. Guided notes are printouts provided by the teacher with cues as to how students should take notes. Here is an example the author used while teaching high school government.

This example does a number of things at once:

Teaches students a new graphic organizer.

Provides a small amount of information to show students how the graphic organizer works.

Makes it easier for students to follow along with the lecture/presentation.

Guided notes are much more than graphic organizers. They can also include the following components:

A warm-up that students complete once they sit at their desks.

Space to complete in-class activities after the lecture has finished.

An 'exit slip' activity on the last page that students can tear off and hand the teacher on their way out the door.

For any teacher who uses scaffolding, the end goal is to take the scaffolding away. Depending on students' age and abilities, scaffolding can last anywhere from a few weeks to a few months. No matter what, if a teacher commits herself to scaffolding, she will see engagement increase among the majority of her students.

Final Thoughts

The advice in this article is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to raising student engagement. Never forget that more experienced teachers are a great resource, too!
Thomas Broderick lives in Northern California. After teaching at an alternative high school for four years, he now works full-time as a freelance writer in the educational field.
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How to Engage a Classroom of Diverse Learners

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For some people, the term 'diverse learners' conjures the image of students who are learning disabled. Yet for a teacher, this image is an outmoded mindset. Every student has strengths and weaknesses. Every student has her own way of learning. Most importantly, every student has her own way of best expressing what she has learned.

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Student-Centered Project Based Learning: Time Travel Through U.S. History

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Student-Centered Project Based Learning: Time Travel Through U.S. History

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Critical Thinking Questions
(1) What would it be like if we lived during that particular time?
(2) What other outcomes might have happened?
(3) Why is this time period important?
(4) Can you compare this with another time period?
(5) What questions would you have asked?

Detailed Description of Task
"As a class of 56 8th graders, we first determined the 16 most significant events in U.S. history through a Socratic Seminar discussion. We then constructed a wormhole to travel back in time (via time-traveling bus) in order to experience our chosen events, firsthand, alongside the historical characters and events we researched. We documented our experiences through PhotoShop images and vignettes and compiled them into a Blurb.com book." (www.hightechhigh.org)

Justification for Your Choice of Activity Type
I picked project-based activity because I like to see students gets hands on involved in their learning. Project-Based learning also makes students collaborate and work together just like they would in the real world.

Technology Use
The technology used in the activity was a Photoshop for images from the past and a blurb.com book to the travel to different time periods.

Assessments
(1) Quiz on the most significant event in U.S. History that were discussed in the project.
(2) Students play Kahoots about the significant events and the winner gets a small prize.

Analysis of Assessment Tools
I chose a quiz to be given to see if the students were understanding the important facts about the most significant events in U.S. History. I chose for the students to play Kahoots because it allows them to have fun but at the same time see if they comprehended the important events. These assessments were authentic because they realted to real life, the students were engaged and involved, and there was critical thinking involved.

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What are the most significant events in U.S. history? What would it be like to travel back in time and experience history as it unfolded?

As a class of 56 8th graders, we first determined the 16 most significant events in U.S. history through a Socratic Seminar discussion. We then constructed a wormhole to travel back in time (via time-traveling bus) in order to experience our chosen events, firsthand, alongside the historical characters and events we researched. We documented our experiences through PhotoShop images and vignettes and compiled them into a Blurb.com book.

- a 164-page published book full of polished, time-traveling vignettes and PhotoShop images ( link to full book preview on Blurb.com)

- an interactive exhibition that allowed elementary students to board a cardboard bus, crawl through a wormhole and meet 8th graders (dressed up as the historical figures they met back in time)
Students will know:

the 5 W's of the 16 "most significant" (according to our classroom debate) events in U.S. history

quotes from significant historical figures

Students will understand:

how we determine an event in history "significant"

the habit of mind - S.P.E.C.S. (significance, perspective, evidence, connections and supposition)

why we study history

Students will be able to:

build a timeline

research historical events and take notes

summarize and synthesize researched information to use in a creative writing piece

write vignettes using sensory details

peer edit using kind, helpful and specific feedback

insert themselves into historical images using PhotoShop

use Green Screen to travel back in time in iMovie

apply S.P.E.C.S. (significance, perspective, evidence, connections and supposition) to major events in U.S. history

- Dicussion and debate about determining what is historically significant

- Applying the Habits of Mind - S.P.E.C.S. (determining significance, taking on varying perspectives, researching evidence, making connections between historical events and practicing supposition - what if this major event didn't happen or were changed in some way?)

- 16 Major Events in U.S. history researched, presented on and the 5W's memorized for a Celebration of Knowledge (i.e. test)

- Research notes for historical events/ using historical accurate research in creative writing

- Writing and Revising

- Using sensory details in writing to bring a historical event to life

Students will definitely hit many different parts of the Social Studies content standards for 8th grade, depending on which events they choose. When given the choice to determine significant events as a class, they will inevitably go past where the 8th grade standards end (at Reconstruction and the Industrial Revolution) to more current historical events. The discussion about what the state has determined to be significant Social Studies content standards for an 8th grader could fit very well into this project as you show your class the standards to see for themselves:
8th Grade Social Studies Standards
8.1 Students understand the major events preceding the founding of the nation and relate their significance to the development of American constitutional democracy.

8.2 Students analyze the political principles underlying the U.S. Constitution and compare the enumerated and implied powers of the federal government.

8.3 Students understand the foundation of the American political system and the ways in which citizens participate in it.

8.4 Students analyze the aspirations and ideals of the people of the new nation.

8.5 Students analyze U.S. foreign policy in the early Republic.

8.6 Students analyze the divergent paths of the American people from 1800 to the mid-1800s and the challenges they faced, with emphasis on the Northeast.

8.7 Students analyze the divergent paths of the American people in the South from 1800 to the mid-1800s and the challenges they faced.

8.8 Students analyze the divergent paths of the American people in the West from 1800 to the mid-1800s and the challenges they faced.

8.9 Students analyze the early and steady attempts to abolish slavery and to realize the ideals of the Declaration of Independence.

8.10 Students analyze the multiple causes, key events, and complex consequences of the Civil War.

8.11 Students analyze the character and lasting consequences of Reconstruction.

8.12 Students analyze the transformation of the American economy and the changing social and political conditions in the United States in response to the Industrial Revolution.
8th Grade English Standards
2.0 Reading Comprehension

3.0 Literary Response and Analysis (synthesizing historical research)

1.0 Writing Strategies

2.0 Writing Applications (2.3. Research Reports, 2.1 Short Stories)

1.0 Listening and Speaking Strategies (1.4 Prepare a Speech Outline)

Required
- Computers for writing and revising work
- Access to textbooks or online research
- Materials and costumes for building interactive exhibition back in time (tunnel for wormhole, etc.)

Optional
- PhotoShop (although, cutting out student photos and gluing them into historical photos could be a way to achieve a similar outcome without PhotoShop)
- Green Screen/ Green Sheet or painted wall along with iMovie (this is optional for a fun iMovie activity)
- inDesign (also optional - other programs could be used to layout the book, including Blurb.com's free program BookSmart)

STEP 0 (~1 Day w homework the night before) (Before the Start of the Project): Students are assigned a homework assignment of compiling the 10 most significant events in their lives, so far. When they arrive in class the next day, they are asked to cut that list down to the three most significant events that they write on three different notecards. Then, they form two group - boys and girls. They are given 15 minutes to build a timeline of major events with notecards, paperclips and string. The number of events included should be less than the total number of events being brought forward by the group. This should help the students start thinking about which major events make it into the history books, and which don't. The quieter or more timid students during the activity may not get their lives represented at all, unless a louder voice speaks up for them. The students and observations could be recorded for the activity and applied to the process of determining significant events in U.S. history.

STEP 1 (~3 Days): A Socratic Seminar to determine what our team (of two classes) considered the Most Significant Events in history.

Each student researched what he/she considered the three most significant events in U.S. history. This completed handout was required for participation in our Socratic Seminar: MajorEventsSPECS

Socratic Seminar Handouts: Socratic Seminar - Expectations for ALL, Inner Circle Response Prompts, and SocraticSeminarFeedback

STEP 2 (~2 Days): Make final choices on which events will make our list of most significant events in U.S. history.

Example list of our 16 Most Significant Events with brief definitions by student groups: MostSignificantEventsVocab and MostSignificantEventsVocabDefined

STEP 3 (~1 Day): Students form groups of four who are most interested in specific events. Students compete for points by getting answers right from the U.S. history portion of the U.S. Citizenship Test. Those points give some students more capital as they compete to sign up for the events they are most interested in researching and "traveling back in time" to experience.

STEP 4 (~3 Days): Together, students research the 5W's of their chosen events and the S.P.E.C.S. (habits of mind: significance, perspective, evidence, connections and speculation)
Handout: MajorEventsSPECS (Before students completed their SPECS about their major event in U.S. history, they practiced and received feedback on applying SPECS to a major events in their personal lives: SPECStopersonalevent)
STEP 5 (2 Weeks): We chose a title for our book and began discussing our audience. As a teacher, I created a handout for the project with requirements, a calendar and examples of the fact sheet and time-traveling vignettes each student was beginning to write.

Project Handout with requirements, calendar, book intro and example writing pieces: StaffClass2thePast Project Handouts
Research guide for student vignettes (visiting a specific person in history associated with the chosen event): SignificantPersonResearch Inserting yourself back in time using PhotoShop: PlacingYourselfInHistoryWithPhotoShop
This project is meant to build foundational understanding of major events in U.S. history, along with challenging students to begin questioning how we determine an events "significance" in the grand scheme of history. The published book and interactive exhibition were both inegral parts of the project, but could also be seen as extensions. After understanding and researching different perspectives on signficant events, the hope is that students will take that critical thinking skill and apply it to understanding differing perspectives on current events.

"Sometimes, it can be challenging to get my students (and myself) excited about researching major events in U.S. history, but time-travel was a great hook. One of my students came up with the idea of traveling through a worm hole and using gummy worms to come back to our time-traveling bus. I loved hearing all of the creative ideas come out during this project as students planned where they would travel back in time and who they would meet in the context of their chosen historical event. We brought history alive by imagining ourselves traveling back in time into it, and I think creating the PhotoShop images and using the green screen brought more fun and enthusiasm to the project. I really enjoyed traveling through time alongside my students."

- Cady Staff, 8th grade Humanities teacher, HTMCV

"What inspired us to write a book about time travel? On a Monday morning our humanities teacher, Ms. Staff, came into class more excited than usual. She began to explain a dream she had over the weekend. In her dream, the entire eighth grade class went back in time with her to visit the 16 most important events in U.S. history. At first we thought she was kidding; then we realized she was serious! She was serious about making this our next history project. Thus, the time travelling began. We split into groups and chose our important events in history. Through careful and deliberate research, each person in the group wrote a vignette about their "experience" with an important historical character from the past. We put them all together and... Voila! Our book was ready. Ready for editing that is. That's where our role came in. We spent countless hours re-reading and editing, looking for grammatical errors, accuracy and clarity. Each one of us read and edited rough drafts countless times before we felt it was perfect."

- Excerpt from Staff Class to the Past Student Editors' Introduction: Kyla Getzel, Phyllis Kuroda Crawford, Juan Sánchez, Nayeli Diez de Bonilla, Alexis Azhocar and Jessica Guevara

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Staff Class to the Past: Time Travel Through U.S. History

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What are the most significant events in U.S. history? What would it be like to travel back in time and experience history as it unfolded? As a class of 56 8th graders, we first determined the 16 most significant events in U.S. history through a Socratic Seminar discussion.

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Here's an instructional web-based tool that meets the reading comprehension needs of diverse learners in the classroom. The tool is called "Newsela" and here the students read an article of interest and answer questions to practice their reading comprehension. Students may also take a quiz on the material or write a summary about the article.

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It's time to improve literacy skills during social studies instruction and ensure that readers of all abilities have what they need to access grade-level social studies concepts.

Join us on Thursday, December 7 for a look at scaffolded materials that provide extra literacy support while building key social studies concepts and skills.

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Newsela | Content and assessment platform

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Content Aligned To National & State Standard, Flexible To Support Relevant Curriculum. Find the Perfect Piece Of Content For Lessons. Go beyond the book.