One thing I like to do every year when I study electricity with my class is to take the time to teach them how to use drawing tools on a Google slide. Most have had very limited experience with this--but take to it quickly and use it often throughout the year. As we have worked our way through our lessons on safety, how light bulbs work, conductors and insulators, and different types of ... Read the Post
Moving Toward a 1:1 Technology Classroom
I am super excited to start this school year off with a bang in the technology department! Now that we are 1:1 in fourth grade (Chromebooks), I have a lot of thinking about how to start doing things differently! Logistics Chromebook Storage I use crates with "pot lids holders" to keep my "Chromies" safe. I keep 6 in each crate, and have my crates in four zones in my classroom. This ... Read the Post
Monday Made It!
It's time for "Monday Made It" with Tara over at 4th Grade Frolics so I thought I'd share a little bit about what I did this past week. Make sure to click the image above to take you to a bunch of other great ideas! Last week I showed you some pics of my son's graduation gift...what I didn't show you was the front step of our house (a door we RARELY use...that's my excuse) where I ... Read the Post
Pioneer Life: Part 2 and maybe even part 3!
The other day I blogged about how I have been trying to incorporate more "informal research" into my instruction...and how we dug into our pioneer research. Miss it? Just CLICK HERE to find it! So...the entire reason for our research (besides learning about some of our country's history!) was to help students understand that reading historical fiction WELL requires a certain ... Read the Post
Google Form Assessment: Text Structures!
Today I wanted to share with you something I did this week that I loved! Like many of you, we explicitly teach the concept of informational "text structures" in both reading and writing--and have to give a grade on report cards. This is a tough concept to quantify! As the unit came to a close, I had an idea of how I could get a sense for how well students were applying the ... Read the Post
Loved That Lesson! November
It's already time for "Loved that Lesson" again! I am super excited to share with you one of my favorite lessons from last week. We are getting close to finishing up our electricity unit, and I wanted to give the students a chance to "show what they know" WHILE learning some new technology skills. I taught my students how to do the following with Google Slides: *insert text ... Read the Post
More fun with Google…another Google Assessment trick!
For those of you who liked my last post about a Google assessment idea, I think you will REALLY like this one! Did you miss the last one about using a Google form to do a student self-assessment? CLICK HERE to read it! Today I want to tell you about another one I did and the students LOVED it. What I really liked about this one is that we did it as a part of math workshop, and ... Read the Post