Google Classroom ~ Should I Add it to My Classroom?

This is the beginning of a journey to learn Google Classroom.  Are you in?  Do you want to learn more and possibly implement this tool into your classroom's landscape?  Here are some things to make you think and decide.  If you decide yes, I will be sharing nuggets of learning about Google Classroom that you can read, learn and implement (a 21st century style "make and take" workshop) right into your classroom and your practice.

Graphic from:  http://goo.gl/21QIDM

Google Classroom was introduced in 2014 in August, so it is a bit over 1 year old.  Google Apps, Chromebooks, and Google Classroom have truly taken off as a device and tools of choice in classrooms worldwide.  

Google made Classroom so that teachers could spend less time on paperwork and administrative tasks and it does this very well.  It is a seamless tool for managing the sharing of Google Drive documents between students and teacher.  This exchange works both ways.  Teachers can share very easily with students and students can share back.

One of the amazing things about Google Classroom is it is constantly being updated with new and exciting features.  Teachers are able to give feedback to Google and they listen and change Classroom to meet our needs.  As the video states, it is like the classroom's mission control.  

Are you ready to blast off and learn about this powerful classroom tool that will make your life and your student's life easier, more efficient and open new channels of communication, collaboration, and more?

Stayed tuned in the upcoming days for nuggets to start your journey!

ELA in a Digital Age: Online Text Sources

Check out this collection of Online Informational Text Source I have put together.  Some offer leveled text and others do not.  All are targeting students as their audience.

Consider subscribing to Tween Tribune as a teacher and setting up student accounts.  It is a “a free online educational service offered by the Smithsonian for use by K-12 grade Teachers and students. TTribune consists of daily news sites for kids, tweens, and teens, and includes text, photos, graphics, and audio and/or video materials prepared by the Smithsonian and others about current events, history, art, culture and science.”   When you set up your students, you enter their lexile level, so that they receive content at their level.  Awesome!

Give it a try using one of my sample student accounts:

User Name	Password	Lexile Level
primary-sch	cherry8677	500
intermediate-sch	kiwi7164	830
middle-sch	apple4989	1050
highschool-sch	mango0661	1200

Once logged in,

1. Check your assignment dashboard.

2. Read the assigned article(s).

3. Take the quiz and answer the critical thinking question for each assigned article.

4. Review your assignment dashboard and complete any outstanding work.

From the teacher end, quite easy to manage.  Can’t wait to see what data I get. It might get messy with many of you using the same log in, but give it a look.

       

Another interesting site for upper Elementary and Middle level teachers is Common Lit.  It is created by teachers for teachers.  Teachers identify texts that will engage students and are good for discussion. The articles are sorted by Lexile levels and text complexity and also by theme.  It is FREE!  It is a great site to check out and use to help students read, form opinions and discuss topics and themes of interest.

Other sites to Check out (if you aren’t already):

Readworks ~ this site provides text and reading passages at different levels for different themes, topics, and reading skills.

Myvocabulary ~ a great vocabulary resource for all subjects and skills.  Give it a look!

Wonderopolis ~ one of my favorite text based sites, for all ages.  Check out the Wonder of the Day and all the wonders …..

Readtheory ~ a free web tool that determines student’s individual reading level and then gives them reading passages and questions to develop reading and comprehension skills

Actively Learn ~ a website that connects, reading, higher level thinking, discussion, assessment, annotating text, and more into one web tool.  Geared to middle and high school grades.  

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Resources used for this post:

Ebener, Sarah. "Using Engaging Informational Articles in the English Classroom and Beyond." Straight Outta Kemper. N.p., 28 Sept. 2015. Web. 24 Oct. 2015. <https://ebenerblog.wordpress.com/2015/09/28/using-engaging-informational-articles-in-the-english-classroom-and-beyond/>.

Tucker, Catlin. "3 Websites Where You Can Find Complex Informational Text." Blended Learning & Technology in the Classroom. N.p., 8 Sept. 2015. Web. 24 Oct. 2015. <http://catlintucker.com/page/3/>.

Technology and the Math Classroom Part 3

Problem Solving and Showing Math Thinking

Problem solving is an essential part of math learning, plus using problems and tasks is a great way to incorporate reading and writing into your math instruction. These resources have tasks and problems that students would or could use individually or in groups to think and apply math skills to real world or problem type tasks.  Great higher level thinking application activities!  Students could share their answers with you in a Google Document or a Google Drawing? These activities truly prepare students for the types of math we see in the performance tasks of the state tests.

Yummy Math

Get the Math

Illustrative Math

K-5 Math Teaching Resources

mathalicious ~ real life math for grades 6-12

inside mathematics:  problems of the month & performance assessment tasks

Resources For Teachers to Explore

Math Landing ~ resources and tools for elementary math teachers

Connecting Writing and Mathematical Practices Standard resources

Thinking & Blogging / Writing about Math

Stem Questions to Promote the 8 Mathematical Practices

ELA in the Digital Age: Writing Tools

Kaizena Mini Google Add-On ~ Click here to install

Getting Started with Kaizena Mini ~ click here to learn more about this add-on and its function

Kaizena for Google Docs Getting Started Video

Kaizena is a great way for teachers to give students feedback and for a student to interact back with the teacher on a Google Document.  Feedback can be in the form of audio feedback, typed feedback and sharing resources or links.

Draftback Extension ~ Click here to install

Click here to learn more about Draftback

Draftback is a free tool to use with Google Docs that allows the user to playback the revision history of any Google Document.  It is like watching the writing process replayed from beginning to end.  It is really awesome for a student, reflecting on the writing process.  It is also great for playing back a student’s revision process to give insight for targeting writing strategies for students.  Once I installed it, I refreshed and it appeared within my Google Doc.

No Red Ink website  ~ https://www.noredink.com/

Watch this video to learn more!

This website is a free signup for teachers and students that helps students improve their grammar and writing skills.   It is adaptive and tracks student progress, plus it engages students with high interest content.

Click here to be a student in No Red Ink in my Sample Class….. Class Code: 7m3xwa48

Easy Bib Extension ~ click here to install

Read more about this tool here.  

This Chrome Extension not only cites online source quickly for students it also has capabilities to determine if sites and sources are credible sources.  

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Resource for this post:

Figurelli, Steve, and Natalie Franzi. "Literacy in the Digital Age: Five Writing Tools." Teaching Channel: Tchers Voice. N.p., 12 Aug. 2015. Web. 23 Oct. 2015. <https://www.teachingchannel.org/blog/2015/08/12/literacy-in-the-digital-age-writing-tools-sap/>.

Technology and the Math Classroom Part 2

Practice or Apply Learning Online

Another station or rotation in our technology and the math classroom exploration

could be time set aside for students to either practice what the new learning from today. This might be online practice or it might be using problems that the teachers shares with the student digitally or not digitally. Practice and application might also be time for differentiated math learning. There are many great online tools for that type of learning. Here are just a few....

Math Playground

Virtual Manipulatives

Illuminations:  Resources for Teaching Math

National Library of Virtual Manipulatives

Math Manipulative Web Tools

A+Click ~ math and logic problems online sorted by grade level and by math skill

Front Row ~ this link will give you more information about the Front Row program and also access to a test class to check out Front Row as a student

Buzz Math (for grades 6-12)~ check it out as a student by accessing my class at www.buzzmath.com/join with code:  E3FD-7445

Compass Learning ~ a new added feature in the Hybridge version of Compass is that within the content, there is an activity alignment with the Everyday Math curriculum.  See me if you'd like me to show you or here is how you can view the lesson correlations.  Have kids type in the activity number of the activity to save yourself the time of assigning tasks.  

ELA in the Digital Age: Text Complexity Online Tools

Here are some tech tools that will help teachers and students be better prepared to access complex grade level text, and increase their student vocabulary, knowledge, and capacity.

Check out the Text Compactor website, which allows you to create a summary of text to varying degrees or percentages.  

Another site that does this function is Rewordify ~ free, online tool that is ready to use with no installation. Helps takes complicated text from websites and make it simpler for students. Does not necessarily set it to a specific reading level, but does take difficult text and make it easier for students to read and understand. Watch this video about Rewordify with students. Watch this video showing you how to create a library of reading for students online.

Third option to try, The Readability Test Tool.  This site allows you to enter a web URL or text as direct input.

Announcify ~ this extension is a text to speech app that will read websites out loud for students and also clear the clutter on the webpage. Already installed for WGSD students.

SpeakIt! ~  another extension that will allow the reader to select online text to be read out loud.  Already installed for WGSD students

Readability ~ a web extension that removes the clutter from a website and makes online content easier for students to read.  Already installed for WGSD students

Kami ~ both a Chrome app and extension that allows you to open pdf and word (.docs) documents in the Chrome browser.  I opened a Read Works document, as an example.  I will then able to with the free account, highlight, add, underline, and strikethrough text.  I could add comments and then I could download, save, share my annotated document, either to my computer or to my Google Drive and keep all annotations.  I think this could be very powerful for supporting reading of online content.  Give it a try and let me know if this should be added to student’s accounts.

Text Help Study Skills ~ a Google Docs add-on that lets students highlight and then collect and extract those highlights from Google Docs.  “Used by educators in the classroom to help students identify and group key facts together, indicate new words to learn, or collect research to assist with studying. Texthelp’s Highlighting Tools are great for all content and grade levels”

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Resources used for this post:
Figurelli, Steve, and Natalie Franzi. "5 Tools That Demystify Text Complexity - Literacy in the Digital Age." Teaching Channel: Tchers Voice. N.p., 26 Aug. 2015. Web. 23 Oct. 2015. <https://www.teachingchannel.org/blog/2015/08/26/literacy-in-the-digital-age-text-complexity-sap/>..

Technology and the Math Classroom Part 1

How can you incorporate technology into your math instruction?  I have a few ideas to share with you, but it takes a little looking at things differently.  I think having access to Chromebooks opens your students to greater, deeper learning in Math.  It allows you to meet the diverse needs of your students better because I think the Chromebook is the perfect differentiation tool.  Think of your room in stations, rotations, or as different math learning experiences.  Some suggestions could be:  teacher with small groups, virtual instruction, small group collaboration, writing about math, independent practice, peer to peer application, etc.   I share some different options, ideas, and resources with you:

Math Videos ~ Flipping the Learning

Videos do not replace the teacher, but students sometimes need to fast forward the lesson when they already have the basic concepts.  Or maybe the student needs to rewind the lesson, slow it down or hear it again to review the concepts. Hard to do with the live teacher in front of the room, since the rewind or fast forward is then felt by all students.  This is where videos come into play.  Not always as a teacher replacement, but sometimes as a different voice, to be heard in a different time and/or different place.  Here are some great online sources of online or video Math learning:

Learn Zillion ~ an online curriculum built for teachers by teachers.  There is a Full Math Curriculum (organized by either grade level or my common core standard) and a Math Video Lesson Library to support your math instruction.  You can create classes or link content for students to access.

Khan Academy ~ well known for its instructional math videos, it is organized by Subject, grade, and skills.  There are videos and there are also practice problems.  You can link to content or create a class and have student join using a class code. You are then able to track their progress through Khan Academy.

Math Live ~ an engaging set of online video like math tutorials

Math Movie Network ~ browse video by grade and categories

TED Ed: Math in Real Life ~ these videos are very unique and spark higher level thinking

Video Story Problems Channel

ck-12 Common Core Math Standards Browser ~ grades 6-12

You Tube Channels for Math

mathantics

Numberphile ~ more math extension video, but of high interest

PBS Math Club

Schmoop Math