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Seesaw:  journal and parent communication

I use Seesaw with my beginning orchestra. They make videos and write captions to show what they're learning along the way, and parents can view and comment on the journal. It's a way to celebrate progress, but also encourages kids to watch their own videos back and self-assess. As a bonus, I can include notes to parents about important events like concerts.

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Smore-newlsetters and student publications

This year I wanted to make an effort to communicate regularly with families, but I wanted to choose a platform that would let parents see what's going on in my classroom rather than just reading about it.  I chose to use Smore because of its beautiful integration of links, video, and photos.  As a bonus, I can link between my various flyers.  As I prepare flyers for different events, I can link them right into the newsletter.

I also like to do an interactive, student-created program for our concerts. For the spring concert, I used Smore in place of Google Slides. It was easy to integrate projects students had made on picCollage, iMovie, and google docs.  I love how the kids have such a strong voice in the program, and how I'm able to include pictures of them alongside their work.

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Merry Go Round pg. 60 Discussion Protocal - Modified
I had 4 circles of about 8 students each in each corner of the room. The circle would designate one person to sit on a chair in the middle (they closed their eyes). I would post a math vocab word on the smart board. When I say go, students in the circle would give quick 2-3 three word definitions or examples one at at time moving throughout the circle. The student in the middle is in the hot seat... and needs to guess the vocab word. When the group guesses the word, they yell... " We got it!" I kept score on the board... I decided to try this strategy to get more participation - as I had been doing the traditional Hot Seat... and always getting the same volunteers. This way all students are engaged and participating and learning from each other! The kids loved it. I was worried about cheating, but the kids did great. We just chatted about the rules of the game... it was a lot like catch phrase. Quick and fun! Easy to implement too.

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I used Nearpod for introducing public speaking skills. I embedded open-ended questions and the collaborate feature to engage students throughout the lesson. Nearpodize was initially used to transfer a Google Slide presentation into a Nearpod lesson. I liked having the lesson backed up in Slides just in case the lesson was accidentally deleted in Nearpod.

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Touchcast-I have used the Touchcast app several times this year for my own presentations and for student presentations. It is a great way to introduce a unit. It's also an effective way for students to demonstrate understanding of a topic or concept. An example (attached) is the students created their own skit in which they acted out a battle of the Civil War. It was super cool!

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Tellagami-This app is very easy to use for short presentations. We have the free version which only allows 30 seconds of recording. One way students have worked around this is by recording multiple 30 second recordings and uploading it into iMovie. Also the students can only import one image into the background. A work around to this is to have the students use PicCollage in which they can use several images and save it into their camera roll and import it into Tellagami. The students love this app!

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Educreations-I used this app for students to create presentations. It is fairly easy to use. It allows the students to record their voice, import images and to draw (best feature for some students). The students should have a script printed out because editing if difficult.

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iMovie-This is a great app for students to use to present information. It is a favorite of students because they have used it a lot in past classes but also because of its ease of use. Some students also use this to "App smash" An example of this is when students use the Tellagami app which only allows for students to record 30 seconds. Students record more than one Tellagami and upload it into iMovie. It works really well.

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One of my goals this year was for students to demonstrate learning in a variety of ways. I had the students present several times. I used what I call a "Wheel of Apps" to randomly assign presentation apps to students. This does get students out of their comfort zone some but has worked great for them to learn about apps that they never have used before.

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The Wheel of Apps

You'll have to take our word for it that the wheel landed on Touchcast. Your browser cannot display the wheel of choices. Please upgrade to a newer browser that supports HTML5 (most new ones do). Wheel Decide would normally show a wheel right here with choices that you can set (lunch, games, dinner, anything!). You can spin it to get a random decision. Make your own wheel of dinner, wheel of fortune, wheel of lunch, wheel of whatever you want now!

What's Wheel Decide?

Wheel Decide is a free online spinner tool that allows you to create your own digital wheels for decision making, prize giveaways, raffles, games, and more. Browse through our wheels and spin to randomize your life and make the decisions that have no wrong answers.

Decision Making

Let the wheel decide. Save your energy for the big decisions

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You'll have to take our word for it that the wheel landed on Touchcast. Your browser cannot display the wheel of choices. Please upgrade to a newer browser that supports HTML5 (most new ones do). Wheel Decide would normally show a wheel right here with choices that you can set (lunch, games, dinner, anything!).

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Looking for a timeline app? The best one I have found is RWT. It allows students to put in dates and short descriptions. It isn't the most user friendly app but does the job. I have included an assignment that I used it with.

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My free choice is using a Hyperdoc. I used several Hyperdocs throughout the year. Their are a lot of different formats for using this. The first one I did was an Election Hyperdoc. A Hyperdoc is kind of a "one stop shop" for students to learn about a topic. It also challenges students to learn in several different ways. Each day the students had to record what they learned. They finished the unit by expressing who they wanted to be President based on evidence that they had found. It worked great!

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The science teachers have created a Tic-Tac-Toe board with choices of extension projects for all of our units. Students can't do essays, PowerPoints, or Prezis. They need to choose something different and more creative. Students are able to come up with their own option to present their learning.

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Last summer I read the book Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller.  In it she describes ways she has learned to motivate students to read.  This was one of the many things I wanted to get better at doing.  Donalyn gives students time each day in class to read books of their choice  and challenges the students to read 40 books in a school year.

After reading her book I embraced the challenge adopting these two strategies in all of my reading classes.  The students were excited to have time in class to read the books that they wanted to read and nervous about meeting the challenge.  I was interested to see what would happen and terrified about "giving away" ten minutes of instruction each day.

There have been a few hurdles, including time management, having enough books to read, tracking students' progress.  Over the course of the year we have been flexible when the students received their choice reading time.  We started the year giving the first ten minutes to independent reading.  While this worked well, it was a little choppy.  Now we have the mini lesson up front, practice the skill or strategy and then read to apply it in our choice books.

This year we have more students using their iPads to gain access to the books they want to read through Macken Via, the public library, and the Kindle app.  While this has taken some of the pressure off, I still struggle to have enough of the popular book titles the students want to read.

At the beginning of the year students wrote down what they were reading in their notebooks.  Yikes!  Reading them was a challenge.  With the help of Kate in Instructional Technology we were able to create a Google Sheet that was shared with each student through Google Classroom.  It has worked well and is pictured below.

The conversations that have come from this program are amazing! Students are reading and talking about their books! I will modify a few things and do it again next year.

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I have wanted to do a March Madness Battle of the Books for quite sometime.  The library media specialists at other middle schools have discussed it, but never got it done.  So this year, I decided to just do it!  I wanted to generate some interest in books using the hype generated by the NCAA March tournament.  First I needed to choose the 16 books that would 'battle' to win the tournament.  I asked a few collegues at Friedell for thier books title suggestions.  Then I had to seed them.  This proved to be more time consuming than I anticipated.  Creating the Brakets was also challenging.  I had help putting the brackets on the wall in the hall.  Laura Willis helped me with the Google forms that allowed students to vote.  The PTSA reimbused me for the gift certificate prizes.  I was please with the number of students who filled out a paper bracket, and the number of students who voted in each round.  I look forward to trying it again next year, with a few improvements.  Thank you Sam Ol for Tweeting about it and generating excitement!

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I used Smore to produce a weekly update for Friedell staff. Prior to trying Smore, I had been emailing the weekly updates using different font colors and an occasional picture to make it more inviting to read. I don't think my font tricks were very inviting! I connected with a Principal colleague who I knew was trying different apps to publish a weekly bulletin. I tried Smore first because I liked how my colleague's bulletin was so visually appealing. Smore was really easy to use and I was able to embed video and links. The only downside I can see right now is that it is emailed out from the Smore site and it took a long time for the bulletin to show up in staff inboxes. Also, some staff appeared to not get the update. I am working on imputing a staff email list into the Smore system.

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During our novel study of Unwind, I had students fill out a "one comment, one question" slip after they read a section of the book. This strategy came from Kelly Gallagher in his Deeper Reading book. The strategy encouraged students to decide in their small group discussions whether they were going to pose a question or a comment. Before I assigned this, I gave them guidelines as to how to write a "thick" question and meaningful comment that elicits discussion and demonstrates depth of thinking. Students were highly engaged and really loved having the choice! When we regrouped as a whole class to share, so many students had their hands up that we simply ran out of time before getting to all of their questions/comments. I highly recommend this strategy.
http://www.redesignu.org/design-lab/learning-activities/one-comment-one-question

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Our winter concert was snowed out this year, and we had to make it up during the school day. We used Periscope to allow the class to perform for an audience from the school. Parents could tune in during the live broadcast, or watch it anytime in the next 24 hours. Students recorded a preview of the concert the day before, and posted it to their Seesaw journals along with the Periscope link to invite parents to tune in.

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Sue Nelson- Friedell- I start each class with either a trivia question or brainteaser which has become a really fun way to start class and also a way for me to get to know my students better.  The topics I pick aren't necessary related to the class so it gives us a chance to talk about other topics.  I originally picked this for entertainment purposes, but it has turned into a relationship building tool as well.  

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Sue Nelson- Friedell- I start each class with either a trivia question or brainteaser which has become a really fun way to start class and also a way for me to get to know my students better.  The topics I pick aren't necessary related to the class so it gives us a chance to talk about other topics.  I originally picked this for entertainment purposes, but it has turned into a relationship building tool as well.  

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I read "Teach Like a Pirate" over the summer which had amazing and creative ideas to get students engaged in their learning. One strategy was to use PlayDoh to have students respond to questions. I used it the first day of writing with all of my classes because I wanted to hook them with something different and fun. I know that writing often is either a favorite or strong dislike for students, so I wanted a high success activity. I modified it slightly to have students "Create, Write, Share." I posed a question such as "What is something you did over the summer?" or "What is one thing you are looking forward to?" Students had a few minutes to "create" and answer with their PlayDoh. Then they wrote 1-2 sentences to tell what they created, and finally, they shared at their tables. I really enjoyed watching the creativity and seeing all students engaged in all three parts of the creating, writing, and sharing. All voices were heard and all students were engaged which I consider a great success on the first day of class. Students left asking when we were going to do PlayDoh again. I certainly think i will use this strategy again.