Author: Admin

Archive A Classroom

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The new school year has just begun, and I have been asked by a few, “How do I delete all of my assignments from last year, and add this year’s class to Google Classroom?”

My answer: Archive the old and create a new classroom! It’s easy to do.

Navigate to your Google Classroom. Find the class you wish to archive. Click on the three (3) dots in the upper right corner. This will bring up a pop out menu. Here you have the choice to ‘Rename’ the class, or ‘Archive’ it.

Archive 1

No worries, you can always refer back to last year’s assignments in your archived classes:

Archive 2

Math In the Summer

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Unexpected Email

MangahighThis was waiting for me in my Inbox recently; along with the message:

Mrs.N LOOK !!!!!!!!!

Now, this may not look like a big deal, or that the student was playing a game and beat it, but when you look deeper; it’s a big deal. I received this email on June 28. Our last day of school was June 4. This particular game helps to reinforce the concept of the PEMDAS Rule. So this means that ‘J’ has been playing meaningful math games during her summer break! Oh, and that this game covers standards above 5th grade, is just the frosting on the cake.

The Power of Games

Back in November of 2014, I wrote about how I was Gamifying my math homework. I was using Mangahigh. Then in the spring, my school decided to purchase a different system (that had math included) for the entire school. So I switched my math homework to the new system (I was using the free version of Mangahigh). My students were NOT happy.

When I first asked them about their preference, they all agreed that Mangahigh was better. At first they went on about the games, but when I pressed further on the issue they disclosed an interesting revelation. Mangahigh showed them steps, processes, and most importantly, where their mistakes were. After one student explained, “I like Mangahigh better because it tells me why I got an answer wrong,” the rest of the class quickly agreed and expanded on the value learning from their mistakes.

Next Year

After listening to my students go on about Mangahigh, and seeing that students were STILL using it on their vacation, I asked my school to purchase 2 classes. Unfortunately, due to a very limited budget, it’s a no go. So now I’m on to trying to figure out how to finance this valuable tool. As I always say, “It’ll all work out in the end.”

Data Driven Vs. Numbers Driven

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Are you Data Driven or Numbers Driven? What about your district? In order to answer this question, we need to understand the difference.

Data Driven

data-229113_1280The buzz word from the past 8 years or so. This is where teachers, schools, and/or districts collect data from students in order to guide instruction and progress. Most often this data comes in the form of formal and informal assessments. In my opinion, the most powerful assessments are the informal ones. The ones in which teachers observe students demonstrating understanding of a concept. Based on the information collected, the teacher knows best how to proceed with the students. In short, Data Driven is helpful, guiding, and reflective. It also focuses on the growth that students have made; it recognizes room for growth.

Numbers Driven

This one is a bit trickier. It masks as Data Drive but, in pay-530338_1280fact, is not. Let me try to explain what I mean. It mainly uses the formal assessments that were mentioned above. I have experienced Numbers Driven with districts (and by extension, state and federal). Many districts give summative assessments – benchmarks. I have heard administrators claim that the information will be used to help guide teachers. See, sounds like Data Driven, but this is where it takes a turn. What is said, and the actions that are taken are two different things. This is because there are (still) Pacing Guides. So when a teacher has given the 1st benchmark, regardless of the outcome, they need to move on to the next item(s) on the Pacing Guide. There is no time to reteach confusing concepts (according to the assessments). The Numbers Driven game tends to be competitive, punitive, and unhelpful to the stakeholders – students and teachers. Its sole focus is on the final number; it’s very finite.

My Answer

I tend to be more Data Driven – based more on informal assessments. However, I get tangled in the web of Benchmark Assessments, from time to time. It’s easy to get sucked into the hype when you know you are being judged – and looked down upon – based on scores. Unfortunately, No Child Left Behind helped change the focus to Numbers Driven since that’s how money was/is allocated.

So let me ask my question again, are you Data Driven or Numbers Driven? What about your district?

To Ceremony Or Not

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This week’s #youredustory question:

 Why are, or aren’t, graduation and promotion ceremonies important?

Graduation Ceremonies

Yes, I do think these are important – maybe more so in some communities than others. It is a way for the rest of us to celebrate the accomplishment of those that have worked hard to meet a goal. That being said, I need to clarify that, for me, graduations are at the end of high school and college – be it a Bachelor’s, Master’s, or Doctorate’s. I am also a firm believer that ALL students should be recognized, by name.

Promotions

Not a fan of these. I had a whole rant written here but deleted it. Why? Because I would rather focus on what my school does.

The 'Tunnel' Photo by: Maricela Cuevas
The ‘Tunnel’ Photo by: Maricela Cuevas

The last day of school has a celebratory feel. In the morning, each classroom has their own traditions. Starting at lunch, the Luau begins. Each year, we BBQ hamburgers for the students and staff. Then teachers sign up for a game station (I do a wet sponge challenge each year. Students race with a wet sponge on their heads). Then about 30 minutes before school is dismissed, all grades K-4 form a tunnel, or aisle, for the departing 5th graders to go through. The tunnel ends at my classroom door, so the 5th graders file into their classroom to say their final goodbyes. As they all go through the tunnel, the rest of the students give the 5th graders high fives. I love this tradition.

Why do I like this so much? First of all, it’s understated and simple. Secondly, it still acknowledges the fact that these students will not be at our school next year, and that they are moving on to the next phase of their lives. Then there are the parents. Parents, siblings, and other family members often join us for the festivities. The parents love this tradition too. I talked to several, who don’t have 5th graders, who really like this.

So, we celebrate the 5th graders without going ‘over the top’.

Thank you to Maricela Cuevas, Vanessa Reyes, and Elizabeth Zuniga for the photos.

Publish To the Web – Google Docs

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Throughout this past school year, I had students write their blog posts in Google Drive. This was a great way for them to get peer feedback, edit, and save their work. In the beginning, I told them to ‘copy’ and ‘paste’ their work into a new blog post. This was NOT acceptable for many of them. Many took their time getting just the right font (NEVER comic sans – responsible digital citizenship and all) and color. So I agreed to show them how their original work could be viewed on their blog posts – Publish to the web.

Here’s what we did:

Publish to web

First we chose the ‘Embed’ code, not the link. Then we copied the ‘Embed’ code (Control + c – PC; Command + c – Mac). Finally, we chose the blue ‘Published’ button. 

On our blogs, we found the ‘Text’ option – Not ‘Visual’. We use Edublogs, most blogs give you a Visual or Text option. Within Text, we placed our cursor where we wanted our document to be viewed, and ‘pasted’ (Control + v – PC; Command + v – Mac) the ‘Embed’ code. Below is an example of the results. We did play around with the Height and Width to get a visually pleasing outcome.

The Good, The Bad, The Frustrating

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The school year ended, for me, two days ago. As most of us do, I reflected upon the year: What went well, what fails did I have, how will I change things for next year?

The Good

There were many good things that occurred this year.

  • Google Maps – This was a big one for me. I slowly began to integrate Custom Maps into my curriculum. The result? A fun interactive way to do State Reports.
  • Splitting the 5th Grade Curriculum with my Partner Teacher – Amber Pursley. She taught ELA and Science; while I taught Math and Social Studies. Together we planned for Writing and ELD. This arrangement allowed for each of us to be creative and push ourselves and the students.
  • Teaching more digital citizenship to my students and staff.
  • Having students enter films in the California Student Media Festival. They didn’t win, but we got our feet wet!
  • Getting a 3D printer via Donors Choose & Chevron.
  • Having a student do research on the 3D printer on her own. She knew more than any of us – and it was one of my shyest girls.
  • Having an AWESOMESAUCE class! They were kind, respectful, worked well together.

The Bad

These were more like ‘FAILs’ (First Attempt In Learning), so I can change it up for the future. Maybe it should be called ‘What I learned’.

  • That really great, “It’s only going to last a month” Road to the Revolution lesson. Yeah, that thing lasted like 3 months! My bad. I had it set up that students would be self guided with questions and tasks. Brilliant idea, right? Not so much. The students were answering the questions, but not retaining the information. So in the middle of the lesson I took out the questions and only had them focus on the tasks. The tasks covered the Stamp Act, Famous People, the Boston Tea Party, and the Battles at Lexington and Concord. Changes will include: Deadlines for each task, better oversight on my part (making sure they are using the resources that I provided for them, and NOT gamifying it. I’m sure there will be more, as each group of students has different needs.
  • Depression sucks! Started the year in a major funk. Fortunately, things got better!
  • Silent Sustained Reading (SSR). This one wasn’t so much a fail as it evolved throughout the year. By the end, I liked what I had. It started off as all students reading, or listening and following along, for half an hour. By the end of the year it had evolved into a half an hour of (your choice): Raz-Kids, reading a book, listening and following along, or Duolingo (there were 5 different languages students were learning). Students often switched it up and didn’t do the same thing everyday.
  • Coding – I started off strong, then it kind of fizzled. Not sure how to transform this. I do want this in my classroom. Will work on this problem during the summer.

The Frustrating

These were things that frustrated the living daylights out of me, and I had zero control. There were a lot this year, so I’ll try to stick to the most frustrating.

  • NO YouTube! – Not for teachers or students. At one point there were work arounds that my students found. We used them to enhance our learning, but they eventually got blocked. There were a myriad of reasons given: not enough bandwidth, can’t filter out the bad stuff, TESTING.
  • NO online editing software – I started the year off using WeVideo. My students have 1:1 Chromebooks so everything we do is online. We have 3 old iPods we use to videotape. We were in the process of editing our video class rules when ALL editing tools were blocked.
  • The ever-changing focus. First it was focusing on opinion writing, then it moved to speaking and listening, then it was ‘You MUST use Engage NY (aka Eureka Math) with fidelity, NO supplements allowed. Okay, full disclosure on this one. I supplemented, then stopped using it. So I guess that wasn’t so frustrating. A teacher’s got to do what he/she feels is best.

All in all, it was a good year. As they say, it’s all in your perspective. I chose to focus on what I could do and change. I tried not to worry about things that were out of my control. So, the ‘Good’ I’ll keep, the ‘Bad’ I learned from, and the ‘Frustrating’ I can only hope it changes for the better next year.

Working WITH Technology

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This school year has had its ups and downs. One of the ‘Ups’ were my students’ State Reports. We used Google Maps to accomplish the same task that use to take 10 type written pages. I still maintain, no one wants to read a 10 page report – let alone 47? Yeah, much happier with the Maps idea. As we went through it, I saw ways to improve; and will implement those changes next year.

Then there were the ‘Downs’. Yeah, some of those made me want to pound my head against a brick wall. My ‘Road To the Revolution’ project. I thought I was soooo brilliant. Not so much! I will attempt it again next year, but will make several changes. Then, there are the downers that I have little to no control over. One that popped up throughout the year, were the ones where teachers and/admin wanted to block/ban sites. (This is where my head hangs low, before I hit a wall) Banning/blocking is NOT the answer. As with anything, education is. We not only need to educate our students, but we need to educate the teachers.

The answer is to teach our teachers HOW to work with technology. We need to show teachers and students what it means to integrate technology. When students are doing research; provide a list of acceptable sites,create a custom search engine via Google, and teach students HOW to search. Typing ‘What is the state flower of Maine?’ is not an efficient search. These are tools that students, and teachers, need. It is a district’s responsibility to provide the training so that quality instruction can occur. Far too often, a district thinks that giving a classroom a set of computers will be the answer, but it’s not. What ends up happening – more often than I care to think about – is that the computer becomes a babysitter, time filler, or dust collector.

I understand the need to block certain sites – like the super bad ones (remember: I’m coming from an elementary perspective). But in general, I am an advocate of keeping the sites open. Yes, students will push the limits. Yes, they will try to find inappropriate pictures, videos, whatever. But it’s our job to guide them along the path.

Teachers need to work WITH technology. We need to use the inappropriate searches as teachable moments. We need to monitor, walk around, give students the tools to be successful. Will we catch everything? No. But my teachers didn’t catch all the notes and things I tried to get away with, and I came out fine – mostly.

Awards – We’re Doing It Wrong

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medal-646943_1280Awards

Awards should be given out to those who earn them. If I have a student who Perseveres, is Enthusiastic, and Cooperative, then they should receive all three awards. Likewise if there is a person who does their job well several months, they should be given “Employee of the Month” for all the months they have earned it.

Why Am I Talking About This?

Recently, we had another Citizen of the Month Award Ceremony. Yeah, it’s become a ‘Let me make you feel good for the few minutes while you get to stand up in front of everyone’ sort of thing. I know this is not just happening in my district. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that it is more common place than I’d care to think about.

This got me thinking, why am I giving out this award? I don’t always necessarily think that student A deserves the Patience award, but they sort of fit that category. And since EVERYONE gets a COM Award, student A gets Patience.

The same goes for teacher awards. Years ago, my district participated in an award that celebrated teachers who brought literacy to their classrooms. It could have been through innovative ways, starting clubs, or getting hundreds of book donations. Those individuals deserved the award. But because my district wanted to be involved in it every year – which I applaud – they would often scramble to find someone to get it. It often times became meaningless.

It’s Okay NOT To Give Someone An Award

Yes, it’s fine NOT to give every child in your class an award. We really want students to work, persevere, be enthusiastic, etc. By the time students hit 3rd grade, they’re on to the game. They know they don’t really have to work at any of the character traits. They know at some point in the year, they will get an award. Then their parents will come with a minimum of 3 mylar balloons, candy and/or a stuffed animal, but that rant is for another time.

Back to the literacy award. I mentioned several reasons why employees received the award, but didn’t talk about the MANY years that we scrambled to have a person. And why did we scramble? Well, there were many times when the discussion was, “Who hasn’t gotten it yet?” That is NOT how we should be celebrating our accomplishments. What if person A created an after-school literacy group year 1; then year 2 provided training for others to have their own literacy group? Well, person A was then out of the running because they had already received the award year 1. What a shame.

What Should We Be Doing Instead?

With my students, each month they should start with a clean slate. If some students don’t get an award that year, that’s okay. If a student gets an award twice, that’s okay too. Looking at the literacy award, if person A did amazing things to improve literacy, they should have received the award more than once, because yes, that’s okay too.

We need to stop making these awards meaningless. My job is not to make a child feel good in the moment, but to teach them to be a better person. Study after study has shown the negative affects of giving everyone an award.

We need to celebrate those that are deserving – even if they’ve been acknowledged before.

Google Maps & Adding Piskel From URL

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This year a student found a free pixel art creator, Piskel. This has become all the rage in my classroom. The students can create original art or create gifs based on their work. So when we started on our state reports, I had a few students ask if they could create their state flag using Piskel. Of course I said yes! Mind you, I have no idea how this Piskel thing actually works – downloading, saving, file types, etc.

Then came the time to insert the image on their map via the URL. Yeah, this took a bit to figure out. BUT Jason, a student, and I figured out a work-around. LOVE figuring this stuff out with the students. So this is what we did:

On the right side we chose the ‘Export’ icon.

Then downloaded it as a png file (it wasn’t a gif)

Next we opened up Google Draw – yup handy work-around – and inserted the png. We then published the Drawing, and grabbed the link (URL)

Publish to Web: Go to file > scroll down to Publish to Web. Then:

Choose Link > Blue publish button > Copy link (URL) to the clipboard (PC – Control C; Mac – Command C)

Now in your map, locate the location you’d like to insert the image and choose ‘Image URL’. Next, paste (PC – Control V; Mac – Command V). Finally, choose the blue ‘Select’ button.

And that’s it! Collaborating with students can be VERY satisfying! Here’s the final product:

Thank you Jason & Andrew for allowing me to collaborate with you, and use your work.

Language Monsters

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This is what my students are! Several of my students (and myself), have started using Duolingo to learn a new language. Currently I have 5 languages being acquired in my classroom: Spanish (most popular), French, Portuguese, Italian, and English.

duolingoIt all started several months ago with an ELL student. She was still having trouble acquiring English after being here for a few years. One suggestion I received was to have her get on Duolingo. So, we set her up in her native language (Spanish). She took the placement test and began learning English. She loves doing it, and feels that it’s been helping her. In order to have her not feel different during our Silent Reading time, I agreed to brush up on my Spanish. As time has progressed, more and more students have asked to learn a language. Yes, I realize some were asking so they could ‘get out’ of reading during Silent Reading time (SSR). I said, “Yes!” Yup, I’m that teacher that is okay when a student says they hate reading. I know they just haven’t found the right books yet, or it’s hard for them and SSR is no fun. So, learning a new language can be fun – and yes they are reading too!

What really excites me, is that some of the students asking to learn Spanish come from Spanish speaking homes. Some of these students have ‘forgotten’ their first language, in varying degrees, want to speak with their grandparents, or just want to learn the language their family knows. I think it’s all very exciting!

Now my SSR has students reading books – inside or outside; real or digital – learning a new language, listening to a book on CD, or reading a story (and taking a quiz) on Raz-Kids. Will all of them stick with learning a new language? No, and that’s okay. I love their willingness to try and learn new things.