ICivics.... Loved by all!

This week was a roller coaster week. Nothing was horrible but I spent a lot of time adjusting my lessons to create more engagement for student success. Some things worked out and others are yet to be seen. Mostly, I felt like a failure and success all in one week. Welcome to the wonderful world of teaching!!!!

Tuesday was Constitution Day and I thought it would be a perfect day to introduce the kids to iCivics and computer use in my classroom. I gave the kids the entire period to just play with all the offerings on iCivics. I instructed them to play at least one game for at least ten minutes and they had to write a review on that game.

Both my seventh and eighth graders looooooooved iCivics! I have never heard so much excitement over the games. Kids were yelling at the people on the screens and verbally getting excited to sell cupcakes at a bake sale.

They begged me to play it for the rest of the week and some kids even come in during lunch to play it now:). The overwhelming favorite was Counties Work. The kids had to manage local government and many kids wrote in their reviews that it was addicting.

For the rest of the week, my seventh graders finished up their Create a Place projects for the five themes of and they are coming out amazing. Wait till I get a picture of the island that has Bieber heads for coconuts.

I had to switch gears in eighth grade this week. We're doing a colonial review and instead of focusing on the individual assignments, I decided that I needed to abandon whole group instruction and activity for now. I took my activities (most of them are geared to the interactive notebooks and pretty hands on) and set up three stations. My team members (there are 6 of us) share a Mac cart, so I was able to grab a handful of computers and add a BrainPop Station. So far, I think it has been successful. I was looking to create more on task behavior and I think it has given me that. I'll let you know more next week.

I am very blessed to be working with an amazing team. Every time I felt like a failure this week, I had a fabulous group of professionals that offered advice and support. I love working on a small team and can't wait to see what we can accomplish this year.

I do need to throw a question out there. The ability groups in my class are many and widespread. I have a lot of kids that finish a task and have to wait quite awhile before we move on, even in a station situation. Does anyone have any ideas for "When You Are Done?" Tasks. I don't want to give them extra work but I do want to keep them engaged and challenge them. Right now I'm going to try giving them some primary source work from Read Like A Historian, but I would love some suggestions of things that have been successful!

Lastly, I put all my geography activities in a covenient and affordable mega bundle....

Click here to check it out!!!

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Digital Unit: Citizenship... I Didn't Even Need to Be There

Last year I created this digital unit that the kids absolutely loved. I was totally jazzed to implement it again this year and I was a little disappointed my life took over and I actually had to be out of school for two of the five days of the project. The funny thing is, I had created a digital unit where they would not only create independently but also learn independently. Goal accomplished! They were able to continue on with everything without me even being there.
I needed to teach my kids the basic concepts on citizenship and I had always done a quick worksheet to quickly cover the standard but I always knew I wasn't doing it justice. After a little investigation I was able to create a fun learning experience that gave them room for creativity. Here is a quick look at the project:

1. The kiddos watched a BrainPop on Citizenship and took the quiz. Google and BrainPop have a wonderful relationship which allows children to submit their score to a Google spreadsheet in my account. It's wonderful because it creates a grade book in my Drive account where each quiz taken is a separate tab in a spreadsheet.

2. In order for students to learn who can become a U.S. citizen, I had them play Immigration Nation on iCivics.  In this game students learn the different reasons people can become a U.S. citizen and give students practice on identifying and classifying these reasons.  Students took notes as they played the game.

3. Next the kids had to play Responsibility Launcher at iCivics.  In this game students learned about the things that citizens have to do and the things they should do to make a better country.  Again, they took notes as the played the game.

4. Once they were done gathering information, the kids had to create a presentation that would help people understand the what it means to be a citizen of the United States of America.

In order to do this, kids were given the option of three different digital mediums:
     1. Google Presentation - This is Google's own version of PowerPoint and my kids are masters at it.  The
         benefit is they can share it with me.
     2. Prezi - Prezi is considered a "moving presenter".  I works along the same lines as PowerPoint but
         instead of having multiple slides, you have one work space and you zoom around the space.

     3. GoAnimate - OMG my kids loooooove this.  You type in your dialogue and it creates an animated movie for you.  There is a quick version which just requires you to type dialogue and a full video maker which gives a bit more freedom in design.

For two years now my students have really enjoyed this project and have learned so much.  The games really help the children work with the information and they really loved the creation part.

Check out what they made!!!


Citizen by musicdog on GoAnimate

Animated Presentations - Powered by GoAnimate.

Google Docs and ICivics walked into a bar....

Originally posted on Weebly 1/12/2012

So although I absolutely loooooove iCivics, I have found their sign up process for students to be iffy at best. In one class during one period I could only sign up 2/3 of the kids. To this day I have two kids that can't sign up no matter what email they use. I had wanted to give students bonus points if they played so many minutes a month but that really wasn't possible. I figured out a solution to my problem when iCivics sent me an email last month announcing they were launching a new game called "We the Jury". The game placed students on a jury where they had to collaborate to decide guilt or innocence.





To offer this assignment as a bonus but hold the kids accountable for playing the game for a decent amount of time I decided they could write a review of the video game. To do this, we used Google Drive.



I created a form and embedded it into my classroom website. The students had to reflect on what they learned, whether they would recommend this game to another middle schooler and include information that swayed their decision.







I felt like I got a really good glimpse of the experiences the kids had while playing the game and I think I'm going to email the comments to iCivics. We are in the midst of a government unit right now and I think I'm going to use this method so they can experience some other games and take me along for the ride. Do any of you use iCivics? What results have you had?