CMS Take Apart Day 2015

On Friday, December 4th, students in the PRISM Program had a 'Take Apart Day'.  They brought in items to explore by deconstructing them to see what makes them tick, so to say.  As they take the items apart, not through destructive means (even though that was tempting), they arranged all the pieces for a photo.  That photo became the background of a ThingLink image which then included text, images, videos, &/or websites.  Below are a couple photos from the event as well as one team's ThingLink.  If you would like to view more, check out their blog post: Room 814. Makers. Movers. Shakers.

Students taking apart a camera

Students taking apart a digital watch

Students' ThingLink for taken apart motorized truck: https://www.thinglink.com/scene/731869658864418817

Storyboarding in Seventh Grade Language Arts: A Google Drawing Exploration!

This week we have a guest post from Brittany Rivera, 7th Grade IRLA at CMS. 

To be frank, the 1-to-1 initiative intimidated me. Even as a third-year teacher, I couldn’t stop thinking about how I could possibly change from the way I was “used” to teaching. How could I consistently incorporate this much amazing technology in the classroom? How would I get there? How could I use these devices in the best way possible?

I started thinking about my visual learners and the goals I wanted my kids to reach. I wanted them to feel like close reading was a natural practice as opposed to something they “had” to do. It wasn’t enough to model and practice close reading on paper. I needed to do something else.

The New York Times Ed Blog opened a lot of doors for me and inspired me to try Storyboarding as a way to practice Close Reading. Students were placed into three groups with a different short story per group. The focus of the lesson was using a Storyboard to gather relevant evidence as well as choose visuals to increase their understanding of each piece of evidence. In the day’s experience, I found that my students felt more empowered in terms of understanding their stories, and their inferences and claims were so much stronger.

Using Google Drawing, students were able to develop their Storyboards. They could share their work with partners within the classroom and participate in a gallery walk where they had the opportunity to see other students work and how they incorporated visuals into their analytical reading work.  It was truly an awesome experience and gave kids the opportunity to interact with texts in a more creative way!

My Model

Students participating in our Gallery Walk

Students were given the option of using paper storyboards over the Chromebook; Chromebooks were used most often!

A student’s work on the short story “The Stolen Party”

A student’s work on the short story “Thirteen and a Half”

Google Classroom's Integration with Calendar

How Google Classroom Enhanced a Math Lesson

This past week I had the opportunity to participate in a 6th grade math lesson.  Both Linda Scanlan & Taylor Sternotti planned and carried out the lesson via Google Classroom.  All three of the 'create' functions on the classroom's Stream were utilized.  They first 'announced' the lesson by posting an invitation.

During the lesson, they posted an 'assignment' using Google Presentation for the students to plan out and solve the questions of date, place, and host.

Finally, the lesson utilized the 'create question' function by having the students submit their answers to the invite.

Here's what Linda & Taylor said about their lesson:

"Lesson title: Math Mystery Ball

First, we sent an invitation prior to the lesson to all students by sending an 'announcement' through Google Classroom with the invitation attached. Students were intrigued by the invitation. We sent a Google slide presentation with information students needed to complete the activity. The learning objective was for students to be able to reason, abstractly and quantitatively, to solve real world problems using the strategy 'Use Logical Reasoning'. Students needed to solve three logic problems to correctly solve the mystery of when, where and who was hosting the party. Google Classroom provided students with the file on the Chromebook, therefore, they were able to work at their own pace and provided diagrams for visual learners. We sent a question to all students, through Google Classroom, that asked the three details of the Math Mystery Ball. When students solved all three logic problems, they then submitted answers to the question. As a formative assessment, the teachers were able to see students’ responses and comment on each student response in real time. This provided immediate feedback for students to move on to the next activity in the classroom or revise incorrect answers. Students were actively engaged in the lesson and had felt a need to solve the problem correctly. Thanks to Liz Keller for providing the activity."

An Issue w/ Google Classroom's 'Turn In' Feature - FIX

I had a couple of teachers, recently, bring an issue to my attention about the 'Turn In' feature for assignments in Google Classroom.  The student would try to 'Turn In' an assignment and they would get an error message:

Here is a resource I put together to assist them on how to fix this issue themselves:

View 'Turn In' Fix full version on Tackk
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