Technology 2015-2016

I am at that point in the summer where I decide I need to start planning but then my temporary ADD kicks in.  Standards, Lessons, Benchmarks, PARCC, Technology, Class Rules,  INBs, Flipclass...
It drives me crazy!  I always say to myself KISS! But of course my brain doesn't work that way.

So I start by breaking it down into categories,  This post is obviously about technology.  I won't lie I am the teacher in my school that loves technology and gets super excited about trying new things  However, I am also not naive enough to think that tech is the answer to every prayer and will change everything about my teaching.
The main thing I try to ask myself when thinking about technology in my classroom is:
Will it improve student learning?

The following are things that I know for sure I will use this year.
All things Google:
 We are a GAFE school and I have totally fallen in love with Google Drive after having to send out my laptop for repairs last year, got a loaner and never missed a beat since all of my files were on Drive.  I plan to use Google Forms for administrative tasks like parent logs and for stuff like formative assessments.  I plan to use Google Drawings by uploading photos of student work and annotating them to provide feedback.  I plan to use Google Classroom to share this feedback, along with flipped videos and to provide a place for students to communicate with me and peers. (*along with other uses I find after reading Alice Keeler's great post: http://www.alicekeeler.com/teachertech/2015/04/13/60-ways-math-teachers-can-use-google-classroom/)

Weebly:  
I know I just raved on about how much I love Google and we are a GAFE school, but my admin wants us to use Weebly sites.  I have no clue why, but it is what it is.  I have a class webpage where I share info with parents, the weekly assignment sheets I make for students and any videos they need to watch are there in addition to Classroom.  

Plickers:
Discovered Plickers last year and my students and I love them.  My favorite way to use them is for quick formative assessment.  After I teach a whole group mini lesson I give 2-3 problems to see where the students are.  Then I can sort them out to groups based on the results.  I like that it saves the results so you can go back and analyze it a little more when you have time, the only drawback is you can only get a report on one question at a time.

This shows a portion of the report which is really cool.  Not only can I see who got it right, I can see the wrong answers that were chosen so I can figure out where the misconceptions might be.

CueThink:
BRAND new to this!  CueThink was suggested to me by our awesome, amazing, wonderful (can you tell I think highly of her?) technology consultant Lauriene.  I can't even begin to explain how super cool this app looks in this post since I've only just created my account and tinkered with it for about an hour yesterday.  However, trust me it is super cool: teaching students problem solving skills, getting them to share their THINKING, visually and orally, and sharing with peers for feedback.  Since we are not a 1:1 school, I plan on using this in one of my centers so hopefully all of my students can get on and use it within a two week period.

Tenmarks:
Even though my students didn't exactly love Tenmarks due to the fact that they found it too challenging (too bad!) I am continuing with it this year.  As much as I hate teaching to the test, I feel that Tenmarks really prepared them to take the Parcc test.  Since the questions and responses are set up in the same format.  I really like how their reports are formatted.  Very usable which is important.

IXL:
We have a subscription for this at my school and we use it a lot.  My students who didn't like TenMarks were happier with IXL, because I think there are less word problems.  Unlike TenMarks, the reports are really hard to figure out and use.  Its almost like there is just too many options. But in general I really like this app because the students really get a lot of practice with the skills we are learning.

There are other things I might throw in from time to time like Kahoot, xtra math, Brainpop, StudyJams, etc.  But the others will be used on a regular basis.

Waaaaay Out of My Comfort Zone

This summer I am tutoring a former student of mine in Algebra 2.  She didn't pass the course and has to attend summer school in order to receive credit.
She is a great student but makes silly mistakes. She really knows what she's doing and we are having great conversations about the math.
However, I haven't done some of this since 2008!  And it is so much fun!  I LOVE it!
Since I don't teach this normally and sadly sold back my Algebra 2 textbook from college, I've been relying on two awesome resources, Tenmarks and Desmos to help me out.
In Tenmarks, I've set up a Tutoring class and when I meet with her we do an assignment together and then I give her another assignment to practice.  We work on the topics they are reviewing in summer school or the ones they told her will be coming up.
The nice thing is that while we are doing the assignment together if there is a place I get a little unsure of myself I just click on the "hint" and its also showing her that its okay to do that.  I know a lot of my middle school students feel like they shouldn't look at the hints, but I tell them that's what they are there for!
Demos is just the most awesome app I've ever played with.  And that is usually what I do with it, just play.  Now it is coming in so handy!  I use it on my phone just to double check some of the work I do to make sure I'm remembering correctly.
I am so glad I agreed to do this, not only am I enjoying the time with one of my former students, but I'm also learning a lot this summer too!

She has been getting high 80's on her quizzes and tomorrow is her mid-term.  I'm hoping she does just as well on it as the quizzes!

Parent Contact Log pt 2

After sharing my idea for the parent contact log using Goggle Forms  I couldn't stop thinking about how something was missing.
Thankfully it didn't take too long to figure out what it was. One of the greatest things about Google products is how easily you can collaborate with other people. In my small school we only have one teacher per subject for each grade level. For example, I am the only math teacher for 5th and 6th grade. So I'm thinking I will share the form with the ELA, science and social studies teacher for 5/6 and then we could really see trends in student behavior!
It will be nice to see if a student is having trouble in one or multiple classes, or if there is a student not getting any parent contact at all. With 72 students it's hard to contact all parents regularly, but this system and working together could make it easier to reach out to every family without feeling overwhelmed.
I'm not sure how it would work in bigger districts, but any school that has teams or sharing students between subjects, I think could benefit from it.

Parent Contact Log

I've said before that this year I have really learned to love Google Drive and since I have learned so much reading other teachers blogs I am always looking to share things that I find helpful.  This is one of them, it may seem basic to experienced Google users, but hopefully it will help someone!

When it was time to upload Domain 4 artifacts into Teachscape I kind of panicked because I keep a lot of my records on paper and the Parent Contact Log was one of them.  I have a nice black binder on my desk where I write it in.  I wasn't sure how I was going to get that into Teachscape other than snapping a picture on my phone and just uploading a page shot.  This got me thinking about getting prepared for next year and how I could make this process not only easier for the end of the year, but easier to maintain and use as well.  

I also like to make videos for my students so I thought instead of trying to explain it all in a post I would record a video to share exactly how I edit and use my electronic parent contact log!  Excuse the "ums" and fast Jersey girl speak!  Here's a link in case the video below doesn't work:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlwuLk3jgDk&feature=youtu.be

Let me know if you would like me to send you a copy of my form and if you have any questions!

End of Year Reflections Pt 2 Random thoughts

I've started writing this blog post about 5 times since my last post.  Changing the title and content every time.  To make it easier I'll throw it all together. I will probably blog about each of these in more detail, but I want to get this down so I don't forget!

Google
I have really fallen in love with everything Google this year.  One of the biggest love moments was when my laptop broke and I had to have a replacement while it was out being serviced.  It was wonderful having everything I needed right there on my Drive!
Calendar:  I have started a calendar for both grades and now attach my lessons right to the calendar. Then I share it with my principal, special ed, title 1 and RTI teachers.  Now anyone coming to my room knows exactly what we are working on.
Google Forms and Autocrat:  My favorite creation this year was setting up a form to use for writing lesson plans!  I fill out the information and then using Autocrat merge it into a doc.  So easy!!!

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Teachscape/Domain 4- found a GREAT blog that shows how to organize all of your artifacts throughout the year with my favorite thing ^^^ Google Drive!  Here is a link: http://lifetimeofmusic00.blogspot.com/2015/05/teachscape-uploading-and-tagging.html

Professional Development Plan-This is something that I really love to do each year, but I feel like it gets created at the end of the year and kind of forgotten about.  This year, I plan to print mine out and keep it visible as a reminder of what I really want to accomplish.  I feel like it would be a good idea to have them revisited and discussed at observation meetings with administration throughout the year as well.

5th Grade
Speaking of goals for next year, here is an area I really need to work on.  When I switched grade levels from 7/8 to 5/6 I went from being an 8th grade homeroom teacher to a 5th.  I mistakenly thought that 5th graders were miniature middle-schoolers.  Um NOT true!  These kiddos are still very much elementary students even though they act like they think they are 21.  Over the summer I need to really rethink how I am going to adjust my style for these students.  Also how to help them make a better transition to middle school.

End of Year Reflections Pt 1 GRADES

I still have almost a full two weeks left of school, but it is the end and as I said before IT came terrifyingly fast.

Tomorrow is the last day for accepting any graded assignments since final grade are due by Monday morning.
This year I wanted to change a lot about the way I graded.  I wanted to only give a grade on how much math the students learned, not participation, or behavior etc.   I made homework 5%, the benchmark exam 35% (this was because I wanted students to take the benchmarks seriously) and concept checks 60%.  My policy was that you could take the concept checks as many times as you needed to.  I thought this would be a wonderful option for my students who struggled and needed those extra chances and time to get it right.  You know who were the ones who really embraced this?  The students who got 90% or even 95% so that they could get the 100%
Still I didn't mind.  What I did mind was that those who really needed the help and the opportunity to retake never did until the end of the marking period or right before progress reports, of course.  The problem was, I didn't put a grade in until they passed which in our system means it looks like you have a really good grade and then boom you are down to a C or if you wait too long you could be at a D or even F!

So, for next year, I'm toying with the idea of setting up my grade book by standards and then assigning points you would have to earn towards that standard.  So for example in 5th grade the standard would be:
 5.NBT.1

• Recognize that the value of a digit changes by a factor of 10 when it moves by one place value, having a value 10 times greater when it moves left and 1/10 of the value when it moves to the right. Students do not need to extend this knowledge to moving multiple places values (e.g. knowing that moving a digit two places values to the left increases its value 100 times)

I would then make assignment and quizzes for this standard worth a certain number of points. Maybe practice being like 10 points and having 5 of them (homework/classwork) and then a quiz worth 50 points. Then as they are working each assignment will build towards their 100. So a kid who is getting it fast, blows through their 5 practice assignments for 50 points and then takes the quiz and gets 40 something and the grade shows 90+ but a student who needs more help might need 7 or 8 practice assignments and 2 or 3 quizzes to earn enough "points" to get a good grade in that standard.


I'm thinking this is a way to make standard based grading more aligned with the standard grade book.  One of my fears with doing something like this is that even the "smart" kids would have somewhat bad grades at first.  For example they've completed one assignment and got the full 10, when I enter the grade it will be a 10 out of 100 so an F!  I think though with a parent/student conference in the beginning of the year I could explain the method and hopefully get parental support. 

Another nice thing I could do is spiral in standards that we have already learned/practiced so that students would quiz each marking period on them as a part of their grade.  Maybe they just need 20 points on one quiz to show they retained the concept.  

I'm actually really excited about this idea.  It just came to me today and I'm thinking it might be brilliant!  LOL, I guess  you will have to stay tuned while I flush it out over the summer and then hopefully implement and blog about it next school year!

The Countdown Is ON!

Every year I am amazed at how fast the time goes.  This year it was seriously on warp speed.  I feel that this was because I changed grade levels and because it was my first born's senior year.
I am excited to say that I learned SO much this year!  Unfortunately, I did not blog about this learning as much as I should have.  I am going to use this post as a reminder to just blog!

I've been meaning to post (gush) about my experiences with teaching Hands On Equations to my 5th AND 6th graders this year.  It has been amazing for both grades and I am so happy that I decided to include my 6th graders in it.
I went through the program a few years back with my 7th graders, but felt they already had too much experience with the concepts presented to really get anything out of it.  I can already see the benefits for my 5ths and 6ths.  Especially my 5ths since we will be learning all about opposites next year and formally introducing equations.  I am also excited for my 6ths since the biggest complaint I hear and had when I taught 7/8 is that they can't add and subtract integers.  Let me tell you that my 6th graders add/subtract signed numbers like it is no big deal already!!!

I make them sign and date a card to keep track of pieces.

Tomorrow we start working with the green cubes and I can't wait to see them really make the connection to the "rules" they know.

I am also looking forward to see how 5th grade does with it.  If I can get them used to these concepts now, a lot of the anxiety will go away in 7th grade (I hope!) 

I know that next year I will be able to refer back to the Hands on Equations to make connections!

18 days to go!