Google Classroom.... The beginning of a love affair...sigh

Ugh..... My pile of grading is daunting....

Ha! I make myself giggle sometimes! Seriously, that is my pile of grading. Google Classroom is amazing and fabulous and I'm a school girl in love.
I told the kids that this year I wanted top go "paper light".  All assignments would be in paper form and online. Students could decide how they wanted to complete them. I also have the luxury of 5 old laptops, 2 beautiful macs, and one iPad in the classroom and a study hall time for kids to accomplish assignments.

The kids were hung ho! I spent a whole day doing a tech sign up for the entire middle school (Google Classroom, Engrade, Quizlet, etc.) and showing them how Google Classroom worked. I was fortunate enough to have one of our tech instructionalists from the district join us, because when it comes to tech, an extra set of amazing hands is always welcome.

 The kids fell in love and we have been off without a hitch. I post all my assignments (as well as posting them on Remind... My other love) on Google Classroom. Weekly, I assign a current events article with Common Core close reading questions to support my English Language Arts teachers. This assignment can be "turned in" through Google Drive and they looooove it.

 About 70% hand the assignment in digitally. Interestingly enough, they still prefer to have the reading in paper form but love to do their writing in digital form.

Once we got started, I decided to step up my game. This summer I took a two day conference with EdTech Teachers and... Well.... It was amazing!!! My workshop was all about learning how to use technology to help struggling learners. With my special ed beginnings and my new endeavor in a district with a huge number of students who speak English as a Second Language, I was captivated by the entire two days. Beth Holland, my teacher, wrote a guest blog post for Richard Byrnes about combining Google Drive and Newsela.

 I took some of the suggestions and combined with this blogpost and found liquid gold. The first time I did this I used Junior Scholastic.  Junior Scholastic now offers a lower lexiled article online for teachers.  I then used the summarize tool on the mac to make an even lower lexiled version.

The second week I used Newsela to organize three articles at three different Lexile scores.

 I spoke with my ELA teachers and organized my readings into three levels, created folders in Google Drive for those three levels, and shared them with the students based on their SRI and MCAs scores.

 For bonus, I put reading comprehension questions in the comments based upon the reading level of the article.

 For my lowest level group, I made an audio version of the article, using QuickTime on the computer(something I learned from those crafty EdTech Teachers) and put that in their Google Drive as well. 

Voila! Instant reading groups, leveld discussion, teacher feedback and read alouds to meet every IEP.
Have I reminded you how much I love Google?

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Why do they keep murdering people in my classroom?

Ever since I staged the Boston Massacre in my classroom, my seventh graders have been begging for a similar experience. I was going to wait for 8th and make it a rite of passage and then I asked myself, "Why?" Exploration should not be saved. I knew I wanted to do something with Julius Caesar and I totally lucked out to find exactly what I needed on a fabulous website run by an amazing Mr. Kevin Roughton. He is an amazing teacher (whom I have never met; I'm entirely an online groupie). Who puts ALL of his resources for Ancient World History online for free. To say that his work is engaging and amazing is an understatement. I have been using his interactive notebook ideas all year and was excited to give one of his activities a whirl. I decided to do his Cold Case: Rome activity, which would have the kids decide the true motive for Caesar's death; was it to save the empire, was it jealousy, or did Caesar actually know all about it and decided to die in a blaze of glory? His lesson includes an amazing launch video he created and 12 different stations with evidence at each. What is fabulous, is that he made the autopsy report look like an autopsy report, quotes from bodyguards looked like affidavits, etc. I decided to out my mark on it and start with a hook. The kids had a basic day close reading and foldables ahead of them but each table got to spend ten minutes taking detective notes on a mysterious scene of a crime that had shown up the night before.

As they were observing and taking field notes, I heard one of my reluctant kiddos lean over to another one and say, "Man, Wilkins always goes big or goes home." Yeah! Win for me! At the end of class we discussed our observations and linked it with any background knowledge the kiddos already had.

 

The next day they walked into 8 stations. I launched the activity with my own launch video that I made with iMovie and my fabulous app that I couldn't gush over more, Green Screen by Do Ink.

 

They then spent about five minutes at 8 stations answering two to three questions per station. One station was a video and another was an audio recording.

 

At the end, the kids had to choose one of the three motives an write an endictment with textual evidence. Voila! It's a Common Core activity in disguise.

The kids had an amazing time and we will totally be doing this again. Check out Mr. Roughton's website....you will not be disappointed!!

 

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PBL and Real Estate.....too much fun!

So, as the year is nearing a close (21 days and counting, not that I'm counting:)) I'm going full tilt. I'm throwing my best at them and we are loving it!

In my 7th grade, I just finished up a totally fun PBL on Athens and Sparta. Here's the explanation and info.

Here's the launch video:

First I explained to the kids what a real estate agent was and what their assignment would be. Their first activity was to become experts in what daily life was like in Atens and Rome for various family members. We considered this the orientation phase. It consisted of textbook reading, studying the fabulous information provided by the British Museum and some fun and informative Horrible Histories videos.

In phase 2, students were then assigned a family that consisted of a father, mother, son, daughter, and slave. There were two possibilities for each family member; a person who would fit in Sparta and one that would be a perfect fit for Athens.

To randomly choose the family and really add to the problem solving, each member was chosen randomly, using this awesome app called Decide Now!

Using my fabulous Apple TV, I projected my iPad and each family member was chosen randomly for each group. Students then, had to pick the best vacation spot for each family based on the largest amount of family members they made happy.

Once they figured out where they should live based upon majority, realty groups needed to make a pitch presentation that only focused on what would make each person happy about their new vacation destination. Students could use Google Prentation or Pow Toon to make their pitches. First I launched the third and final phase of the project with my own Powtoon video.

Then they made their own!

 The kids absolutely loved this project and totally became experts on Athens and Sparta.  They also got to work on their argument skills so that is always a plus.  If you are interested in doing this in your own class, click here for all the resources. Make a copy for yourself and feel free to modify.  I would love to hear from you if you use it in your class!

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Zimmer Twins and Fabulous Swag

My extremely long Egypt unit is done (thank you snow days) and I really wanted to do something fun, especially since Tuesday starts MCAs. Aaaaahhhhhhh! First I decided to do a very Common Corey project. When I moved into my new classroom I found all these amazing, but singular, books on Egypt so I decided to put them to good use. I asked the kids to peruse the books and find a topic about Ancient Egypt that interested them. Once they found that an interesting topic, they were to make a claim about their interest and support it with four pieces of textual evidence.

My kids are textual evidence masters so this was easy and we could soon move to the fun! I decided that the kids would use the Zimmer Twins website to lay out their claim and evidence in a movie. My fabulous friend Tracy did a similar project and Oscar party last year so this year I decided to pillage her great idea.

Th best thing about the Zimmer Twins is its a cartoon maker where the kids can easily choose what happens next in the movie. It has tons of freedom so the students really feel like they are making their own movie. The kids loved it an we planned the First Annual Wilkie Awards for today!

When the kids entered the classroom they got to walk the red carpet and "Hooray for Hollywood" was blasting in the background;)

My fabulous boa!

The red carpet!

Yup! Lots of popcorn!!!!

My amazingly fabulous and wonderful computer teacher let the kids work on their videos during class. She said they kept working and telling everyone they were going to win that Wilkie. I looooooove these kids!

The awards ceremony is Monday so stay tuned!

 

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Social Studies Brackets, Word Walls, and Interactive Notebooks....oh my!

Another great couple of weeks in the book!  The hubs, kiddos and I got our third bout of strep throat but we weathered through it and we can finally see the other side.  School wise... knock on wood... everything has been bliss.  The kids have hit a sweet spot, academically, where I can continually ask for more and a greater percentage rise to the challenge.  Here's a breakdown of what I've been doing:

1. Civilization Madness
We finallllllllyyyyyyy finished Mesopotamia and I wanted to finish it up in an engaging way but not too engaging because the kids had just finished their Hammurabi plays.  I had been reading about using a bracket system in social studies.  You take multiple THINGS (people, events, etc.) and you have the "compete" in a March Madness type bracket system.  We had Sumer, Babylon, Assyria, Chaldeans, Phoenicians and Hebrew compete against each other for "best" civilization.  I told the kids they were able to choose what made them the "best".  I launched with this....

...and then the fun began...

The kids loved the whole activity and it was a great way to summarize the whole unit.  If you are interested, click here to grab some of the resources so you can do this on your own!

2. Egypt!!!
Egypt is always fun and I decided to combine the spirit of genius hour with a Common Core research activity. I decided at the end of this unit, the kids would be able to choose any topic they found interesting and research it.  Instead of just a simple research and report, the kiddos need to make a claim and support it through research (i.e. "Mummification was disgusting." or "A woman's life was tough in Ancient Egypt.")  The kids will be able to support this claim with evidence and I'm going to have them present in a variety of ways.  I'm going to allow Go Animate, the Zimmer Twins, Google Presentation and basically whatever they want.  We just started our Egypt unit bit I wanted my early finishers to have a chance to start thinking about the project.  When I moved into my new classroom, I was amazed at the amount of nonfiction was there but I wasn't sure how to use singular books on a single topic.  I figured it out though...

When kids are done with class activities, they are able to peruse the books looking for possible topics.  So far, my early finishers love it.  By the way... isn't my word wall fabulous....

3. Rejuvenation of Interactive Notebooks!!!!
I love my interactive notebooks, but being my first year with new curriculum, I lost my path around November.  I really started to plan and document with the notebook and I see the buy in from the students increasing every day.

 It's so funny, the more I focus on the notebooks, the more invested the students become.  It really shows that what a teachers feels can go a long way.  We did a pretty amazing Constitutional Convention unit where the kids did text mapping while I worked with six kids at a time on the Great Compromise and the 3/5 Compromise.  I looooove when I get to figure out how to work small group teaching into a class of 27!  After we completed our unit, the kids had to pretend they were a member of the Constitutional Convention and were Tweeting at the scene.  I gave them an example......

Then they amazed me......

All in all... an amazing week!

If you are interested in some of the foldables, head on over to Teachers Pay Teachers and check out my newest activity.