Infographics

I love infographics, don't you? I am a very visual person, so they are right up my alley.

I made this one for an online class I am taking.

You can make one for free at Piktochart.

FREE Place Value QR Code Activities

Good morning ladies and gentlemen!

I have more goodies to share with you today. I am slowly working my way through our 1st six weeks math curriculum making QR code activities. I want these to be review activities before we take our mini-assessments.

Click HERE to download your copy!

This includes standard form, expanded notation, and word forms of numbers. It has kids practice making the three largest numbers possible when given 4 digits. It also asks the value of a single digit in a large number.

Click HERE to download your copy!

This packet includes ordering numbers from greatest to least and least to greatest. Students will practice finding inequalities and word problems.

These are FREE resources because I believe in sharing among teachers! 

Please leave me a comment if you download the activities. I would like to know if you like them or not.

Thanks!

Desk Citations

I am working through my summer to do list...

I want to integrate our classroom economy into everything we do, including keeping our classroom neat and clean. It is my responsibility to teach my students how to keep a clean and organized work space. This might not be something that sticks with each kid, but they need to be able to do it when they have shared work space.

So I decided to make desk citations. I am going to conduct random checks every week.

Procedure:

1. I will instruct everyone to stand up and walk to one of the wall of the classroom. That way they are out of the way and they don't get a chance to quickly organize.
2. My custodians (student job) will grab the desk citations and a pencil, walk around their portion of the classroom, and inspect the desks.
3. They will leave a citation on any desk that has an infraction.
4. Kids will have until the end of the day to correct it.
5. The custodians will double check the desk and then give me the citation to make the withdrawals from student accounts.
6. If students do not correct the infraction the same day, I will double their citation.

Get your free download HERE.

I also wanted to make something for students to strive towards. It is good to have those positive rewards! 

So I made a Fabulously Organized Desk bonus card. If a custodian notices a particularly neat and tidy desk, they can leave one of these on the desk as a reward.

Get your free download HERE.

What do you think? Can you use these in your classroom?

Date Board for Your Classroom

Hey guys,

I wanted to share with you a different way to display the date in your classroom. In the upper grades, we don't do a daily calendar, so I wanted a way to display our date where I wouldn't have to write it daily.

This is from my 4th grade room.

This is from my 2nd grade room. I kept track of the number of days we had been in school on the far right.

I was inspired by this pin in 2011.

It is a great way for the kids to see the date. You can grab yours HERE if you want it.
Do you use anything like this? Let me know what you think.

Parent Communication - Behavior Update

Hello all!

I L.O.V.E. Pinterest! Don't you? It is the perfect place to gather great ideas. Here is one I found a few days ago.



It got me thinking... Our report cards and progress reports do not give much information in the way of behavior. So I made some changes and came up with this.

Front

Back

I will copy this front to back to save paper.

I wanted to bring the student into this process. I think it is important to sit down with each student and discuss what I think of their behavior, be it good or bad. This way the parent gets to see that I have talked with their child and can see what their child has to say for themselves. I am hoping that this fosters some good conversations all around.

Download yours here if you are interested.

As always, email me if you want the original version to edit for your purposes! Let me know your thoughts on this.

Inspired by Pinterest

Hey ladies (and gentlemen if there are any reading this),

I wanted to share something I made for myself the other day. Well, for my classroom. Same thing, right?

I saw this on Pinterest and loved it.


So I decided to make it into signs for my classroom.

Download your copy here

I am planning on printing these on card stock, mounting them on bright paper, and displaying them in my room. I really want to use these as teaching pieces. I want to do a better job of teaching empathy and responsibility, so I think these are going to become my mantras.

What do you think?

Flubaroo = Self-Grading Google Docs

I was so happy to have found this wonderful script for Google Docs. I am planning on using a lot of Google Docs next year, so this will make my life easier! I was having trouble grading my quizzes, just because it was different. This is the answer to my prayers!

Watch this: (I made it for you...)

Do you think you might use this?

Remind 101

I could have sworn I posted about Remind 101. I searched, but I guess I didn't...

Weird.

Anyway, I want to share this amazing resource with all of you.

I know that some teachers give our their cell numbers to parents, but I am not one of those teachers. I just don't feel comfortable. The downside of that is I can't text parents. So many people respond to texting quicker and more often than phone calls. I'm not talking about sending tons on random texts to parents, either.

I wanted a way to send out reminders in a way that I know parents will receive them. I get the feeling that many of my notes home do not make it into their hands. :) You know how it is. So here is the solution!

Remind101 from remind101 on Vimeo.

I really like using this, but there are a few downsides:

• You have to keep it short.
• You don't have the ability to send individual texts, what you send goes to everyone.

I do like that it is one-way communication. This is exclusively for reminders. I have used it for:

• parent conferences
• field trips
• testing days
• early release
• holidays
• homework reminders
• tutoring
• STAAR camp reminders
• clubs

All in all, it is a great resource for every teacher.

I.P.A.D.S. Initiative

So I have been preoccupied lately with our proposal and presentation for a chance at a 1:1 iPad classroom next year. Our school district received some money from the government that was earmarked for technology and they have to spend it before next year.

Our technology department decided to use this money for some 1:1 classrooms. They opened up a proposal process for all elementary and middle schools in our district. We have 32 elementary schools and 8 middle schools, so we knew there would be a lot of competition.

This was a two-part process. First you had to submit a written proposal answering questions they committee supplied to us, if they rated your proposal high enough, they asked you to present your ideas to a panel.

We had two weeks to prepare a proposal. Here is what we created.



I also created a website with more information: iCrave iPads

We turned in our proposal and began the wait. :) God has really been teaching me to wait patiently this past year. We got the exciting email last Monday (May 20) that we were chosen to give a presentation! Our presentation would be in 3 days. We presented at 8:00am on Thursday (May 23) morning.

We began with a video made by another teacher who was presenting with me. Here is part of our presentation that we made on Thursday morning. These slides were in Nearpod. We provided each panel member with an iPad mini from our campus.

The presentation went well. The committee has until the beginning of June to make their selections. We can't wait to hear! If we are chosen, I am planning on sharing my day-to-day success and failures on here. I know that many of us are beginning to make the transition to technology rich classrooms, so I want to share the inner workings of a 1:1 classroom.  :)

Organize Everything with Evernote

Do you use this resource?

Evernote is a multi-faceted, organizational tool that is free! It is easily accessed from any computer or mobile device. You have plenty of data storage and it is easily customizable.

Watch this quick video for an introduction to Evernote and what it has to offer.



I haven't really used this so far this year. I know that I will be using it next year. I am going to create student portfolios within my Evernote account. I am also going to use it these last few weeks of school to organize my papers. As I come across professional development papers, I am going to collect them and use the camera feature to add it to a notebook. That way I can recycle the papers and have a searchable set of images that I can really use!

I can just imagine how powerful my parent-teacher conferences will be next year with this tool!

This guy has some great ideas to share! It is worth watching the entire video.



As I start to use this more, I know I will have more to share. Please let me know of any ways you use this, personally or professionally.

myHistro - an interactive timeline

It's Monday! I know that most of us are so close to summer that we can almost taste the lemonade, smell the chlorine, and feel the sunshine, but (at least for me) I am not quite there yet.

Here is my FUN schedule for the next three weeks:
May 20-24
     Monday: Watch for an email to see if we are chosen to make a presentation in the hopes of being chosen for 1:1 iPads for next year.
     Tuesday: Visit from the district photographer, cooking club for students after school, and Family Education Night from 6-7pm.
     Wednesday: STAAR scores are hopefully in and a baby shower after school.
     Thursday: iPad presentation??????
     Friday: iPad presentation???????? Social Studies CBA (curriculum based assessment)

May 27-31
     Monday: Memorial Day Holiday and announcements of our district web awards
     Tuesday: Reading CBA and cooking club after school
     Wednesday: Field trip to the Dallas Zoo
     Thursday: Math CBA and Science CBA
     Friday: Play Day!

June 3-7
     Monday: iPad announcements?????????
     Tuesday: iPad announcements?????????
     Wednesday: early release, organizing room, and sister-in-law's bridal shower
     Thursday: early release, last day of school, organizing like crazy
     Friday: Faculty work day and organizing like crazy

I am sure your schedule looks similar. I am planning on tackling the organization parts a little at a time. Organizing makes me happy, so I will probably get started this week after school. I like doing it that way because if I don't it overwhelms me at the end and I just shove things in weird places and worry about it all summer. Not good.

********

Now for the real post...

I noticed that my kids were having difficulty remembering the flow of events in our history lessons. They would ask me, "Was that before we were a state or before we were a country?" I could tell that things were fuzzy in their minds, so I began searching the internet for something that would help.

I found myHistro. There are some things I don't like, but overall it is a good resource.

Here is one I have made as a review for my students. I still want to add to it.

Some good features:

You can:

• add pictures and videos
• add plenty of text
• add links to websites

If you have found a better interactive timeline, let me know.

Nearpod- stream information directly to student devices

Happy Saturday!

I have 3 weeks left of school this year. I am ready for a summer break that will be full of planning for next year. I am not 100% sure of my placement yet, so I am limited in what I can start planning right now. We won't know until our STAAR scores come in, which should be any day now. That's ok with me, because we are working on wrapping up our year.

I have really enjoyed my groups of kids this year. They can cause gigantic headaches, but they all are special to me.

Anyway...

I want to share with you an awesome tool for any teacher who has technology in your room. This works with desktop computers, laptops, tablets, or iPods. It is called Nearpod.
Watch this video I created...

There are several options. I have the free version right now, which is good. There is a school edition that your district can purchase, too.

Here is a breakdown of the different versions and what they offer.

Click to view on their website.

I am hoping to try it out this week. I am working on a few lessons this weekend. I will let you know how it goes.  :)

City of Ember Comic Strips

We are reading The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau in my class. All my students are loving it! You know it is a hit when you finish a chapter and they beg to read the next.  :)  Success!!!

I have to say that reading a novel with my students has been a revelation. They are really enjoying the shared experience and I have noticed an improvement in their fluency over the past 2 weeks. They want to read aloud. They are reading more intently during their silent reading time.

I am so happy about this. We haven't really spent time reading together this year, and I regret it. It seemed like we had so many other things to do that were more important. I was wrong about that. I am wondering if their comprehension and enjoyment of reading would have improved more this year if we had been sharing a book throughout the year. Hmmmm.

They have been journaling throughout the book pretending to be a part of the city of Ember. Some of them are being very creative in their entries. I will try to scan some of their entries to share with you.

Last week I had them create a comic strip illustrating a scene from the story. Here are a few of my favorites.

Planbook = Awesome Lesson Planning

Lesson planning...

It's a love/hate relationship isn't it? We all have to do them. Some of us enjoy planning, while others suffer through it and then fly by the seat of their pants. I say, to each his own.

I am a planner. This means that I love doing lesson plans in theory. I usually try to spend more than one day on my plans for the upcoming week. I tend to make flip charts for my Promethean board, find videos, incorporate Edmodo, and think of ways to engage students with interactive journal activities while I am doing my lesson plans. This tends to drag out the process...

I have struggled the past two years on the format of my lesson plans. First I bought the normal lesson plan book from Mardel. I used that for several months. Then I decided to switch to the online lesson plan book on Eduphoria since that is where our curriculum is stored. The format wasn't pretty enough for me, so I starting doing some internet research.

Have you ever heard of Erin Condren? All I can say is, "WOW." I want one of everything. Check our her lesson plan book HERE. It's a little bit of heaven. I just couldn't bring myself to spend that much money on a lesson plan book. Boo.

So I decided I would try to make my own. I was pretty successful...

I do share these, so if you want the file email me at rmorris@mesquiteisd.org

I used those during the fall of this year. I did like it, but I guess I just don't like writing things anymore. I am a huge fan of technology, so I really wanted an online planbook that I could customize. I was doing some searching over Christmas break and I finally found one!

For 12 dollars a year you get a fully customizable planbook that is available from anywhere! I LOVE it!

My favorite features:

• Customization: You can add up to 8 sections per day that can be labeled whatever you would like. You can add times and color codes to each.
• There are many views: week, day, month, class, etc.
• You can share the link or print your plans.
• You can attach files, add standards (with just a click of your mouse), bump forward or backward, extend the lesson for more than a day, and cancel a class for a single day.
• You can add events and no school days.
• Within each class these are your options: Lesson, Homework, Notes, My List, and Standards.

This is the class editor. Very simple!

I will be using this planner for the rest of my teaching career. I love that I don't have to carry around a planbook anymore. It is available to me on my iPad or phone. They do not have an app, but I think one is in the works.

What do you think? Will you join me on Planbook?