Bulletin Boards+Pinterest=WIN!

One of my many duties as a resident teacher has included updating the bulletin board in our hallway each month.  Of course, the bulletin boards are updated each month to keep updated with what is going on in our classroom and usually should reflect the time of year.  Luckily, I am not the first teacher who has had to come up with visually appealing and creative ideas that integrate the fall with beginning 8th grade.  All I had to do was search 8th grade bulletin boards on pinterest and a plethora of ideas came up for me.  This is what I decided on:

 I know that pinterest has been around for a while but I couldn't believe all the ways it can help a new teacher come up with creative ideas for fun bulletin boards.  The when Christmas came around, our middle school team decided to turn our hallway into Whoville, but we had to include our class content and unit in our bulletin board.  Luckily, Pinterest helped me make the connection between the Grinch and his dilating heart that grew three sizes that day.

Pinterest helps with making anchor charts and foldable notes.  Another reason I turn to Pinterest for my classroom is coming up with ideas for community builders, here is my latest community builder I used when I visited a classroom other than my own to get to know the students and learn about their goals:

I've never identified as a creative person and thought I would struggle to fit in the elementary school community and build a warm, inviting classroom.  Pinterest has helped me create the illusion of creativity, so I thank all the pinners out there!

Improving Math Fluency on Chromebooks

Our administration recently made a push for us to get our students on the Chromebooks in the classroom to give them more practice with the math fluency.

The program they designated as our go-to is https://www.ixl.com/math/  One of the really great things about this website is that it is partnered with the Illinois State Common Core Standards.  Teachers can enter in target standards that the students are currently learning or have learned and need to improve fluency for so when students log in, the questions they are working on are relevant to them.  This is also a way that fluency practice can be differentiated.  We, as teachers, can analyze an individual student's NWEA scores and assign standards that they need practice on.  Also, for our accelerated students,  we can challenge them with standards above grade level to expose them to content they will see in upcoming grade levels.

 Another thing that teachers and administrators both like is the analytics of the student usage.  We can see how long students are spending in the program, what questions they're working on, and the success they have with each question.

 IXL is not just a program for math, it can be used across all grade levels and content areas.  I am only becoming familiar with it in the context of math fluency practice but it is a user friendly website that makes it very easy for teachers to give the necessary practice students need with common core standards.  Parents would be able to monitor their child's progress and it could be a great tool to bridge the gap between learning in the classroom and learning at home.
https://www.ixl.com/community/resources/printable-materials
The above link includes some free printable resources to help facilitate and monitor the use of IXL in the classroom.  It offers progress charts and achievement certificates for individuals and whole classes.
I am looking forward to seeing what the students think of this website and hope they find it as useful as I do!

The Discovery Channel

I am quickly learning how important it is to seek out quality resources whenever possible when creating engaging and relevent activities for the classroom.  I recently attended a wedding and ran into a friend who works for the Discovery Channel's education division.  He told me about all kinds of great things they were developing for use in the classroom.

I was able to gain access to the site because I knew someone behind the scenes, but it is password protected.  As with many resources in education, a fee is required to permit access for use in the classroom.

Below is a screen shot of the Lesson Plan Library available within the Teacher Center of the website. This library includes full lesson plans with supporting technologies and activities across many different subjects.

The Interactive Discovery Atlas Map could be used in so many ways.  Students could research different cultures, governments, histories, and natural worlds through this tool.  Teachers could use the videos within this map to enhance certain topics within the classroom.  I could even see myself using this map to research future travel plans.

I also found a great resource for students working on a STEM fair project:

In addition to all of the great resources for the classroom, Discovery Education offers professional development and different professional resources for teachers.

I'm so glad I ran into my old friend at another old friend's wedding and made this wonderful professional connection.  I hope I can find ways to use this collection of resources in my classroom.

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.