We will learn how to use our Outlook Calendar to schedule meetings and invite attendees.  We will also learn how to attach links and documents to Edmodo and send to students and fellow teachers.

Edmodo Resources in Help Settings

Sue Cleveland Outlook

student projects slideshow

As we begin to implement the Common Core Standards and analyze the College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards, we know that students must read widely and deeply from among a broad range of high-quality,increasingly challenging literary and informational texts. Through extensive reading of stories, dramas, poems, and myths from diverse cultures and different time periods, students gain literary and cultural knowledge as well as familiarity with various text structures and elements. By reading texts in history/social studies, science, and other disciplines, students build a foundation of knowledge in these fields that will also give them the background to be better readers in all content areas. Students can only gain this foundation when the curriculum is intentionally and coherently structured to develop rich content knowledge within and across grades. Students also acquire the habits of reading independently and closely, which are essential to their future success.

Here are some of the ways our students are conducting research in the classrooms.  My favorite website to use for research these days is Instagrok. You can change the reading level of your searches by sliding the bar at the top of the page, which is helpful and you can build  your own Journal to share with students or they can create their own journals of notes.

Another favorite research tool is SC Discus.  Students can create workspace projects as they conduct their research. Students using iPads take screen shots of photos and upload photos into their digital stories and into Apps such as Skitch. They also upload their creations into Edmodo to share with others.

Students need folders with graphic organizers available for writing down their thoughts as they conduct their research. Have the key concepts you’d like for them to find outlined in the graphic organizer.  Many students have enjoyed using the website Jog the Web for webquests that are already created.   They use the laptops to look for the information that the teachers asked for in the graphic organizers. Some excellent graphic organizers are SmartArt in Word and the App Popplet allows you to insert links to videos and photos.

Students using iPads have enjoyed using the App StoryKit to create their own textbooks using photos, their own paintings, recordings of their voices, and typing their findings on each page.

Fun Research Projects

Instagrok

Photos for Primary Sources 

Parker’s Blog

Sara’s Blog

How do I become a better teacher? I believe it is all about knowing the content, having positive, caring relationships with your students, and involving students in the learning process.

1. Study the standards/ Common Core standards that you are teaching.
2. Plan your lessons with the end in mind and assess along the way to guide instruction.
3. Let your students create either by drawing, painting, sculpting, building, writing, singing, dancing, speaking, using the computer or iPad: Project-Based Learning. This gives students the chance to practice rigorous thinking required for Common Core.
5. Provide technology for On-Demand access to information: videos, tutorials
6. Differentiate Instructions for all students: ESOL, SPED, Gifted & Talented

Some simple ways to begin the process of creating and differentiating instruction is to use the laptops from your laptop cart, the computers in the labs and in the media center. If you have a few computers in your classroom, put them on tables around the room so more than one person can sit at a computer at a time. It is much more fun and helpful if you work with a partner and students learn so much from each other. Collaboration is one of the 21st century learning skills.

We need to prepare our students for higher level thinking required for college and careers. The first website that I recommend  for you to use with your students is www.instagrok.com .  You have to download Chrome or Firefox in order for it to work on your computers.  You can click on the links above to download them.  Someone will need to do this on all of your laptops and desktop computers.  Use Chrome or Firefox when you want to launch www.instagrok.com. Any subject, standard, concept that you teach has many articles, videos, games, assessments right at your fingertips on this site.

I’ve been attending the Paving the Way to Common Core Workshops with Paula Burgess as we learn about the Language Arts Common Core Standards. One word that stands out in my mind that students need to be able to do across the curriculum is to analyze. First we need to read a passage, talk about it with a partner, then analyze it. This will work beautifully with www.instagrok.com.  You can save your information in the online journal and refer back to it as you create a project from all the information you read and analyze.

Some projects your students could create are simple WordClouds using websites such as www.abcya.com, www.tagxedo.com or www.wordle.net

Students can use the iPad or computers to record their voices as they discuss their findings in MovieMaker, PhotoStory, PowerPOint, Prezi.

A practice that works well that many teachers do across the district is posting links to games, videos of students teaching a lesson, or interactive websites to their blogs or teacher websites. This allows students the opportunity to review if needed any material they didn’t quite understand. For example: Cathy Turner, the webmaster and Computer Lab teacher at Welcome Elementary, posts her lessons on her website. Students know how to navigate to her website and can go through the assignments on her web page. They can do this independently now.  Here is a link to her website:  www.technology-treehouse.com
Parker Rowland, a 4th grade teacher,  from Monaview Elementary School uses his blog to publish mini-lessons of him teaching and his students’ projects:  Mr. Rowland’s Blog  4th Grade teachers at Welcome Elementary like to posts students work and links to activities that correlate to PASS.  Sara Awtrey’s blog is divided by subjects:  Awtrey All-Stars

I have enjoyed every minute of this year as I interact with students and teachers as they integrate technology in their classrooms. Welcome Elementary 4th grade students have the incredible privilege of participating in a Pilot Program 1:1 Ipad initiative, which means ipads for each student. Planning with the 4th grade teachers, assisting with projects in their classrooms,and designing lessons using Apps has been the most exciting experience of my 29 year teaching career. It is truly amazing what these students are learning by researching, reading, writing, drawing, taking photos, videoing, and designing. I have never seen anything like this.

Students in a 3rd grade class at Sue Cleveland Elementary are saving paper and time as they use the laptops daily to complete their assignments that are posted to Edmodo. Reading groups are differentiated using Edmodo. Tests are given and graded immediately and instant feedback is given using this program. Students are answering questions and sharing reflections as they watch Brain Pop movies about geometry, measurement, liquids and solids. It is extremely powerful and successful. They play games that relate to the standards and use manipulatives to solve problems, while using white boards to write and draw the steps of the problem solving process. Technology is improving student learning.

4th grade students in Mr. Rowland’s room at Monaview Elementary are using laptops daily to work on Edmodo, conduct research, and publish. His students use MP3 players to listen to audio books and they play games and record themselves using iPads for assessment. Check our Mr. Rowland’s awesome blog to see his students’ projects. Mr. Rowland’s Blog

When I had my own classroom, I used laptops with my first graders all the time. I rolled the laptop cart in my room and we pulled the laptops  to create stories and movies, they visited my website to click on links to interactive games based on the standards I was teaching that week, and they could use Word and PowerPoint effortlessly as they wrote stories or presented projects to the class.

Many teachers and principals tell me that they don’t have time to do this with their students which is sad. My goal is to help teachers and principals see that it can be done. I want to share examples of students and teachers using technology to prepare students for the 21st century. Common Core standards are more rigorous, so our planning and teaching has to incorporate ways to meet our students needs by addressing these concepts. Technology is just one of those ways.

I hope you will check out the photos of students engaged in learning and look at some of their finished projects. It can be done:)

Apps, Edmodo, and Virtual Field Trips

GCSD Elementary Art Teachers

Please check out the STEAM presentation located on my blog.