Online Teaching

     As this pandemic continues many of us are learning that our first day of school will be online. This will be a different kind of year! Each of us are wrapping our minds around how to make our class work via Zoom, Google Meet, or Teams.  Each have features that we have to learn AND teach our students how it works on their end.  

    I think how can I keep my class as normal as possible.  My routines and lessons won't have to change much, just how I deliver them. As I watch other teachers on YouTube teach virtually, I am relieved that many of them aren't doing much different than I did when I was live in class.

    So when I think about what I do in my classroom, I started thinking about how to deliver these items virtually, which led me to creating a digital Student of the Week resource. Students can still do this fun activity, where I tend to learn something about a student I didn't know before they presented their poster.  

    When I think about the struggles of a student filling out this resource, I've brainstormed how to solve it. I think students will easily figure out how to type on the digital poster BUT what if taking a photo and inserting it is too much for them.  I then though, NO PROBLEM, I'll take their picture.  If you are thinking how, this is what I would do, have the student pose in Zoom, Meet, or Teams, whatever platform you are using, then take a screen clip of them. Did you know there is a short cut to do this?  In this order click and hold these keys windows+shift+s, you will get cross hairs that you can click and drag across the screen.  It automatically saves to your clipboard. Then go to the digital poster and paste it (ctrl+v). 

    If you have a Mac the shortcut is shift+command+4, drag the crosshairs across the area you'd like to snip. The screenshot saves to your desktop as "Screen Shot [date] at [time].png". 

Made in both as Google Slides and PowerPoint.Or how about playing games online? How about Color and Shape Bingo? It's one of the first games we play as a class.  So why not play it digitally online?  There are 40 bingo cards, why not share the presentation with them and they pick their card?  The flashcards can be printed out for the teacher and s/he shows them the color and shape if this is the beginning of kindergarten so they can check that they covered the correct color and shape.  The first time played directions on how to move the pieces and how to pick the card will need to be explicit.  BUT how much fun would this be to keep a game that you used to play live, can now be digital?  You can do this small group (which I'd recommend until everyone learns how to play) or it can be whole group!

Made in both Google Slides and PowerPoint.

Good luck with this new and unusual first day of school!

Kids Love Incentives

I have always used some form of incentives in my classroom.  My favorite incentives are very simply printed pieces of paper.  They have been easy for me to make and kids love them.  Since I have always made the incentives in singles, I thought about making all of the different kinds that I have used in the past.  My kindergarten and first grade students especially love the "science notepads" I'd make. They are simply the word we are studying with a picture of the item and the definition.  I staple a few blank copy or lined paper sheets to them cut them into fours. I will see students using them on the playground and in class. I have had parents tell me their child uses them at home sketching their most scientific finds.  Here is an example of how I create these:

Stapling two staples along the top and two on the bottom. Then using a paper cutter I cut them into fours.  Students then have a science notebook.

With pages in it for them to record their scientific findings.

Another hit with my youngest learners are bookmarks.  I laminate them use a hole punch in the top and then tie with a piece of ribbon.  This way students will use them throughout the unit.  Occasionally I'm taping up the hole and retying ribbons, but for the most part, my students would take care of all of these incentives.  I create them with four on a page, they make for rather wide bookmarks, but they are perfect for young learners they are easy for them to manipulate down a page.

    

I'm always surprised how a piece of paper can become a prized possession.  The next set I call "trading cards".  As we go through the unit I add different incentives with other vocabulary words that relate to our unit.  Students begin trading for pieces they don't have.  For this reason, I copy these on cardstock.  If I'm using black and white printing, I will then print them on different color cardstock.  Students will trade the same incentive, just trying to collect a different color.

I have taught k, 1, and 4th.  My 4th graders especially loved collecting the different vocabulary on a necklace.  I use these small rectangular shaped ones, then punch a hole in the top, I provide each student with a chain that they add them to.  My rule for the necklace is that they can only wear them in the classroom and at assemblies.  I had too many wearing them out to recess and losing them.  I had a pushpin in my room, next to where I displayed each students' work and they hung their necklace there if they didn't want to wear them.  I also told them they were for wearing, if they were playing with them, they'd have to hang them up.  In fourth grade, it was a competition to see who could get the most.

I also created "buttons" because I didn't want to deal with pinpricks with a safety pin, instead I'd either place a roll of tape on the back or print on sticker paper, which you can find at an office supply store.

I'd say these two items were my fourth graders' favorites.  I bought the chains off amazon.  Just put in the search "dog tag bead chain", when I purchased mine I got 50 of them for $8.  I do tell my students that they only get one chain for the year.  

I also would copy a small puzzle on cardstock on different color.  I did make a rule that if they were going to cut them apart they'd have to take them home.  This way, I avoided hearing that they had lost a piece.  

In kindergarten, I provided each student with a small ziplock baggie for them to place their incentives in.  I also gave them the option to take them home, in kindergarten most students took them home each day, in fourth grade, it was a competition to see who got the most.  

In kindergarten and first grade I did not give out these incentives, instead, I'd have a "scout" or an "incentive officer" do this for me.  In kindergarten, I did a lot of rug time.  I'd pick two students who would sit on either side of the rug in chairs, their job was to watch the class and when I stopped teaching I'd ask them if they noticed anyone following our rules, in my class, there were three when I was teaching, "being respectful", "eyes on the speaker", or "being responsible for their own learning". If one of my incentive officers noticed someone, they told me which rule they were following and what they were doing to show that rule, they then chose one incentive to give to that student.  I had them take the incentive out of the bag, leave the bag on the chair and give it to that person, that person would say "thank you".  If they said, "I already have that one" or "That's not the one I want", the incentive officer would tell them "sorry".  I also had the rule that the incentive officers could not give it to any "Mimi's!" those are those kids shouting out Me, Me! I would give my incentive officers a large ziplock bag full of the incentives, as I introduced more vocabulary I'd include more incentives.  So typically their bag looked like this:

I also love to make post-its, when I make post-its they are what I give out, students might find them stuck to their desk or on their paper.  

I create them in both black and white and color.  If they are in black and white students love to color them themselves.  Other students love to get the ones in color.  I am slowly creating the whole incentive pack for different scientists, as I would kick off my unit with a scientist and the definition, this way I could say, "Ok, now we are going to be botanists" and students knew what I was talking about.  I also would make that word be my word of the day/week.  When I said botanist, students would call out "a person who studies plants".  If you would like to take a look at the ones I've created, click below:

Botanist

Chemist

Geologist

These are links to my bundles of both color and black and white, but there are links within the product description if you would only like the color OR the black and white.

In addition, if you have a vocabulary word you'd like to have incentives for, just contact me.  Typically I can create them in less than three days.  

Standards Based Grading Is New to Me.

Our district has turned to standards based grading.  They have altered our report cards to reflect this, along with any assessment we give, we have to grade with a scale of 1-4.  I wondered how I would grade without percentages.  I was graded with percentages as a student myself, and have been grading with percentages for my 23 year career.  This would be a big shift for me.

As I attempt to wrap my head around this shift, (which is a good shift, in my opinion) I struggled with how I would grade my students.  So I created Google sheets to do this.  The research says you do not give an average, instead the child's score is the mode that happens most closely to report card date.  For example, the student below would earn a 3.

Standards based grading is intended to show the student and the parent the child's growth.  Most students when they are first assessed on a standard they more than likely will be getting 1, because they have not been exposed to this standard and have had no experience with it, but over time the child will become proficient.

I thought putting the standards in sheets would be easy for me to figure out the grade when it was time to give the child a progress report or report card.  In addition, Google Sheets will allow me to record the assessment that I will be using and can easily refer to it.

If you have never used Google Sheets and want to see how I use mine, click here for a link to YouTube to watch me manipulate my sheets.

If you scroll to the bottom of my sheet, I have added on each sheet, the range in order for the child to score what they did.

This way I can be consistent with my scoring.
The sheets a fully editable so if I want to change the wording, I can easily do this.
There are some standards that have an overarching standard with sub-standards below it. In those cases I have added a sheet that will calculate the average of the scores.  Take a look.
I have included space for 30 students and 40 spaces for assessment scores.  I have included all the California Common Core State Standards in ELA, Writing, Foundational Skills, Informational Text, Reading Literature, Language, and Speaking and Listening.

Here's a helpful resource, these are all of the keyboard shortcuts in Google Sheets.

If this is something you may be interested in here's a link to my Teachers Pay Teachers' Store. 

Flipgrid Gives #StudentVoice

Flipgrid is an exciting resource to use.  As soon as I found out about it I began using it in my own classroom.  I was surprised to find many teachers in my district had never heard of it before.  So I started spreading the word. Flipgrid creates equity in the classroom.  Students who may be to shy to give an oral presentation really blossom on Flipgrid.  What is Flipgrid?  It's a website that allows teachers to pose a question or lesson and students can record themselves responding.  This year I am an Educational Technology TOSA for my district.  I have gone into multiple classes and have not encountered a student yet who would not record themselves.  Yes, I've had some hesitant students or students who have asked to go to a private location to film, but EVERY single student in every class has recorded themselves.  Meaning, I have always had 100% participation! #StudentVoice (There will be that exception, I'm sure. I just haven't experienced that child yet) This year I have used it with TK-6th grade classes and all students have easily navigated the site.  Flipgrid was recently purchased by Microsoft, so it is now a FREE website.  That was exciting news!
Flipgrid is great for all students. Your struggling reader loves it because you can record yourself giving directions, they do not have to read.  Of course, you could make your directions text. After listening to your directions students film a response.  The site will walk you through creating your educator account.  The site allows you to create a grid, I think of the grid as a binder, inside the grid are topics, I think of those as my tabs in my binder.  You decide how you want to organize this.  I had a grid for my own class and another for my partner teacher's class.  I taught both of our classes science.  This just helped me organize my assignments.  This year, as the Technology TOSA, I have a grid for each school.  Mine looks like this:

If I click on the grid, I will have assignments I have made for that school.  Creating an assignment is very simple.  Open the grid you'd like to make the assignment for, then click on "New Topic".

This takes you to the assignment.  There are items that are required and there are optional items.

You have to give it a title.  I rarely give a topic tip.  The video response time, I do suggest that you change this to about how long you think it will take.  If you make it too long, I have found that students try to fill up that whole entire time and I didn't always get quality responses.  Topic display date will auto-populate with the date you created the assignment.  You do have to add Topic Description/Question.  If I'm NOT using this for a listening and speaking assignment I will type exactly what I ask in my video.  If I want this to be a listening and speaking activity, I will just type, "Listen to the directions on the video".  This gives you some great data, because students can rewatch your directions as much as they like, if they ask you what they are supposed to do, it lets you know that they are struggling with listening skills.

In the topic privacy section the video moderation is turned off.  I suggest that you turn this on.  (You can always edit and change at a later time).  Turning this on will not make the videos public.  You will need to watch each one, once you approve them then the class can see them.  I suggest turning this on, for two reasons.  One if a student is giving an incorrect response you can catch it before it goes out to the class and the incorrect response causes a misconception for another student.  Two, if you have that child who thinks it's funny to be inappropriate, you can deal with that before other students see it.  You can change the Active status, if you don't want it to be visible to your students yet.  You can also change the launch date and freeze date.  This is great when you have a substitute, you can have it launch on that day.  The freeze date is great if it's an assessment.  This will freeze the assignment and students can't go back in.

This section is the fun part!  You can add any topic resource.  In our district YouTube is blocked, so students are unable to view YouTube videos.  So make sure you check that whatever you choose to add it is not blocked for students.  You can even add attachments!

In the video features section, I do turn a few items off.  I keep the stickers and drawings option, but you may want to turn it off the very first time students ever record.  I turn off video Reactions, Video Views, and Student to Student Replies.  I do this so students don't get distracted with these items.  Once my class has used it a couple of times then I will add something and explain the rules in using this.  The Student to Student Replies is VALUABLE!  For example, you could have students read their essay and assign another student to listen to it, that student could then provide feedback.  You do need to teach your students what feedback is versus criticism.  I also change the attachment links to none.  The very first time I limit what is on.

This section I leave just like it is.  This will allow you to give students feedback to a response.  It's that simple to create.  If you'd like to experience Flipgrid as a student, go ahead and join my Flipgrid, tell everyone how you will be using Flipgrid with your class.

When you go in as a student, try the immersive reader.  Since it's owned by Microsoft, it has the immersive reader button.

Once students submit answers you will get email notifications, if you don't want your inbox to be filled with Flipgrid emails, you can turn off those notifications.  Click on the actions button on your grid. Then click on Grid Notifications, here you can turn the notifications off.  If you work with another teacher, here you can add them as a CoPilot which would allow them to see the student responses.  They MUST sign up for a Flipgrid account themselves before they can become a CoPilot.

Flipgrid gives you many resources, my favorite is their Disco Library, teachers have shared resources/assignments.  You can use one of the premade ones.  You also can click on Mix Tapes and create your own "Mix Tapes", I do this when I want to pick a few student responses and would like to share it with another teacher, this way he/she only has to listen to the ones that I want them to listen to.  #GridPals is another one that is great, we are moving our students to become global learners, what better way than connecting with a student in another state or country?  You can look at the map and connect with schools around the world.

It's that easy! Give it a try, your students will thank you!

Student Council Ballot Using Google Forms

I have been involved in our student leadership for years.  The last couple of years another teacher has been training to take over this role.  The one thing that I've still been in charge of was our student council elections.  With help from another teacher, we would print ballots then have teachers count their class totals, then the two of us would tally those totals.  Of course, some teachers would not have time to tally their totals, leaving us to tally each vote.

 Last year's race was so close we had to determine a tie for historians.  We recounted votes several times, each time one of the candidates would win by one to two votes.  So we finally said, "It's elementary school, it's not that serious, let's call it a tie and they both win."  This year, I wondered if there would be an easier way to count the ballots.  Google being my friend I decided to play with the thought of creating a ballot in Google forms, this way it would count the votes the two of us wouldn't have to do this!  So, I created a mock ballot with a few names sent it out to teachers and asked them what they thought of the ballot.  I got great feedback, one teacher suggested we add photographs of  each student near their names, since some students don't share the same recess or lunch, they never get to know each other.   What a great idea, but how would I get every student's picture in the form?  I thought I'd just have teachers send me pictures.  Then I started thinking about what would most likely happen, I'd get different sized pictures.  Everyone knows that there are those teachers that we work with that are never on time, so I also envisioned not getting pictures in time for me to put in the form.  It actually took me several days to brainstorm how I could get similar pictures of similar size in the form.  Then I thought of it!   We have our student attendance system which has pictures of all students, the problem was I only have access to my own students.  So, I asked the school secretary if I could sit at her desk and access pictures to put in my Google form.  That worked!  I then shared the link with teachers and asked them to vote, to make sure it worked.  No problem!  Now the teachers just needed to share the link with students.  Here's what students saw on their ballots:

As they scroll down the ballot they see the other offices and the candidates.  Teachers were very pleased about how quick it was for students to vote.  AND best of all no tallying of the votes!  Teachers who use Google classroom added an assignment and put in the link I shared with them.  IMPORTANT:  Make sure in settings you choose, "Limit to 1 response".  This will allow students to only vote one time.

When I was ready to view the results, it was so easy to get totals.  I clicked on the response tab and here were the results all tallied for me.

If you'd like to see how I created this ballot watch this video and I will show you step by step.

Green Screening with DoInk is so Easy!!!! (Can Green Screen be a Verb?)

I have been giving trainings within my district for years on how to film on greenscreen.  There are many apps out there, but I'd say the easiest to use would be DoInk and using an iPad.  I have taught kindergarten to fourth grade and they have all been able to do this.  If you only have Chromebooks you can get WeVideo from the Chrome Store, there is a monthly fee.  I have played with that app once, so I'm not as familiar with it, so today's blog will focus on DoInk.  The DoInk app looks like this:

The app is a one time $2.99 at the time of this posting, but as compared to apps through the Chrome Store, this is cheap.  Once you have this installed all you really need is your iPhone or iPad and a green piece of butcher paper, once you start playing and if you use it frequently you will want to start making a few investments.  These are my recommendations:

Again, none of these things are necessary, it just makes filming easier and easier if you are allowing the kids to do this themselves.  A microphone should be one of your first purchases, as you begin to film you will see how handy a microphone is, if you are filming in a workstation or center, you will be picking up the other students in the background.  If you have a microphone this eliminates A LOT of background noise.   You want to find one with a long cord, this way students can stand close or far from the iPad.  I had a teacher at a training, say, "Well, I'm going to be filming my small group, so I'd need to buy 5 microphones, right?"  No, your iPad only has one plug source, they do make a dual lapel microphone, for two kids.  If you are filming a group, then students can pass the mic to one another OR a great microphone, is the Yeti.  I love mine, but it will pick up background noise, so I use this only when I have a group presenting to the class and the class is a silent audience.  All of these things add up.  Write a DonorsChoose for a greenscreen project!

 A tripod should be your second purchase.  When the students start filming, you'll see it is quite shaky.  An iPad or iPhone, won't just mount to your typical cheap tripod, you will have to get an iPad tripod mount.  Most of these are adjustable in size, I know mine will slide down small enough for my phone and large enough for my old large iPad.

You can always use green butcher paper as your background, but you will need to watch if it has wrinkles in it.  The wrinkles sometimes reflect the light and you will then get see through parts, or the wrinkles are visible when you are taping.  If you purchase green fabric (cheapest) the wrinkles are not picked up, because the cloth does not reflect the light.

A gooseneck iPad mount is helpful, if you will be filming students using puppets or other small items at a table.  I have a pizza box that I have covered in green butcher paper and then they can film in front of it on a table top.  The gooseneck mount can be mounted on the table and used as a tripod.

Again, all of these things are not necessary, but all can be found on Amazon.  If this is your first time, I'd suggest using green butcher paper and see if this is something you even want to attempt a second time.

OK, let's get to the fun part.  Once your app is installed you are ready to begin.

Let's first practice by taking a still picture.

This is the next screen:

You are now ready!

Congratulations!   You've taken your first greenscreen picture!!!!!

Video recording is the same steps as above, just make sure instead of image you pick video:

Now pick which type of back ground you want, you can either film a background, insert a background or movie from the internet, or take a photo of a drawing or any photo.

You must have the layers in the correct order.  What you want to appear in the front will be your first layer, your background the second.  You can have up to 3 layers!

That's it!!  Even if you can't figure it out, give it to your students for a little while, they'll have it figured out in seconds.  :)

I get a ton of my ideas from following @doink on twitter.   People are so creative!

If you liked this blog you might want to follow me or following me on twitter @gina_hickerson.
You might want to check out my TPT store.

Decibella and her 6-inch Voice

I started school about 2 weeks ago.  This year my 4th grade class is extremely talkative.  My partner teacher has also said her class was very talkative.  She recommended I read a book to my class, Decibella and her 6-inch Voice by, Julia Cook.  It is a picture book.

My kids loved this book and now instead of referring to voice volume with numbers we now refer to them  as either whisper, 6-inch, table talk, strong speaker, or outside voice.  In fact, they loved it so much I decided I'd make a reminder for them.

I have hot glued each little poster onto a ribbon and move the clothespin to where I expect their voice volume to be.  I have created these in full sized sheets and half size sheets, if these are still not the right size for you, when you go to print you can click on "More Settings", then in layout choose anywhere from 2-16 pages on one sheet, this will make the images smaller upon printing.   You may choose to just put up the voice volume poster you expect.  I have created these posters full page and half page.  I have also included one sheet with all of the volumes.

I could have easily used this in kindergarten.  My fourth graders have responded very positively to this, too.  If you are interested in this resource you can find it here.

You may want to visit my store to check out other resources I have.