Tuesday, December 22, 2020
Canterbury Tales Spotify Playlist Using Google Slides
Saturday, October 31, 2020
Sphero Golf Course
*The photos in this post were taken before COVID, before masks and before social distancing but could still be done in this crazy time we are in.
I taped off some mazes on the floor and students used their Chromebooks to connect the Spheros via bluetooth and they were able to dive into programming right away navigating the mazes. I have plans to blog about how I have used them in water as boat engines, with K'nex as race car engines, to send secret messages after reading Ender's Game, and as Roman Chariots in social studies. And yes, there is definitely more! But for now, I want to show you SPHERO MINI GOLF!
Tuesday, September 29, 2020
Characterization in Your Writing with Storyboard That
One of our electives is Creative Writing and it is amazing to see each student's unique writing voice. The teacher is phenomenal but she wanted to add some technology to the students' writing. As a math teacher twirled into an instructional coach, writing is not my one of my top skills! But this teacher makes the coaching easy and tech is one of my top skills! She is the best at developing students' writing skills and fostering their untapped passion for narratives and stories.
In this class, students learn about setting, characterization, and different types of conflict and plot through narratives and stories. To help them with creating character driven stories, they first had to learn about characterization. This was what she wanted my help with and I found the perfect EdTech for it! STORYBOARD THAT! This is an online storyboard creator students can use to create amazing visuals and for digital storytelling. For this characterization lesson, we used Storyboard That as a comic strip type activity.
I showed them examples of direct and indirect characterization. The project was to create an illustrated guide of either the classroom, our school, or their family. Characterization had to be used through telling about the character's personality, physical traits, or flaws. They also needed to include indirect characterization by using speech bubbles, actions, reactions from other characters, and appearance.
Students also write about pirates and jungles and do a detective unit, zombie unit, and fractured fairy tales. Can't you just hear the buzz in the classroom? This is not your quiet, librarian shushing you writing classroom! It is writing filled with technology that makes it come alive. Check out the narrative prep with the Personal Narrative in Your Head we did using a green screen on our heads. You may also enjoy the podcast students created that is a collection of short mystery stories including sound effects. You can listen to Ms. Grant's Middle School Mysteries here.
Most students, at the end of the class, when asked if they knew they could write will say no! Some are outstanding and they didn't even know they could write. This class has sparked a love for writing!
Saturday, August 22, 2020
Digital Teacher Tool Box Using Google Sites
Wednesday, July 29, 2020
Digital Interactive Student Notebooks
Tuesday, July 21, 2020
Create a Classroom Website Using Google Sites
Tuesday, May 5, 2020
Bitmoji Virtual Classroom
Bitmoji anything and I am all in! I have used bitmojis for all the things in my classroom over the years - lesson slides, interactive notebook pages, stickers and basically anywhere I can add them for fun! So when I saw them being added to "virtual google classrooms" and how super fun these classrooms looked, I had to join in!