New Tool to SPARK interest in your classroom-TECH Tuesday

Good Afternoon my wonderful people! The summer is flying by.  I am getting antsy! One of my colleagues posted this picture..I am that bird that is getting kicked off the perch! LOL

During this time I generally find myself looking up information on how to incorporate technology into my classroom in a more meaningful way and low and behold I found a wonderful platform that teachers can use! The best part is it’s free! I will also provide a list of a few other websites I have used in the past, I really do like this one. It’s called Spark! 

There are so many things student could use this platform for. Here is a list of a few ideas:

• All about me Posters
• Public Service Announcements
• Book Talks
• Vocabulary Building (especially great for ELL’s)
• National Park Studies
• Lab reports
• Digital Citizenship explanations

You can have students create graphics, web pages, or video’s.  Go Check it out. This is not a sponsored post.

Did you notice the picture at the top of this page? I created that with this tool! So many free templates to choose from!

Let me know if you have any questions!

Adobe Spark

Good Luck!

Free Weekly Learning Log

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

 

Free Weekly Learning Log!

Today I have been working on a document in which students reflect on their learning. I would really love for them to reflect daily. A former colleague of mine completed this as a paper copy. I have decided to do it digitally, in which they have to upload their learning log to our school platform. I will provide them with 5 minutes at the end of each class period to complete.

Let me know what you think! Enjoy

Weekly Learning Log

Growth Mindset-From Fixed to Growth

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

“If your not making mistakes, your not trying hard enough”

Your brain is a muscle, it needs to be given opportunity to get stronger. Failing and learning is how this will happen.

How to help your student see that it is okay to Fail-Believing in themselves is the first step.

I can’t express how I am so moved by this video clip.  This is something that I share with my students on the 2nd day of school when we are going over how to change their mindset.

Facing the Giant Movie Clip

My husband introduced this to me and it hit home for me.  I remind my students about “doing your best”!

Other helpful resources:

Khan Academy

• John Legend – “Success Through Effort”
• Khan Academy – “You Can Learn Anything”

TED Talks

• Angela Lee Duckworth – “Grit” (Note: Make it clear that grit is a behavior that happens only when you have a growth mindset.)
• Derek Sivers – “Why You Need to Fail to Succeed”

Other

• Sesame Street, musician Janelle Monae sings about “The Power of Yet”
• Kizoom, Brain Jump with Ned the Neuron: Challenges Grow Your Brain

 

 

 

Summer Time PD?

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It’s crazy but we have been out of school for over a 2 weeks! Besides the occasional day drinking…I haven’t done much. I am definitely getting antsy about the upcoming school year. I think I have ADD 🙂  (which makes me totally relatable to most of my students). Although I need the break…my mind is still very much in work mode! It will finally calm down the week before school-holler if you already know this feeling.

I really haven’t done anything…until today. Last school year, I participated in an amazing PD-Cultural Relevant Classrooms-AVID strategies.  Our team will be presenting to our colleagues about the importance of Cultural Relevance in the Classroom during our back to school PD days. I felt I needed to refresh my understanding.

As I was watching YouTube videos of how to truly incorporate it into my classroom, I stumbled upon an amazing guy by the name of Dr. Jeff Duncan-Andrade to put everything in perspective for me.

Articles:

How to Practice Culturally Relevant Pedagogy

Videos:

All Together now: Academic Rigor and Culturally Responsive Pedagogy

Jeff Duncan Andrade: “Equality or Equity: Which One Will We Feed?” | Talks at Google

Takeaways:

• You are not academically rigorous if you are not Culturally responsive..point blank…end of debate!
• Race is a component of culture-but it does not define culture; Gender, class, sexual identity is a part of culture-zip code is a component of culture, youth, language, food, style,.music…  If you are truly culturally responsive-then you are attentive to ALL components of culture. Don’t essentialize it to “Oh because you are black, you will like this autobiography of Malcolm X or Oh your Latino so you will like House on Mango Street”
• To help you substitute cultural with community. “South Tulsa is not the same as North Tulsa; Their community is different.
• Maslow’s Hierarchy of  Needs: To reach Self actualization (“ living to your highest potential-you must have all of these other needs first)
• For What?-If you are not trying to acquire this in your school, classroom, curriculum, then we are not culturally responsive which means we are not academically rigorous.
• Difference between Schooling and Education:
  • Schooling-process of institutionalizing people to accept their place in society.
  • Education-process by which you teach them to transform society.
• Metaphor: Tree-transforming students; strong trunk, beautiful branches, colorful leaves-no roots. National obsession with growing the student-but we need to transform this! In a storm, the tree will be the first to fall.
• Invest your time-be apart of the community. Let students get up and walk around-understand why they get loud.
• Affirm that you love their energy-but provide them with the tools to make them successful in other classrooms.
• Validate and affirm who your students-by knowing who they are and build and bridge them to the school culture

After going over initial information from above have teachers split into groups…

How to: Culturally Relevant Environment:

• Creating an Environment of Respect and Rapport
• Establishing a Culture of Learning
• Families and Communities
• Organizing Physical Space and Materials
• Encouraging Classroom Management Systems

How to: Culturally Relevant Instructional::

• Grouping strategies
• Interactions
• Evidence of Understanding
• Variety of assessment strategies

How to: Culturally Relevant Curriculum:

• Instructional Materials
• Content Delivery

Equality vs Equity:

People in the Know:

• Dr. Jeff Duncan-Andrade-AMAZING!!!

 

Again this is my outline for our PD for the upcoming year as well as takeaways (meaning-I rephrased or paraphrased for Dr. Jeff Duncan-ANdrade)

Let’s make next year a success!

Free Bulletin Board Letters

Good Morning Fabulous People! Can you believe that school will be here before you know it! We start Friday! WOW OH WOW!!!

Today I am super excited about sharing my Bulletin Board letter creation.  I recently was searching through Bloglovin and came across a Tutorial on how to create your own Bulletin Board Letters. You can find the original post here and here. 

I want to create a wall of Famous Scientist.  So I got started on my “Finch Scientist Bulletin Board Letters”. I was playing around with the different features in PowerPoint and here is

 

Here’s a copy for you to play with! Enjoy!

A CLEAN HOME IS A HAPPY HOME!

 

Hello! Today I decided to re-do my chore list. I was constantly making chore lists, alternating what the kids were required to do, and it just wasn’t working for our large family. This seemed to be so much of a hassle for me. If you’re anything like me, then being a Hassle is a pain in the tooshy!  Not to mention the kids were having trouble knowing what to do because it changed weekly.  What was I thinking?! Kids love structure and routine.  It’s easier to say “Oh, It’s Monday, I have dishes”, not looking at the chore chart everyday and trying to figure out what they were doing.

This Chore chart was Modified from the blog “My Crazy Good Life”. I really how like how Becca Ludlum organized it. Of Course I added my own personal touches, changed up the chores for my kids, and added a few things that works for our household.

One of the things I wanted to add was meal planning. My kids are older and I think this is a very important skill to have. Most kids don’t know how to cook.

Please feel free to download, use and share. Happy Cleaning!

Monthly Chore Chart

Please note: To edit, click File > Make Copy > a copy will be generated for you to use.

Free Lesson Plan Templates

Happy Friday!

As I was scrolling through Facebook and the many teacher groups I am apart of, someone had mentioned they the were a first year teacher and would like an example of a lesson plan template.  I figured this would be the perfect time to share my resources as well as some websites that I pull from.  I have been teaching for almost 10 years and I believe I have finally found what best works for me.

Teachers PLAN and they PLAN and they PLAN! I utilize both digital and paper planning. Here’s how I supplement one with the other.

Here’s what I do for every Unit.  

• Create a google drive folder
• Create subfolder for every unit
• In every subfolder, place your unit lesson plan, click here for an example of how I write mine. I really like the Engage, Explore,Elaborate, Assess lesson format. This unit plan is typically what I would send to my Administration for review and suggestions.
• Place all of your files for this unit in this subfolder. This will allow you to have everything in one spot.
• Print out your Unit plans so that you have your “guided questions” in front of you daily.

***Many of my unit plans came from one of my favorite teacher sites, Mr. Bucs Science, he has so many resources that I love!

Also another great website I use for resources is Middle School Science, I absolutely love her and all of her stuff is FREE!! Who doesn’t love that!

Here’s what I do for me

This document is pulled up everyday-this lesson plan template is not too detailed, but gives me an “oh okay this is what I have planned” without looking to deeply at my unit plan. This is also where I document my reflections on my teaching practices. As you know,  there will be moments where you stray from your Unit Plan, because something either took much longer for students to understand OR you had an aha moment and you went further in depth with a concept because it was the right time to do so.  My digital lesson plan template was found at this website Tammy’s Technology Tips for Teachers– I have of tailored this template to fit my needs.  My template that I have edited for this year can be found here.  This is a google doc, so in order to edit this document, all you have to do is open in, click file, then click “make a copy”. This will allow you have your own version without messing up mine ♥. Here is what last year’s looked like, click here.  I did add notes and reflections to this years, only because I wanted to be able to reflect on what worked and did not work. Today, I meet with another teacher to help her get her website for her students set up and I was thinking, this document could be embedded into your website for parents to see what happened in class that day, since it’s not as detailed. Just an idea.

School Meetings/Family Stuff

I also keep a Happy Planner for my school meetings and stuff..but Im thinking I am also going to go digital with this as well. I don’t know yet, I enjoy seeing a print version of this.

Here’s a Pic of the one I bought.

TIP: Reflect, Reflect, Reflect-If you do not reflect on your teaching , I highly recommend you do. Write it down during your plan as to what worked and did not work. This will help with planning in the future.

TIP: If you use Google Docs, Sheets, whatever, you can embedded this into your google sites webpage. Anytime you make additions to the document, it will automatically update.

I hope you are enjoying your summer!

Free Syllabus

With school about to start, I have created a rough draft of my Science Syllabus for the upcoming school year. I used the Google Theme provided for free. I want to share this with all educators out there. One of my favorite things about this syllabus is the Retest Policy. I am a horrible test taker, just because of my test anxiety. I over analyze everything. With STATE testing, we have to provide this type of Formal Assessments (I prefer not to do any of this) but unfortunately many states require this “multiple choice” form of assessment to get funding. Shaking my head. Anyways…back to the topic at hand…

My Retest Policy states that students must have a tutoring session with me prior to re-test (within 5 days of test). If a student is retesting then they obviously are missing concepts and YOU should be trying to make sure that they understand what they didn’t understand.

However the student is responsible for scheduling this “tutoring session” with me. If a student wants to retake a test, then they must come to me first. Being responsible is one of my classroom expectations. If they want their grade to change, then it is up to them. What is that phrase “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink.”
So yeah I will provide the time, but it’s up to the student.

This is a google doc..so all you need to do to is “make a copy”  then change it to what meets your needs. Science Syllabus 18.19

TIP: Create set days for which you are available before/after school or during lunch. This will allow student to be in the “know” of when you are available to meet. For example, I will be available before school Mon/Wed, during lunch on Tues/Thurs.

TIP: Go over previous test, during the “tutoring session”

Hope this help!

Hope your having a great summer!

Free Missing Work Form

Do you struggle with keeping up with who is missing what? I know I sure do. When you have 100+ students, keeping track of who is missing what becomes such a daunting task.

The perfect classroom is one in which everyone turns their work in on time, you grade it all at one time, provide feedback…and don’t have to worry about all those papers being turned in late.  Unfortunately, that is not the case, we do have those students who are absent, don’t have the support at home, or just simply forgot/got busy.

So what do you do? How do you keep track of over 100+ students who might be missing work?  I decided that for this year, I will have a “Missing Work Form. If a student is missing something, they will write their name on this sheet. This will provide me with a list of who I need to follow up with.  If a child completes the assignment, they will date stamp the “Missing Work Form” along with checking off their name. This will provide me a date on how long it took them to complete. As I am typing this…I just thought, maybe on the side you can date it as to when you followed up with the student, this might be beneficial when communicating with parents. Just an idea.

Not only is this a great tool for you because it will allow you to follow up with each student, but it also provides you with data on patterns amongst students.

TIP: You can laminate this document for reuse. Just use an expo marker.  ***I prefer the paper, only because it’s nice to pull out at parent-teacher conferences.***

I hope you enjoy this freebie!

Missing Work Form

What are some of your strategies for Missing Work? Have you tried this before? Does it work for you?

New Classroom to Decorate

As some of you may know, this year I will be transitioning to a new school (same district) and new grade level. I will be teaching 8th grade science. This summer I have been so busy but I did get a chance to go and get an idea of what my new classroom looks like. I was a bit shocked by how much stuff was left and how dirty it was. My former classroom was left cleaned and dusted for the new teacher. I had my students help me the last few days of school. They loved helping me.

TIP: If leaving or changing classrooms, clean your room for the new teacher coming in. Don’t leave stuff on the walls. If you don’t want something and think the new teacher would want it, take it down and leave it for them on the counter. I say this, only because most teachers want to start decorating with a clean slate.

As you can see I have a lot of work to do. Stay tuned for the reveal of my new classroom coming up within the next few weeks!

TIP: Take before pics so you can figure out how you want to arrange your room.

TIP: Clean, clean, clean before you get your new stuff in! Saves so much time

What are your favorite cleaning supplies?

I hope all of you are having a great summer!! Only a month left!