First Two Weeks of School 2015

I originally created this post with the intent to blog on the first day of school, but things got in the way.  That seems to be the possible theme for this year, as I then decided I would use this post to blog about the first week of school...and things got in the way.  Those things were my Master's program, planning and grading.

So, here I am, blogging about the first two weeks of school.

Let's try and take this chronologically.

I'm one of the "techy" teachers on campus  (If you've ever read anything on this blog before, you're probably thinking, duh.  If you haven't read anything on this blog before, why are you starting here?).

So I planned to follow Catlin Tucker's example and avoid the boring cliched first day of going over the syllabus.  My plans and the technology's plans were not the same.

Of course, the students couldn't log into the Chromebooks and access the internet.

So we ended up going over the syllabus for the first two periods and chatting about the things we liked to read and watch.  It wasn't until 3rd period that we figured out if the students "browsed as guest" that they could access everything they needed.

From that point on, the rest of the day was pretty good.  The kids liked taking the quiz and they enjoyed competing against each other with the Socrative Space Race.

The second day I switched things out a bit and got 1st and 2nd caught up with the rest of the day, and 3rd on caught up on the syllabus.

The network was still being wonky.  So, the students were still browsing as a guest.  But, I still got them all signed up to Quill.org (though, there were some snafus with that the company is ironing out).  I gave them some time to practice on the site and had a practice unit for them to do that was due at the end of the week (I have not yet gone into grade said unit yet *sigh*).

I got the kids signed up to Google Classroom and started off with an assignment on Two-Chunk paragraphs with attached screencast directions.

I'm in the middle of grading these, after taking a "break" to give the students some feedback on essays, and the students seem to understand the concept and formatting better than they did last year at this time.

On Friday, I tried out Classroom's new question feature with an attached presentation with some videos related to Genius Hour and 20% Time.  I'm going to attempt this with my students this year.  I'm calling it...

I had students respond to a question asking about what stood out most to them and to respond to at least one other student.  That seemed to work out really well too.  

This past week, we worked on our narrative.  The previous week, I used a Google form and took a quick survey of the students to see what kind of narrative essay they wanted to write:  (auto)biographical or a short story.  The short story won.

I had them start off with an assignment that had them going through the ABC strategy (Attack the prompt, Brainstorm, and Choose the order).  I encouraged them to use Lucidchart add-on or the Google Drawing function to create their graphic organizers.  This ended up taking way too long.  Students were a little intimated, I think, by the charts and it took many of them two days to finished and cut into the two days I gave them for drafting their essay in class.

Friday was another Passion Project day.  I had some questions to help them explore their passion and try and begin to think about what they want to do for their projects.  I'm following a lot of the advice/format of Kevin Brookhauser and his book, The 20 Time Project.

I think that is it.  I've got to get to reading and doing my assignments for MY class now...

What I'm Working With

I've already blogged about my LMSs and what kind of Chromebooks I'm using.

Here are a couple of other sites that I use, whether a lot or sparingly:

Quizlet is a website that allows teachers and students to make online flashcards and study them.

Quill.org is a site I found that allows students to practice Common Core grammar and conventions.  I have not used this as much as I would like to as when time is short (and it often is), grammar always seems to be the first to go.

Here is a tutorial video for teachers.  And, there is a separate one for students.

Google Apps for Education is what I am using the most (read:  all the time).  With Classroom, it makes going digital too easy.  

One thing I like about moving my 'worksheets' to things such as Google Docs is that I can add things in color, including the student's answers.  My students and I also find that putting the questions in a table with a corresponding column for them to put the answers in is even better (and easier for me to pre-format with the color coding).

Here are some screen shot examples of how I can use color coding in tables.  Before I attach it to Classroom in an assignment, I make sure that I have already set up each box to the color I want.

I really like Schoology.  Apparently, my district is looking into getting a bid for a district-wide LMS.  I'm going to suggest Schoology.  I really like that I can automatically push updates to my school Twitter.

 I also like how all upcoming assignments are in the corner of the page.

But what I like about it most of all is the ability to create discussions and then get analytics on the discussion.  That means that Schoology will keep track of how many times a student responds and the traffic/popularity with dates and times (not that I wouldn't notice since I get an email sent to me each time a student responds).

If anyone has any other useful tools, sites, etc. that you think I should try, let me know in the comments.