YouTube: A Rich Resource for Engagement

YouTube has been around for quite some time now, and I often forget about how useful it can be to enhance instruction in the classroom.  I recently utilized a video of a rap about the Pythagorean Theorem to introduce the topic to my 8th graders and I was amazed at how engaged they were throughout the entire lesson.  I was so happy to see how effective this video was, not only were they interested throughout the video but they remained engaged through the rest of the lesson. It was awesome.  I often think I need to reinvent how to introduce different topics to my students but I need to remember there is a wealth of resources on websites like YouTube and its derivatives like YouCubed.



I am currently brainstorming ideas of how to enhance learning through the creation of videos by our students.  I think it would be fun for the students to showcase their learning through the planning and recording of videos.  I know traditional papers and reports can get boring and it would be nice to give the students some creative liberties with their learning and change up the routine.  We are just wrapping up a unit on geometry and I'm hoping to offer some extra credit to students who would like to summarize the unit through making a video on what they learned.

I plan to continue using videos from sources like YouTube to enhance my instructions and am excited to see if giving students an opportunity to produce a video highlighting what they've learned will add to their experience as well.

I'll report back to let you all know how the videos come out.  I look forward to seeing what my students come up with!

Student's Choice

Recently, I was charged with a very exciting, super awesome opportunity.  I was given permission to pull some of our high achieving students from their science class (after they finish their work, of course) to let them work on....whatever they want!  The only criteria is that this work is productive and helps bring them to the next level and prepares them for high school and eventually college.

I brought these students together to discuss the possibilities.  I told them that I want it to be fun, engaging and productive.  I told them they wouldn't be graded on the projects they choose and we can discuss the opportunity for extra credit in the future but I want the emphasis to be on the experience rather than "credit."  The students need to bring to me ideas or concepts they want to further explore and tell me whether or not they would prefer to work in a big group, small group, or individually.  They started rattling off all kinds of ideas and I'm excited to see what they present to me.  I have seen some awesome projects from students when given an opportunity like this.  If the students have ideas but are unsure of how they'd like to execute them, I have some websites I'd like to utilize:

Illuminations is full of lots of model-based math activities that are structured in a way that would elicit deep understanding and a higher level of thinking than most procedural or fluency based math worksheets.

Teach Engineering is another website full of model-based engineering activities that my students might find fun to explore.



I really can't wait to see what they bring to the table and I will update their progress once we decide on a project or projects they choose!

Math Can Be Fun?

We started small groups in our 8th grade classroom, recently, and after their rotations of centers the students get 10-15 minutes to play a math game of their choice.  We have a few card games and dominoes, some puzzles and 1 iPad.  Not surprisingly, I noticed the iPad is chosen first. After the first week of small groups I took some time to amp up the math choices of games in the iPad. The students seemed to enjoy working on the iPad but the games were too far below their grade level.

I learned about the zondle app in my Middle School Math class at NLU and I explored some of the games that aligned with the standards the students were learning in our class.  I found some inaccurate questions and some really great questions in the zondle database.  I sorted through the questions and assigned the ones I liked to a game inside the zondle app which rewards the students for answering questions correctly.  When I brought this game to some students during their choice time, they were so into the activity.  I had 2 students who are usually distracted and not active participants in class discussions so excited about correctly identifying operations of exponents in order to play cow cakes.  It was awesome.  These kids didn't know they were improving their exponent operation fluency, they were tricked into learning under the disguise of a game.  I can't wait to find more games to help my students become excellent middle school mathematicians!

Zondle has a huge database of questions that cover all disciplines of education.  I look forward to finding more ways to incorporate it into the curriculum.

Grateful for Google

I am by no means new to the google website, but I had no idea how useful so many of their applications can be to the educational experience.  I have been using www.google.com as a search engine for as long as I can remember (in the world wide web era, at least) and I have had to use gmail and the google calendar in a limited capacity over the past 6 years.  I guess you can say that I am new to the google app world.

Here is a sample of the many apps google has to offer.

In my short time in the role of an emerging educator I have found many of these apps to be invaluable to the educational process.  One great feature is that everything can be saved on the google drive which can be accessed from any device.  This is helpful when I don't have my computer and am trying to reference a file from my iPad, I can sign into the drive and I have access.  I don't have to carry a jump drive with me, which is awesome!

The google drive makes collaboration seamless.  Instead of having to email documents or files back and forth to a group, files can be shared and group members can contribute as if they in a room, working together.  The drive saves a lot of paper as well.  School-wide bulletins, data-sharing, unit/lesson plans, and any other information that may have been printed in the past and placed in mailboxes can not only be shared but the recipients can make edits to original files.

I have barely explored the tip of the iceberg as far as the usefulness of the google apps and I can't wait to discover more ways to make this experience more efficient and accessible.

Navigating the Teaching Channel

My teaching residency comes with many requirements from many people.  It can sometimes feel overwhelming to make sure I am fulfilling all of those requirements. 

I have found www.teachingchannel.org to be a helpful tool in facilitating the communication between everyone on my team.

Through this website we were able to create a group where we can post videos of me and my mentor interacting with the students.  Within this group we can discuss observations of things we see that need to be improved, things I notice was modeled nicely by my mentor, and extra details from students' reactions that we may not have noticed in real time.There is an app that supplements this website that helps uploading videos and makes attaching them to our specific group very easy.

In addition to using this website to collaborate with my residency team, it is a great tool to see what is going on in other classrooms around the AUSL network and the rest of the country.  I can navigate through the website to see videos on how other teachers approach certain content challenges.  There is an I can also use the videos to observe how effective different behavior or classroom management styles are in different classrooms.

There is an entire section devoted to Q&A where teachers can post a general questions and other teachers can discuss it in a forum.  It is a great way to get advice from quality educators throughout the country.
https://www.teachingchannel.org/questions?default=1

There are also some nice, brief professional development videos on this site which are helpful in discovering my personal teaching style. I am confident that I will spend many hours reviewing all the resources packed into this collaborative website.