September 2016

Supporting Best Practices

Formative Assessment

Give one, get oneGive One, Get One

Ask participants to write down 3-5 key learnings or important ideas about the topic of study. You may choose to have people write each idea on a different index card or sticky-note to give away to his or her partners or use Google Slides or Padlet and have each idea on a slide.

  1. Invite the group to get up and mingle with their peers or colleagues.
  2. After about 30 seconds, call out “GIVE ONE to a partner.”
  3. Participants form pairs and each “gives” one of his or her key learnings or important ideas about the topic to the other, so each person “gives one” and “gets one.” Time may range from 1-3 minutes. If using Google Slides, have the student share the slide with his/her partner
  4. Call out “MOVE ON” and participants mingle again.
  5. Repeat the sharing for as many ideas as people have to share.

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Instructional Strategies

Baseball playerTriple Play

  1. Choose 5-7 important terms that students need to review.
  2. Organize students into teams of three and assign each team member an A, B, or C role.
  3. Assign each group a different vocabulary term from the list of 5-7 words.
  4. Team members help each other to complete the following three tasks:
    • A = Write the term on one paper
    • B = Describe the term or give an example on another paper
    • C = Sketch the term on a third paper
  5. At the teacher’s signal, students wad their papers into “baseballs” and have a brief snowball fight with their paper baseballs.
  6. Students toss three total paper baseballs.
  7. On the fourth paper baseball, students open it, analyze their paper, and try to make a TRIPLE PLAY by finding the other students who have snowballs that complete the three parts: word, description, and sketch.
  8. Students call out “TRIPLE PLAY!” when they find the other students who complete their three word parts.
  9. Students add value by drawing another sketch or adding to the description.
  10. Students then return to their original group of three and teach their TRIPLE PLAY term to their group.
  11. Teacher sees and hears the students’ thinking and clarifies/verifies as appropriate

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Digital DooDads

Google Keep

Google Keep

Google Keep – https://keep.google.com/ Google Keep is a note-taking application developed by Google. Google Keep has several features including color coding notes, inserting images, creating lists, geo-fencing, shareable notes, and search by color.  Students and teachers alike can use Google Keep to help keep themselves organized!

Check out this resource: http://alicekeeler.com/2015/12/06/7-features-of-google-keep-for-you-to-teach-with/ 

ClasskickClasskick

Give students more feedback than ever! Classkick is a magic whiteboard that students work on and get help instantly from their teacher and peers. Students work on assignments with their Chromebooks, laptops, or iPads, while getting help from teachers and peers instantly. Teachers create assignments, see all their students’ work in real-time, and give LOTS of student feedback. Best of all, students can help each other anonymously.

Google Read & WriteGoogle Read & Write

Have you seen this icon in your Chrome browser?  If not, you should add this helpful Chrome extension from the Chrome Web Store!   Read&Write for Google Chrome™ works by offering text-to-speech support for Google documents and webpages. As a teacher, you can apply for a FREE premium account which unlocks all features.  There is also an app for the iPad. For more information, check out this help doc or video.

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Professional Resources

Hippocampus.orgHippocampus

HippoCampus is a repository of FREE, high-quality educational resources from The NROC Project and from Khan Academy, PhET, SIATech, and others. Teachers can create a FREE account to customize content and create playlist for their students.

 

freetech4FreeTech4Teachers (Repeat)

Freetech4teachers.com – Richard Byrne provides a great blog on a wide variety of emerging tech for teachers. Richard’s site provides information about free resources that teachers can use in their classrooms. In 2012, Free Technology for Teachers received the Edublogs Award for Best Ed Tech Blog. Free Technology for Teachers is read by an audience of more than 58,000 daily subscribers (current as of December, 2013)

horlineleafSocial Media

twitter-poster-for-neisdpln

Follow Todd Bloomer @yankee_todd for more information regarding the upcoming NISD/NEISD collaboration. Please also join us on Monday, October 10th, for our weekly edchat by using the following –  #neisdpln

Upcoming District-Wide PD

  • #edcampneisd – Saturday, October 29, 7:30 am – 12 pm – Visit Todd Bloomer’s site for details and to register for this free event
  • Digital Anchor Charts (online)- https://goo.gl/Jinpem
  • Doing More with Vocabulary (Part 1) (online)- http://tinyurl.com/h84fx3k
  • Using Google Classroom with Your Students: (Monday 10/3/16) 3:45-4:45 PM at Hill MS (
    E106 7th Grade CLC)
  • Part 1: Google Classroom Toolkit (Monday 10/3/16) 4:00-4:30 PM at Northern Hills Elementary Library 0r 7:00-7:30 PM WEBINAR
    Description: In this session participants will learn how to use their Google Classroom to provide student access to external content as well as how to have students respond to external content within the Google classroom.
  • Part 2: Google Classroom Toolkit (Monday 10/24/16) 4:00-4:30 PM at Northern Hills Elementary Library 0r 7:00-7:30 PM WEBINAR
    Description: In this session participants will learn how to use their Google Classroom to have students respond on a template and also have students create products from scratch.
  • Part 3: Google Classroom Toolkit (Monday 11/14/16) 4:00-4:30 PM at Northern Hills Elementary Library 0r 7:00-7:30 PM WEBINAR Description: In this session participants will learn how to use their Google Classroom in conjunction with Google forms.

TIP:  you can always search for professional development opportunities offered by Instructional Technology by browsing the “Online/Web,” “Technology Services,” or “Webinar” categories in Eduphoria.