The Ease of Technology

I find that using technology is such a benefit in my sixth grade class. We have Chromebooks and have become a Google-ccentric school. I use Google Classroom in my classes and have found that I like the simplicity of it. There are a few things that I am hoping they will add as they continue to develop and change the way it works. One of the best benefits is using Google Forms to give assessments. Today, I gave my students a twenty-five question Social Studies test. I set up the form to collect their username to identify them. The form included text response, multiple choice, and matching. It was a relatively simple test but covered a long unit on Ancient Egypt. I teach about sixty students in my two Social Studies classes. Once all of the tests were submitted, I was able to use an add-on called Flubaroo to grade it. I took the test to make a Key and then put in the points values for each questions and chose my response as the key. The test was graded in about one minute!

As a side note . . . before the test, I created a Quizlet set as a study guide. I think more students studied for this test than any other test I have given in my eleven years of teaching.

Another benefit is being able to analyze the test for low scoring test questions. Seeing that a high number of students got a question wrong allows me to go back and look at the question and determine if I needed to teach it differently or if the question was worded in a difficult way. I'm truly starting to believe that the possibilities are endless for teachers and students when you include technology in the classroom.

Caught Up in the Technology

Wow, it's been awhile since I posted. I had high hopes for posting how I was using technology in my classroom every week. It's been about four weeks since I posted that I was excited to have students and then the Chromebooks.

That first week of school, the week that I did not have Chromebooks, I was overwhelmed with the amount of paperwork that I had to take home each night. When I taught first grade, I was exhausted at the end of the day but it was a physical exhaustion and I rarely had to take grading home with me. Teaching sixth grade is very different. I don't get as physically tired by my mind is challenged all day long. It's a nice change. My students were very excited about the Chromebooks and couldn't wait to get them. I started talking about the importance of Digital Citizenship right away. I gave them a preview of what we would be using and how our classroom would work with the Chromebooks. To be completely honest, many of the things that we have put in place have been implemented because of a need rather than being prepared for certain circumstances.

This is a picture of the Chromebooks that we use. There is a review of the device linked to the picture.

 Dell Chromebook 11

Most of my students came to the Rollout Night. They were so excited to get their Chromebooks! They had to listen to a presentation about the rules and handbook, then they could pick up the Chromebook. They had to change their passwords on the school's network so that it would sync with Google and work on the Chromebook. Once they got the device, they had to stay at school and sign in before taking them home. It would not work at home if they did not sign in at school first. Students who were not able to come to the rollout night were able to go and listen to the presentation and pick up their device the next day during school.

We have had some trouble with the wireless in the classroom. I put in a ticket to have our tech department check the access point in my classroom. They did something that helped but it was still spotty. Then I had a student who needed to have her Chromebook repaired and use a loaner for a little while. We could not get the device to work. One of the tech guys came and helped get it set up and realized that our wireless was not working correctly. They rebooted the access point and our connectivity has been great ever since.

We have started to use some of the Chrome applications in the classroom. So far, Google Classroom and Google Drive have been the most used. Classroom is amazing and simple to use. (I'll post more about this later as it will take an entire post all on its own.) My students enjoy using coolmath games and Scholastic News when they finish early. I will be introducing them to Spelling City as well so that they can practice their high frequency and vocabulary words. Over the next few weeks, I will be introducing a few more apps to the students that they can use to enhance their skills in many different areas.

COMING SOON: How I use Google Classroom with my students.

It's almost time!

As I sit here and try to work on my grad school work, I can't stop thinking about the fact that in one week, I will get to begin teaching with Chromebooks in my classroom. I'm very excited and it will be difficult to reign myself in and keep from trying to do everything all at once. Starting tomorrow, I will have students. They will not have the Chromebooks yet. On Tuesday, September 2nd, they will receive their Chromebooks only if they come to the roll out that night. I am hoping that all students will be able to come so that I can start teaching students how to use them on Wednesday.

I say that I'm going to teach students how to use them but what I actually mean is teach them the rules for appropriate use in the classroom. They have to learn the procedures that I will have in place in the classroom. I am also feeling a little bit of anxiety. To me, this feels like a huge thing. I have to have procedures in place for these Chromebooks and monitoring student use. I have never experienced this before so I don't really know for sure what will work and what won't. Some of it will be trial and error.

Over the next few days, I will be talking to students about the Chromebooks and hopefully getting them excited so that they remind their parents to take them to the roll out night. I will also be making some decisions for where they will keep the Chromebook in the classroom when it is not being used. What happens if they forget to charge it at night? There are so many things that are popping into my head. I think what I will do is have the students write down a question that they have on a card (since we won't have the Chromebooks yet I won't be able to do this on Padlet) and then I will go through them and work with my students to answer the questions that they have the next day. I will need some time to make sure that I can answer the questions before discussing them in class.

This is going to be a great opportunity for my students and the teachers in my district. I am looking forward to going through the process, reflecting on, and sharing my experience.

Almost Done Setting Up

I have been working hard to get everything set up in my room. Tomorrow is the last day before the teachers officially have to go back. I would like my room to be done before that. I wanted to share a couple of things that I did for my bulletin boards. I found the ideas on Pinterest and went with them. Since my students will be working with technology, I wanted to make sure I included a little bit of digital citizenship on my walls. I put up the Before you . . . THINK board on my cabinet.

I used pre-cut letters and printed all of the icons that I thought were relevant to sixth grade. I'm sure there are a million more but I wanted to keep it pretty simple. It also gets the idea across without making it overwhelming with icons. I printed the questions that went along with THINK. This is one that I will leave up and refer to for the entire school year.

The other board that I did was a play on a Wordle. I enjoy word clouds. I plan on using them a lot with my students. I want them to use it as a way to look at their writing to see if there are words that they use more than they should or to see if the general ideas they were trying to get across are really the ideas that they have written about. The bulletin board is on Pinterest in a bunch of different ways. This is my version of the board.

I got a lot of compliments on it today so I think it will go over well. I feel like my room is coming together. I'll post one last time about set up after everything is completely ready. It is at a point now that if I clean up and put all my stuff away, I'll be ready for parents and students to check out the room on our Curiosity Day.

Class Library All Set!

The classroom setup is going amazingly well. Setting up a sixth grade classroom is so different from setting up a first grade classroom. I focused on making it so cutesy as a first grade teacher. For sixth grade, I'm working on making the space comfortable and visually pleasing. I can use posters with words!! I have not hung anything on the walls and have not taken down last year's paper and border yet. I plan to work on that a little bit today and tomorrow. On Friday, my sister is going to help me hang my bulletin boards. I have a classroom assistant this year. It has been years since I have had the pleasure of a helper in my room. I'm excited. I met her yesterday and she came in to help me set up. She did my library! I have been so blessed this year. One of the sixth grade teachers took the Tech Coach position for the district and let me borrow her classroom library. Here it is all set up!

She did an amazing job and I cannot believe that she managed to do it in a couple of hours. She saved me a huge headache. She set up series books in the top row and then organized by lexile levels for the rest of the books. All I need to do now is label the containers and shelves for the kids to be able to find what they are looking for!

On the tech side of things, I am trying out an app on my phone called Level It Books. It has the option to create a library and use it as a checkout system. The only problem I have found so far is that it does not allow for multiple copies of the same book. There is also a website linked to it. I have not looked into the website as much as the app. Within the app there are options to add your class roster, a wishlist, and to search for book reading levels. It has the capability to store gle, lexile, gr, and dra levels.

Over the next few days, I will continue setting up my room. School starts on August 25th for students. We have Curiosity day on August 21st so I will have to be set up by then! I'm looking forward to sharing my progress over the next week!

A little bit of progress

Well, this isn't really a tech post but it is prep for the school year. After my family went on vacation, I went in to work in my classroom for the first time this afternoon. It was overwhelming. Coming from First Grade, I realize, I have no idea how to set up a sixth grade classroom. I spent most of my time in my room unpacking boxes that had been moved to my new classroom. That felt like progress until I realized that the teacher who was in the room before I was left a ton of stuff. I don't think she was trying to stick me with her stuff but I do think she thought it would be helpful or that I would use some of it. I might use some of the borders that she left but not so much some of her posters. I'm just a different person and different things appeal to me. So, I spent some time cleaning out the cabinets and drawers and getting rid of things that I don't need.

I peeked into some of the other classrooms in my hallway. We all do it. No one minds, usually. I saw some really great setup and also some rooms that hadn't been touched. It made me feel better and motivated me to keep going. I set up some shelves for my library area and a rug. I opened up my new rug and my new butterfly memory foam chair that I got since I needed a "cool" chair for sixth grade. My old, broken down rocking chair was not going to cut it for this year!

Here is the only noticeable progress in my classroom.

I put some of the desks in groups and moved the book shelves around. The bulletin boards still have border and paper on them from last year. I will be taking that off. I like to put up black fabric and use colorful border to make everything pop a little bit. It is nice on the eyes once it is done. I have colorful curtains for my shelves so there is still a lot of color in my classroom. 

I'm excited to put up some of the bulletin boards that I have found on Pinterest. One of them is a "BE" wordle. I printed all of the words in fun fonts and colors with the word BE in bold black letters. I am going to include the classroom rules poster and the Tigers are . . . poster that go with our PBIS. They will fit in very nicely. The board that inspired me can be found here.

Since we are going to be using a lot of technology, part of my job this year is teaching my students how to be good digital citizens. Another board that I plan to use from Pinterest is the Before you speak . . . THINK board. I am still working on this one. Instead of using the word speak, you use app icons. Here is the pin that inspired me. Once I have the bulletin boards up (probably Friday) I will post a picture.

I'm going to work tomorrow morning and hopefully by then, all of the furniture will be moved to the right places and I'll be able to get all of my stuff put away.

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Getting Ready for Fall

My name is Gina. I previously taught first grade for eight years. This fall, I will be teaching sixth grade in a different building in my district. I am excited and nervous at the same time. There are some really great things starting in my district, including a 1:1 Computing initiative. I will be one of the teachers that begins the implementation. My students will all have Chromebooks that they will be able to take to and from school. The district set up an Edmodo network for teachers in our district and I will be using Edmodo with my students. I will also be using Google Drive and all that it entails for students to work collaboratively in Literature Circles and other projects. 

One thing that I am looking forward to for the beginning of the school year is having students give input for setting up the classroom. I will be setting up the room initially but to build our classroom community, I will be turning over some of the control to my students. I am currently looking at some classroom layout tools that can be accessed online. One of the tools is http://classroom.4teachers.org/ This site allows a basic outline of the classroom and has basic classroom items that you can add to the floor plan. It is simple and includes most classroom type furniture that you would need to put in the room plan. Another site that I am considering is Floorplanner. I like that I can place windows and doors on this one but the furniture tools are a little bit lacking. It is a floor planner for more than just classrooms so you have to sift through all of the home or outdoor objects to find the pieces you need for a classroom. Lakeshore also has a classroom planner. It is very basic but also has the option to include items that they sell in their catalog and then order the entire classroom. Scholastic also offers a simple classroom layout maker. Right now I'm planning to use the classroom.4teachers site but I still need to do some preliminary work to see if it will be easy for students to use.

I went to visit my new classroom today and drop off a few things that I had in my house that needed to be in the classroom. I took a couple of pictures to show what it looks like before I start unpacking and setting up for the start of the year.

I am going on vacation with my family before the year begins so I will set up when we get back. We aren't allowed in the building to work until August 6th anyway. I am looking forward to getting started on this adventure in sixth grade after one last family adventure for the summer.