A tool that can be very under utilized in creating community in the classroom, is technology. This year, in Covid times, teachers had to rely on tech to not only add to creating their classroom community, but rely on it to create their whole community. This semester I worked on making posts that can be outreach to student interests (Cooking recipes and reading through overdrive), as well as creating a space for them to get to know me (10 Things to do Before I Die), and a space for me to get to know them (Getting to know you). I also focused a lot of energy on creating a class website that could be used by students and parents to stay up to date on various things. Below are my posts that worked to build a community in the classroom, enjoy!
For this post, I decided to make an example of a recipe book. This lesson could be for any grade between 3rd and 5th grade. Students are required to include an ingredients list, a grocery list, and the steps with pictures and captions. I’ve also included a section for tips and would encourage them to include this as well if they can think of anything.
Students are supposed to take command of this lesson, not just sending parents out for groceries, but helping and picking out themselves with help.
The purpose of this screencast is to show kids how to create an OverDrive account using their own address for free! Overdrive allows students to access hundreds of thousands of audiobooks and ebooks for free. It is an awesome tool in covid times when you can’t go to the library, but it’s also helpful anytime. I’ve been using it for about 6 years and have used it to read over 500 books.
It is great for getting students exposed to all kinds of books for free. They can try out different books and if they don’t like them, just return them and find a new one within minutes. Also, as a student with dyslexia and ocular motor disorder (a birth defect that prevents eyes from tracking together), I relied on audiobooks when I was younger. At the time, I could only go to the library to loan books out, but OverDrive would’ve been a great resource for me, so I know it can be an amazing resource for all kids!
I am shocked at how many people do not know about OverDrive, and I am constantly showing my friends how to sign up. So, hopefully, this is helpful for not just students, but everyone!
Overdrive is available for iPads, iPhones, and most other smart phones. Unfortunately, it is not available on computers yet. However, in order to read the books that are not audio books, you do have to also have the kindle app, which is available on computers. Hopefully, if a student doesn’t have direct access to their own device, a parent will be happy to give their child access to reading on a family device or even their own devices. And for some schools, iPads are given to all students.
Directions:
Grab a parent or guardian
Open up your app store
In the search Tab type in Overdrive
It should be one of the top search options, a blue icon with an O in the middle
Click on it and download the app with the help of an adult
Once it is downloaded, open the app
You should see an option to sign in or sign up, click the signup
Next, you’ll see an option to put in your library card or sign up without one
Using your name, email, and a password, sign up for your overdrive account
The next page should show a spot to add a library, click that and add your zip code
When it shows you all the library options scroll down to M and search for the first Multnomah county option and click
This should take you to their overdrive homepage, at the top there should be an option to click create library card
This will take you to a new page and you should click apply now
Enter all the information with the help of an adult
Head back over to your overdrive account and use the credentials you just created to sign in to your account
Read and listen away!!
A few book recommendations from Ms. Rockett:
Smile by Raina Telgemeier
Holes by Louis Sachar
Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan
Freak the Mighty by Rodman Philbrick
Out of my Mind by Sharon M. Draper
Al Capone Does my Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko
I am Malala (Young Reader’s Edition) by Malala Yousafzai
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett *My personal favorite from when I was your age!)
For my website assignment, I wanted to focus on how I would want a class website to look like. I want it to be a place for students and parents to find all sorts of resources. Not only can students find some of their homework here, but they can rewatch videos used in lessons. Parents could find their kids art work for the past month displayed, a form to sign up for classroom opportunities, and much more.
I didn’t complete every single form I wanted to, but this would be something I would put a lot of work into coming into the school year so that it is very accessible to parents and students. So, there would be calendar sign ups for meetings and volunteer opportunities. This would also be the place to access the monthly newsletter than explains the units for the upcoming month as well as any class news so that parents are in the loop. However, this would only be the case if I was in a school situation where I know that kids have access to a computer at home.
For students, they would be able to complete homework, answer class polls, view lessons and past Power Points. Things like pre assessments, exit tickets, and quizzes would take place in the classroom, not at home.
It is also important to note that if I were to use pictures of students, the website would only be accessible to people with the exact link to ensure the safety of all the students.
This lesson could be for either a grade 4 or 5 class depending on your state’s curriculum. The goal of this lesson is to explore the important locations of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Student will get to use a google form to learn about some of the key points on their own and then as a class we will look at the the expedition and how they trekked through our own backyard!
Instructions:
Students should grab a computer from the cart and login. The teacher will have a google form linked on their class website that they can click on. Students are welcome to put headphones in and listen to music as long as they have it at a volume that doesn’t disrupt other students around them. We will work independently for 10 minutes, students should use the time to try to make it through at least two choices on the google form. Then will talk with partners about one interesting thing they learned or a question that came up. Then we will have another 10 minutes to work before we go over the map as a class! None of the important points included on the map from the Lewis and Clark expedition will be on the form since we will be focusing on those as a class.
This google form would serve as a getting to know you tool before kids start school. When I took ED 426, Classroom Management, Dr. Hilary Merk explained how important it is to get to know your students’ hobbies, how they learn, difficulties learning, etc. This is an easy way to get a lot of information very quickly that you can incorporate into your classroom from day 1.
For this lesson, we will be using a google drawings chart to decide whether things are living organisms or not. To do this, I’ve created a google drawing with each characteristic listed as well as what that characteristic means. Then as a class we will go through and add an X or a check mark to each characteristic and if they have all check marks then we will know!
I’ll include the pictures that we will go through, as well as the google drawing. And you can use the same google drawing over and over again, just removing the marks each time. Maybe you could have a table on a whiteboard where you write what qualifies and what does not as you go through them so that students remember. This would be a good lesson for 4th or 5th graders.
Direct Link: https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1DEngBxcrS2LOdza8D3YZIQdf-mDyIKgyNIfvPZfj9Xs/edit?usp=sharing
The purpose of this activity is for reviewing. This would come at the end of a unit on the branches of the US government in 5th grade. This activity allows them to lay out their ideas while also creating a usable study tool for the whole class. It could also allow students to clear up any misconceptions or confusion. If you didn’t want to do this online, you could also do this activity on big pieces of paper and using actual sticky notes, but this way allows students to still have access to it at home.
The goal of this activity is to clear up any confusion before the summative assessment on the functions of the branches, as well as the organizations that complete these functions. Jamboard’s ability to easily move around the sticky notes allows for students to make mistakes, but easily correct them.
Below are the three slides with the different branches that the designated groups are to work on.
When I was in 5th grade, I received my very first piece of technology that was solely mine. It was a tiny slide phone that basically served the purpose of assuring my parents that I would not be kidnapped if they allowed me more independence outside of the house. In 6th grade I received an iPod touch 4, by 8th, I had my first iPhone. From that point on, my world was opened up to the everchanging world that is technology. It became something I relied on daily, hourly even.
My friends share similar experiences fo their introductions into technology like phones and computers. My housemates are twins and shared a flip phone from 4th grade to 8th grade. My best friend didn’t get her first phone until 7th grade, but she skipped the flip and slide phones and went straight into an iPhone. My age group of middle class people seemingly went through similar transition in their preteen years that greatly affected how we view and use technology as adults today.
We use our phones and computers for everything. We use our phones for communicating, playing games, getting directions, procuring food, and so much more. We use our laptops and iPads for schoolwork, photo editing, watching tv and movies, searching up mysterious medical symptoms, etc. The people close to me in age might share this similar experience, we grew up in the time when Apple product drops were bigger news than a moon landing.
But, what about the people younger than myself? Or the people older?
To get a better perspective on the younger generation’s ties to technology, I spoke with my cousin and her daughter who is about to turn 12. Her name is Annabelle and she got her first phone in 1st grade. It was an iPhone and her mother theorized that the sudden drop in the age kids seem to get phones can be attributed to the abundance of the technology. My cousin gave her daughter her hand-me-down phone since she tends to get a new iPhone every 2 years. She also figured that it couldn’t hurt for her child to always be able to get in contact with her.
This is a trend I have noticed. Kids are getting younger and younger when they receive their own pieces of technology. They also are much more exposed to it in their earlier years. I was calling my best friend’s landline home number for playdates, nowadays, kids can just send their friends text messages.
There is also, obviously, an increase in the amount that technology is used in school. Some elementary students receive iPad’s that they can take home with them for the school year. Now we take university classes to learn how to utilize the technology in classrooms.
If this is a dramatic shift for me and people my age, you can only imagine how older generations feel about all this technology.
My grandma is a spunky lady. She asked us one year to gift her ‘cool’ socks because she wanted to ‘hip’ like my sister and I. We liked to wear patterned socks that never matched. However, hip she is not when it come to technology.
Just this past weekend I had to help her through setting up her new phone over FaceTime. She expressed her disdain for setting up the facial ID that allows you to avoid putting your password in every time you open up your phone. This is something most people find pretty convenient. But my grandma, who is a self-made millionaire, thinks facial ID and Touch ID are efforts by the government to have more access to our private lives.
According to her, They are cataloging our faces and fingerprints, adding this information to a database that allows for easier tracking of US citizens. This speaks to her general distrust of all the emerging technology.
Her husband of 59 years, my grandpa, who passed away in January 2021, was a teacher for 50 years in a small town in southern Washington. I know both of them held strong opinions about the use of technology in schools. My grandpa often said technology had no place being so ingrained in the modern school system. But he also retired before it became commonplace to even have projectors set up in classrooms, especially in smaller towns. I think he would be able to see the positives of it had he had more hands-on use of technology. But this was also the guy who only ever owned a flip phone and never learned how to answer that, so maybe not…
Generationally, it is really interesting to examine the differences in thoughts on technology. Some people think we don’t utilize it enough, others think it is helping the government topple our freedoms. Whether you’re of one of these opinions or somewhere in the middle, I do believe technology is a great tool when tapped into correctly by teachers. The classroom should never revolve completely around tech, but it is impossible to ignore the prevalence it has in our lives and how even in the time since I was 10-year-old things have changed a lot.
An art lesson on the rule of thirds an intermediate elementary class.
First of all, what is the rule of thirds?
Also known as the “Golden Ratio”, the rule of thirds is a mathematical relationship of proportion that can found in our natural world. Mathematicians have studied this unique ratio for centuries, and artists and architects such as Salvador Dali, Le Corbusier, and Leonardo da Vinci have used it.
Imagine you’re playing tic tac toe with a friend. You draw the board as shown below. Two sets of parallel lines that intersect each other.
But instead of playing the X and O’s game, notice how the lines intersect one another at a third of the other line. Both the horizontal and vertical sections are split into three sections due to this intersecting. This is the grid that you can imagine upon for works that use the rule of thirds. Many photographers live by this rule, painters and other artists favor it as well.
Whyis the rule of thirds important?
The rule of thirds, when used properly, has the ability to guide the viewer’s eyes to the best parts of the photograph. It is like an invisible highlighter. It also creates a sense of unbalance that makes the picture interesting to look at.
Personal Photograph from author taken in 2020 at Zion National Park
From things I have not done at all like seeing the northern lights to other aspirations that I have already started working towards, like visiting all the national parks, this is a fairly comprehensive list of the things I would love to do before my time here ends.
