Skip to main content

Never Say Never

Quick rundown of new ideas I have implemented in my teaching and shared with my colleagues after attending PETE&C 2016: Kahoot, Classcraft, Aurasma, Google Chrome, and Chromebooks. Plus, a more refined focus on blended learning, Google Classroom, Google Docs, Google Slides, and not to mention building my PLN more. I'd say PETE&C was worth it.
Kahoot, the engaging formative assessment tool that students and teachers love, went over extremely well with my students as they used their Chromebooks to answer. Every day since using it, at least one student has asked me about when the next time we will be using it.

Classcraft, the classroom-based role-playing game, took off among the students, too. They were extremely excited to setup their avatars and start playing. They also showed me they knew a lot more than I did on the subject matter of XP (experience points), HP (health points), and AP (action points). I think I might have them design a Kahoot formative assessment on the Classcraft vocabulary for me.

Aurasma, the augmented reality app, turned out to be a fantastic way for my daughter to bring her 5K STEM project to life. It was great to see the end product with video of how she put it all together. It was also a good practice run for me before trying it in my classroom.

Google Chrome and Chromebooks have been the topic of two morning sessions at my school, in which my district's Director of Technology and I have teamed up to present to the faculty. We had almost all of the faculty show up for the sessions and got good feedback from them. And in the days that followed, I was being asked more about the topics. The ideas and conversations are definitely headed in the right direction, especially since Chromebooks are just being rolled out and teachers want to use them more and more to engage their students in meaningful ways.
My blended learning classroom has never been running better, especially now that I've tied it into Google Classroom. Students now have clear expectations every day of what the need to accomplish. If they miss class, they can now keep up outside of school. The station-rotation model that I am using (direct instruction, collaboration, and independent learning) are all in play every day. Each station brings something new for the students and gets them up and moving. They are learning how to work together, how to work on their own, how to solve their problems on their own which helps build their growth-mindset, and how to become actively engaged in class.   

For what started out as a very exciting and rocket speed type pace of a year, things are starting to get even more exciting but at a much more calmer rate of speed. It's a good place to be in, and I still have a few other ideas from PETE&C 2016 that I think I could easily work in and like to share with my colleagues. Never thought I'd say this, but I'm kind of anxious for summer to get here and be over so I can get back in the classroom and pick up where I left off.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

K.I.S.S.

Third week into the blended learning classroom and I felt pretty good with how things were going. Still a little messy. Still some bellyflops. But overall I was happy with the progression. Then, specials happened. This cut my class time down from 70 minutes to 50 minutes. Just when there was a flow starting to occur, I was forced to try to figure out the best approach to run the stations with a shortened class. I knew the day we would have specials would mean shortened class times. So it was not a surprise to me, but somehow that day just snuck up. What I discovered in trying to figure out the best approach for that day, turned out to be the best approach for every day. I ended up simplifying the stations and rotations, which made for a much more efficient class and positive comments from my students. I took that simplified approach into the rest of the week, and things really started to take off like I had been envisioning since last year. All I had to do was just keep things si...
Post a Comment
Read more

Why I Left the Classroom for Administration

"So there looks like there might be an opportunity for you." At the time when I heard this, I was literally in the middle of having my best teaching year. My sixth grade blended learning classroom was going better than I could ever have imagined. I was "teaching like a PIRATE," engaging and empowering my students, making learning relevant and meaningful to them, learning along side of my students every day, watching them get that love for learning back, and getting to know my students better than ever. And yet, a career opportunity came up that made me leave all of that. Why I Thought Left When I was told, "So there looks like there might be an opportunity for you," I knew it was to step in as acting elementary principal for another principal in my district who needed to take a leave of absence. I did not know how long it would be, but I knew I had to take it. Opportunities like these do not come along often, and if I wanted to take the next step in ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Flipping Out for Faculty Meetings

This year my classroom grew from about 25 students to about 665 students, as I made the transition from sixth grade teacher to elementary principal. It has been an exciting and enjoyable transition. It has also been interesting being on the other side of things. For example, being on the other side of faculty meetings. September's faculty meeting I did the traditional approach. Scheduled it. Sent out an email reminder. Met with the faculty and started going over what I needed to say, offering very little time for discussion. But then I did change things up about half way through. I introduced our district's Google Expedition VR kits. I took them on a few virtual reality field trips and showed them how they could be used with any subject. Then before I knew it, it was time for the students to arrive. As I prepared for my October faculty meeting, I thought about how I introduced the teachers to the Google Expeditions VR kits and how teachers in grades 3, 5, and 6 used tho...
Post a Comment
Read more