Tips For Education

Quizlet Live is the new game feature from the longtime flash card site Quizlet. Any set of flash cards with at least twelve terms can be turned into a Quizlet Live game. The goal of the game is for teams to match twelve terms to their definitions in a row. Teams are assigned randomly and if a team incorrectly matches one of the items then their score resets to zero. What can a teacher learn from a Quizlet Live game? The first information a teacher gets is being able to hear the conversation that students have with each other. This informal method of assessment can help the teacher identify misconceptions students may still have about a topic. The second information that a teacher receives is after a game Quizlet identifies which terms and definitions the class did well on and which were still an issue. Therefore, Quizlet Live primarily gives the teacher whole class data on a given topic. On a practical note, I usually use Quizlet Live when I want students to get up and move. I have als...

I sat down at my desk and began looking over my syllabus for my seventh grade English class. I realized that there was way too much text which most parents did not read, and the important stuff I wanted them to know was hidden in that sea of text. I decided that this year I would simplify my syllabus by creating an infographic of the essential points I want to communicate to parents. I then opened up Piktochart, my favorite infographic creation tool, and looked for a template that would fit my information. I did not find a free template that fit my needs, but I did find an infographic in the "Featured Galleries" that I felt I could recreate. I decided to use Google Draw as my infographic tool. I have struggled before with creating an infographic from scratch, but I knew I could follow a model. A large part of creating an infographic is blocking out spaces using shapes and color. One I blocked out my sections, I added text and images to create this: At the bottom of the syllab...

In the wake of the Common Core Standards, a slew of websites have sprung up to provide teachers with resources to teach nonfiction and make it engaging. In addition, many of these websites have also addressed the different reading levels present in an average classroom. Most of the websites choose and adapt high interest articles that appeared in other new outlets. These web tools have become in invaluable resource for the classroom teacher looking to make nonfiction more engaging and attempting to differentiate nonfiction based on a student’s reading level. When looking for engaging nonfiction to help students increase their reading abilities or to pair with the fiction we are reading, these are the five websites I use in my search.   Newsela This website is the most popular entry in this category. While not every feature is not free, much of the content is usable without having to pay. Students and teachers can create an account using their Google login credentials. This account ...

This year I tried a lot of new things: using EngageNY modules, teaching Shakespeare to middle school students, and testing out the web tool Storyboard That. All three of these new experiments came together for me in a performance task for an end-of-the-year unit. I wanted to expose my 8th grade students to Shakespeare before they reached high school. I decided that the play A Midsummer Night's Dream would be a good choice. It has an engaging plot, a lot of humor, and sets students up to successfully read Romeo and Juliet in 9th grade. Fortunately, EngageNY has a module that focuses on this play , so I didn't have to come up with daily lesson plans. As the unit came to a close, the students were supposed to complete one final performance task: a Character Confessional. Here is the explanation from the EngageNY unit overview : In this third unit, and after studying the thematic concept of control throughout A Midsummer Night’s Dream, students will write a narrative that will act...

When students are working on long or short term projects, it is important for the teacher and the students to be able to easily track group progress. Trello does this in a very visual and drag-and-drop fashion. Signing up for Trello is easy, especially if you use the Google sign-in option.  The website uses the metaphor of a board where users create lists and cards. Each list can have multiple cards and users assigned to each card. Once the teacher creates a board and lists, students can easily be searched for and added to the board. Trello board for my students' screencasting project. Currently, my students are working on a video project with multiple steps. I have created a board for the project and a list for each step along the way. After adding my students to the board, they each create a card with explains where they are at on that step and who is in their group. When a group finishes a step in the project they simply drag their card to the next list, which is also the next s...

I am currently trying one of  Engage NY's ELA modules  in my English class. In order to build background for the novel for the unit, the module has the students complete a  Gallery Walk  with primary sources. The sources range from poetry, to images, to quotes from historical figures. I decided to digitize this process and brainstormed the best solution. I needed to recreate the sticky note aspect of a gallery walk, but also keep all of the student comments organized. I thought about putting the primary sources on a Google Doc and then having students add comments, but this would create too many comments in the margin since each student had to comment on each source. I decided instead to put each primary source on a Google Slide and create a link to a Padlet wall for that slide. Students spent time reading and observing each slide for the gallery walk, and then clicking on the link to add to the padlet wall for the slide. Students were able to add their comments...