Weekly Planning

This year our school became a Comprehensive Title I school. We are finally able to share resources and collaborate with Title I teachers (me). Title I has many laws that the Federal Government has set up to protect students and ensure they are receiving additional support above and beyond what they are already receiving. In order to show that the classroom teachers and the interventionists (reading, math, ESOL, sped, Title I) in our school are working together each team has a collaborative wiki set up. Each week during our weekly planning sessions with our teams, notes, resources and objectives are shared on the teams wiki space. This allows anyone (including our principal) to check to see what we are teaching, our objectives and goals for the week and what problems and concerns we are having. Because I am the more "techie" one on the 3rd grade team, I volunteer to type the team minutes in the wiki space and add any ideas that come up. Throughout the week as a team member finds resources or any idea they add it to the team wiki under the correct date.

Having a wiki set up saves so much time wasted on sending out mass emails with the weeks plans attached (the old way). Now we use this tool to share our ideas and resources. It is also important because it allows other teachers in the building to keep up with teams goals, objectives and ever changing schedules. It is very important that a wiki is kept up to date and continually checked for changes. Without this tool I would have no idea how I would keep all the grades (1, 3,4, 5) I work in straight.

Ever since our school started using a wiki to long range plan and collaborative less confusion has occurred and teachers and staff around the building feel like they know what is going on in each team.

Paper and Pencil survey?

At my school I am the PDS (Professional Development Schools) site liaison. I have to communicate with my staff on a regular business regarding placing and progress of the interns, professional development and training. The best way to organize an upcoming PD training is creating a survey, send it out, collect the data and you have answers. Of course I use Google Docs for this. It makes it easier to iron out details. The best feature is how the answers are published and it allows the user to make a quick decision.

Here is a poll I ask the staff about additional training. I was able to look at their responses and determine a solution.

It was easy to see that no one wanted to use their planning time on training (not a surprise) and I was shocked that some would prefer before school. This poll allowed me to plan a training in Februrary before school for the staff. After the training is over I will send out another survey to determine if the training was helpful or not. The staff appreciates not having to type a lot of comments or worry about losing a slip of paper with the after training survey.

I have encouraged many teachers at my school to start using the survey, quiz and collaboration tool.

If you want to look at the survey you can view it here, but you can not change anything.

Also Google provides fabulous resources to help you get started.

Glogging

My 5th graders last year read their quarterly novel. The media Specialist and myself worked together to set up a glogster account for each student. We saved their id on their login card and allowed them to work on their glog twice a week. Here are some of the finals products. They are a little hard to read. I took a screen shot of them, because I set the glog as private. I felt like it was important that their identity was protected. They used their voices to record an audio file of the summary of the book. They also used Askforkids.com to search for images that they could use. They really had fun finding links, pictures and creating an audio recording for their glog. I was very impressed they did a great job with their glogs.

Technical Features:

At first it is very finicky to play around with, you need patience and practice time. I really had to play around with the site long before I introduced this "poster" to my students.

Check out these awesome websites for more help:

http://www.glogster.com/faq/

I like this video on YouTube

After you figure it out for yourself and present it to your students, they pretty much get the hang of it right away. I was very surprised when they were working how much detail they put into them, and their excitement level!

Try it, you won't be disappointed.

Google Docs- a friendly way to share

I love using Google Docs with my students. It is an easy way to give quizzes, take polls, and most importantly collaborate with other students and staff.

For example in the beginning of the school year in their homeroom classes they were learning about stress. As the technology teacher I wanted to think of a way to collaborate with their teacher and help assess them on what they learned. Icreated a Google Doc quiz with their teachers and gave it during a technology period. I graded them based on my results and gave their homeroom teacher a grade for health.

This is what it looks like:

The students results are published in an Excel type format. It was easy to see who missed what question and it was easy to discuss the results.

As far as setting up a quiz or survey or even a collaboration piece, it is easy. Once you have a g-mail account you can click on the document sections and get started. I created this stress quiz is less than 5 minutes. Of course I needed the questions first.

Also a great feature is you can go back and edit the document and the link stays the same. SO when you make changes it is a seamless process.

The Power of a Wiki

I have really transformed my wiki into a website. Although Wiki spaces are supposed to be collaborative in nature, I use mine to communicate with my parents. I post my students daily homework, spelling list, and reading comprehension strategies that we are using that week.

My parents have found it very helpful to have the link available to them. Instead of sending me an e-mail with questions about homework they can view the Wiki and ask questions if needed.

I also post my students work from my technology classes that I teach. Each student has the websites on a label in their agenda and are able to view the work with out editing it. They love that they are able to see their work and show their parents, too. This is a great way to share student work without having to email the work to parents and or sending it home on a cd.

The parents also enjoy seeing what their children are learning in technology.

What poster?

Finally, gone are the days of creating a poster after you a read a book over a long break. Each year my student complete a quarterly reading project. They pick any chapter book on their level, this year is third grade and they complete an activity based on their comprehension of the story. A few years ago they would create a poster and use markers, crayons, the usual to create a poster including all the details on the rubric. NOW, I have them use Glogster (www.edu.glogster.com) to create their final projects. With the help of our Technology Teacher we collaborate and use Technology time to work and trouble shoot their glogs. This also helps because a majority of our students do not have access to the internet at home. This additional work time allows them to receive help from myself or the Tech teacher.

After the students complete one glog they are considering themselves experts! They enjoy adding their own flare to their glog and love when we share them on the morning vodcast.

Glogs are a great alternative to the old school book report poster. Make sure when using it the first time you allow plenty of time to trouble shoot and let them play around with the options. Happy glogging (it's a verb now).