Aim to Be Awesome, Not Perfect

I am sure you read the headline, and said 'Don't you know about the little shortcut with bookmarking the pinmarklet?' Yes, I do, but it doesn't seem to work all the time. Ugh.  And Pinterest is my GO TO for organizing all the fab stuff I find in the internet.  So today, while I was taking a break from water park wackiness, I was searching around my Pinterest app and noticed that there was an 'Add a pin' spot. This could be the answer to my prayer!  And it was! Any link I opened in Twitter or Facebook or Google Plus, I can now pin very easily. I know this seems really simple, but for me, it rivals the 'Pin in' extension in Chrome that is my savior.    I know this might be silly, but for me, this is Awesome! 

  So in my head, all summer, I have been thinking about a LMS for the upcoming year.  In case you don't know, a LMS is a learning management system.  Teachers use them to keep track of students' content mastery, behavior, even posting assignments and test dates.  In short, an LMS can do a lot - and it is all about what you need and what will give it to you.  So which one do I need?   The first thing I need to do is think about what I want my LMS to be.  Besides my website, I want the LMS to be a go-to place for students to get information, like homework links and test dates.  I am flipping my classroom, so I would really like there to be multiple ways (besides my website) for students to get to the videos.  I also need a location for in-class quizzes or check-ups to be housed.  So that's what I need... I think.    One issue is that there are so many out there! Some do a few things, some do many, and some are new and shiny -...

Sorry I haven't written - summer has been a little crazy, between 2 trips and a week of Girl Scout camp (that I helped run/organize).  My brain has been on overdrive though, so the next few blog posts will probably be about all my thoughts and what not that pertain to the upcoming school year.  Well, there might be one or two posts about vacation.... Anyway, in one of my overdrive moments, I was thinking about all the information I have amassed (that I might need at a later point) to help with either of my three upcoming challenges - 7th grade math, flipping my classroom, and the Next Generation Digital Classroom.   Pinterest is my main go to - I am a visual person, so I really like bookmarking with pictures.  I have been organizing my pins by unit, so that for example, when I teach integers, all of the games/foldables/manipulatives are in one spot.  When looking them over yesterday (yes, I occasionally due to cleaning and rearranging) I realized my boards ar...

As most teachers know, as the school year winds down, the discussions about 'changes for next year' start.  And now that the school year is complete (for the students, at least) and this is when the changes begin.  For me, there is a lot changing for next year. First up, I am moving up to 7th grade.  I have mixed feelings. I am very excited about working with the 7th grade teachers (I hear good things about them) and I am happy to be moving up with my students.  I think the other changes that are coming fit in nicely with 7th grade and their abilities.   However, I do love 6th grade and am sorry to be leaving.  I love all the other 6th grade teachers and my team was a strong one.  One of my strengths is getting the 6th graders settled into a new school and new routines and other newness (like lockers).  I am not looking forward to moving all my stuff into a new room.  Luckily one of my classes has a bunch of wonderful volunteers who helped ...

My students are learning about integer operations this week.  I have read that integers are where a lot of algebra students struggle, so I wanted to make sure that my students got some good integer practice.  I did some searching for something technological (and I do have a Blendspace lesson for review, which we did use) but most days, I did not have access to the computers we would have needed. So I needed a new plan - and came across Integer War! We played it for addition and multiplication and my students loved it! Some played in groups of 2, and others, to extend their learning, played in groups of 4! Here are some photos of my students: They loved it! They were so loud and crazy and engaged that I videotaped my classes for about 30 seconds and showed them the videos at the end of class. It was amazing. It reminded me that some days technology is not needed for learning.  Just imagination.

In my Alternative Certification Program, they always talked about 'hooking' your students.  You know, getting your students interested in whatever lesson you are about to teach.  I fully admit it is one part of teaching that I am not very good at. In my quest to find and use technology in my classroom, I came across something that might help me with my 'hooking' problem.  It is called Powtoon ! So far I am just using the free version, but it is giving me what I want.  It took a little playing with to get comfortable with it, but I started with one of their templates to see what did what.  The biggest bonus for me is that uploading to YouTube is so easy! Here are a couple that I have used (including the one I am using tomorrow). Anyone else used Powtoon?  I am hoping to have students create their own next year :)

STAAR is upon us... (well, actually it is over... Hooray!)  As part of my STAAR Preparation for my 6th graders, we had some days where I did a reverse flip.   I came up with an idea to use my dear friend, Blendspace, to help with some differentiation with my students. I took pictures of problems that fall under a certain topic (for us, that is a TEK or two) and plugged them in. After the picture, the next slide is a video of me explaining how to solve the problem.  This way my students could work at their own pace. Some choose to watch each video, others chose to fast forward to see the answer, then if they got it wrong, they would watch the entire video.   Some days, I had a Google Form at the end as an exit ticket, to see if what they had been working on sunk in.  They seemed to like it, no one ever complained we were doing test prep.   A picture of my class during our "reverse flip".  Links to my lessons  -  Equivalent Numbe...