Vocabulary Review with Flashcard Factory

Instead of writing definitions or creating static sentences, engage students with Pear Deck's Flashcard Factory! Just use this deck that includes the terms and definitions and set the students to work writing original sentences and drawing illustrations for their words. Once students login with Google, Pear Deck automatically pairs students up and puts them into 2 teams. When they are finished with production, you can choose your favorite slides or have the students vote for the ones they like best. Flashcard factory keeps track of the winning team (Day Shift or Night Shift), too. Liven up your vocabulary review with a game your students will love!
https://sharepeardeck.com/x6v77b

Student work sample

Wonders Unit 1, Week 5

These slides accompany Wonders Grade 5 Vocabulary and Skills for the 2017 edition. Feel free to download, edit, and use in your classrooms. If you haven't enabled the free Pear Deck extension in Google Slides, you are missing out! This extension makes the slides interactive. Every student can answer every question, share individual or group responses, and save/review student responses later. With the premium version, Take-aways can be published and sent to every student through Google Classroom with the touch of a button. It is worth the money!

Digital Components in My 1:1 Chromebook Classroom

Here is a recap of the digital components that in my 1:1 Chromebook classroom. Click on the links to go to learn more:

• Google Apps for Education We are a Google school using Chromebooks, Classroom, Docs, Forms, Sheets, Gmail, Drawings, etc. Each student has a google login to connect to the school district wifi network. 
• Hapara  Through Hapara, teachers are able to monitor student screens, access documents, message students, and create collaborative workspaces for projects.
• Spelling City  Spelling City replaced our printed spelling workbooks several years ago. It also integrates with our newly-adopted nders Reading program and GoMath series.
• McGraw-Hill Wonders Reading  The Wonders 2017 program provides digital access to all components, tests, and student responses.
• Accelerated Reader and Accelerated Math For our 5th grade classes, the completion of 20 AR points and 20 AM objectives per quarter is required.
• GoMath  Think Central provides the digital link to our math component. Students can complete tutorials, watch video explanations, and gain immediate feedback using the Personal Math Trainer assignments. 
• XtraMath My students complete XtraMath each day as part of their morning routine. This 5 minuted fact review builds fluency and allows me to track and report progress easily.
• Read Theory After a placement test, Read Theory provides leveled reading passages and high-quality questioning for students. Not only do the topics increase background knowledge, but the reporting features clearly show student growth in reading levels and lexiles. Writing components are optional.
• EdPuzzle  Flipping the instruction and providing remediation is easy when questions can be added to instructional videos. EdPuzzle integrates seamlessly with Google Classroom, too.
• Planbook Digital lesson planning puts sub plans, yearly lesson units, and the ability to share assignments into one place. Planbook makes it easy to print, alter, and save lesson materials for easy access.
• BookWidgets This site provides tools for adding alternate digital lesson options to any lesson. Make digital breakout experiences, crosswords, word searches, drag and drop, fill-in-the-blank, timelines, and sequencing options to Google Classroom.
• Bloomz After using Class Dojo and Remind in previous years, I have settled on using the free version of Bloomz for communication. Parents do not have to respond to the sign up link to get your digital communications by email! Create a class photostream, add reference documents, make alerts, sign-up for conferences, request materials, and message privately through this one app. The read receipts are such a time-saver, too!
• Pear Deck I like this app and extension so much that I paid for the premium version to get even more features. The Pear Deck extension with Google slides turns any device into a digital responder. Collect brainstorming ideas, multiple choice responses, drawings, etc. and save them into student take-aways to review later. This one supercharged my student engagement. Don't forget to try the Pear Deck Flashcard Factory, too. Awesome!
• Quizlet All of my test review materials are housed in folders on Quizlet. No more waiting for review materials for an upcoming test. Students know they can find practice sets here and use games to make learning fun. Quizlet also exports easily to flashcards and to Gimkit.
• Gimkit If you have played online quiz games like Kahoot and Quizizz, you will love Gimkit. I finally broke down and paid a subscription fee. It is a little pricey for my taste. This quiz game beats all of the rest by adding power-ups, insurance, multipliers, themes, and gifting to the individual, homework, and team modes. After playing this one, the students didn't want to go back to the other game formats.
• Flippity This website turns a Google Spreadsheet into fun review games. Check out the options.
• Jeopardy Labs Use this site for students to create and play their own Jeopardy-style games.
• Flipgrid Post a question for your class and compile all of the responses in one place. This is a great way to facilitate classroom discussions and give every student a voice.
• Khan Academy Khan Academy allows you to set up classes and assign content to your class through Google Classroom. This is the perfect way to add remediation for any subject. I like to attach it as an assignment to a Google Forms Quiz based on the students' scores. Use some forms add ons to make this happen automatically.
• NoRedInk For most grammar units of study, students complete a pretest, remediation practice, and a growth assessment through NoRedInk. This is mastery-based program so the length of student practice is based on their success. Once they prove mastery, using sentences created based on their own interests, they are finished. 
• Brainpop After having a school account for years, I finally discovered how to create a My Brainpop account for my class this year! Now I can assign videos, games, and quizzes to students, track their completion, view digital work, and view a digital gradebook easily. Brainpop also integrates with Google Classroom so it is very user-friendly.
• Kidblog Kidblog is a secure classroom blog with options for sharing privacy that made this my classroom choice. I did opt for the paid version, since I liked the format and features.
• Epic! Find digital texts, quizzes, and reading content for your class. There are over 35,000 texts in the library that you can access and share with your class. The students love this site.
• DOGO News  Find current events, high-interest news for kids here. Most stories include video clips, vocabulary lists, and word searches, too. Teachers can create classes and assign content seamlessly. Through the DOGO News classroom or Google Classroom you can share content that is curated just for students and the content if free!
• Padlet I use Padlet for sharing introductions, posting questions and responses, and for Revolutionary War projects. Students can record audio/video, share images, add links, embed slide shows, write, and personalize their Padlet walls. I especially like the privacy features that allow me to monitor and approve posts before they are visible for my class. There are so many options here.
• EduTyping Our keyboarding class uses this and students like returning to practice touch-typing skills in their choice time.
• Mystery Science Our school will have access to Mystery Science next year for all classes! Woohoo! These open-ended science tasks require critical thinking and collaboration to complete. Check out the 

How to Use Pear Deck!

Learn how to use Pear Deck to make your slide shows interactive. This tool is free for most features and amazing!

How Our Schools Got it Wrong!

Whole Language, tracking, inclusion, problem-based learnng, 1:1 tech programs, high-stakes testing, mandates... I have seen it all in the last 34 years in education! But most schools are still scratching their heads and trying to figure out why nothing seems to be stemming the decline in achievement and the massive exodus of teachers from the teaching profession. What is going wrong? Just for a frame of reference, I have taught in four school districts in Central Illinois at grades K-11. I graduated as a high school valedictorian, completed my Bachelors Degree magna cum laude, earned a Masters in Teaching and Learning/Technology Integration, and a K-12 Technology Specialist certification. Most of my colleagues who are approaching retirement have similar backgrounds. We entered teaching because we believed in the power of learning to change lives, and we respected teachers. We CHOSE education, we didn't default to it as a last resort. And if anyone took the time to ask, most of us would identify the same problems in our schools.

1. Funding

We have become beggars... Want popscicle sticks for a project? Beg parents. Need curtains to cut down the glare on the board? Post a "Go Fund Me." Want technology? Look for a community foundation to help. Need new playground equipment? Have students canvas the neighborhood selling candy. Looking for an interactive lesson? Get out your credit card and hit Teachers Pay Teachers. And if you want something small, but necessary, like staples or paper? Just buy your own.

Everytime we default to minimum funding for education, we devalue its role in our nation and communities. You see, there is always funding for what is important, and making teachers and administrators beg for supplies tells our communities how much we should be valued.  We aren't. Most graduates are looking to make a mark on the world, and they want recognition and appreciation, so they don't choose to teach.  Don't lower standards to fill teaching positions! That only perpetuates the disrespect. Raise standards, pay, benefits, and school funding so that saying "I'm a teacher" brings respect again. Graduates will flock to teacher preparation programs if you do!

2. Fear

With the "take 'em to court" mentality of parents, blame-the-school attitudes, and blasting of teachers on social media, fear drives many choices.  Can I hug that crying student? Will I get in trouble for grouping by gender? If a minority student gets a low grade, will I be called racist? Do I need to report that mark on her arm that she said happened on the trampoline? If a child is recording me on his phone, can I take it away? Did I keep 8 weeks of daily records on behavior for a referral? Will I remember how to triage that wound if we have an active shooter in our building? If I call this parent about behavior, will they try to get me fired? If I don't call the parent, will I be reprimanded? Can I put up a sticker chart, a clip chart, student work?  

But worst of the fears is the one that I wrestle with daily: What else could I have done to help this child? You see, teachers often feel alone to face the problems in the microworld of their classrooms. Fear keeps us from experiments that might fail, makes us build walls around our lives so that we are protected, and prompts us to lock our classroom doors. Transparency disappears when we hide and so does innovation. We need leaders and administrators who show us daily that they have our backs. We need to know that they value our training, professionalism, and intentions. We need to know they really see who we are. During one of my early classroom years, a wise administrator defended my teaching decisions to an angry parent, "I won't attack your parenting, and I won't allow you to attack the integrity of one my teachers!" If every principal learned that phrase, perhaps a few more young teachers, like this one, would decide this profession was worth it and stay for another 30 years.

3. Failed initiatives

About 20 years ago, I sat in a meeting agonizing over how to implement new district-wide technology standards. As a rule follower, I was planning the logistics of how three grade levels were going to schedule one computer lab to finish identical projects in a limited time-frame. I realized that what was being asked was literally impossible. As I started to panic, a veteran teacher put her hand on my forearm and whispered, "Just put it in your drawer and do your best. No one is going to check on it." And she was right. This project, and most of the other educational reforms, were devised in a sterile, administrative office with great intentions and little practicality for many districts. Since that day we have had a constant flow of program acronyms: PBIS, PBL, IGAP, ISAT, NCLB, PERA, RTI, CCSS, RtI, STEAM, all backed by expensive research studies and mandated implementation. One impractical solution after another that I have shoved into that "drawer,"  because no matter what label you put on it, quality teaching hasn't changed much in the last 34 years. 

Students need a positive relationship with a caring teacher who will take time to figure out who they are, what they need to learn next, and how best to help them reach their goals. So from the Elementary Teacher who loves to try new things, just keep on doing what you know is right for your students. And if there are any policy-makers out there, perhaps you should spend a week or two in our schools and classrooms to see what is actually going on before you come up with another acronym for my "drawer!"  

Wonders Unit 1, Week 2 Slides for Grade 5

After piloting Wonders last year, I found that I disliked the lack of student engagement on the first two days of instruction. On Monday and Tuesday the teacher introduces vocabulary words and skills from the Reading/Writing Workshop book or display presentations from the online program. Most of the time students are expected to watch, listen, and wait to be called upon. This is just unacceptable. I want every student to be engaged and learning.  Pear Deck and Google Slides solved this dilemma for me. I still introduce skills and vocabulary, but now every student responds, classroom responses are immediately shared, and responses are sent directly to every student through the premium Takeaways option. If you haven't tried the free Pear Deck add-on for Google Slides, you should!

Now for Unit 1, Week 2 Pear Deck Slides

More Wonders Lessons

Since school is starting soon, I am working to finish all of Unit 1 Pear Deck Slides before school starts. Here is Unit 1, Week 1. Look through the archives to find the spreadsheet of all of my other free resources for Wonders 2017 version. If you are using the new 2020, the stories and most of the skills are the same, so feel free to download, edit, and use these in your classrooms.

https://sharepeardeck.com/xuf5a3

Remove the Background of a Photo

I just saw this posted to Twitter (Thank you Tony Vincent) and it is such a wonderful tool and FREE! Just type remove.bg into the address bar at the top of your browser to open the tool. You can then add a photo from your library and instantly the background will be removed. I can't wait to try this with my class. We can add ourselves to any background and even draw the setting. With the camera on our Chromebooks, students can pose for their photos, too. This should accomplish the same effect as having a green screen by simply inserting the photo into the tool. I can also see how this would be helpful when adding images to slides and presentations. Here is how it works: