Keeping Your Students Engaged While Learning at Home

Since technology integration is one of my passions, I have been busy since last week creating screencasts with some of the tools that could be helpful. (I have been using Screencastify and it has been working out great for me.) I have been sharing them out, however, I thought perhaps I would consolidate them and share them on my blog (a blog I haven't updated in awhile!)

Flipgrid and See Saw

Breakout Edu

Formative Assessment with Google Slides

Google Applied Digital Skills

Fun with Formative Assessments

I was supposed to present "Fun with Formative Assessments" at the MACUL Conference on Friday, but it was canceled.  Instead, I created a screencast of my presentation. 

If I create more, I will be sure to share them out! 

Good luck, stay safe, and enjoy this adventure and challenge in our lives! We've got this! #BetterTogether!

Cheers!

Jennifer

BloomBoard: A Great Resource for Teachers

After teaching third grade for the past 14 years, I made the switch to fifth grade this school year.  I am truly enjoying getting to know a new curriculum and feeling rejuvenated.  With that being said, I have also spent a TON of time searching for resources to support my curriculum and build background knowledge. As with most things, when you have a question or need ideas, what do you do?  I bet you Google it, which also means, you are probably on a mini-scavenger hunt to scan and search for quality resources.  I recently found out about a great resource for educators that is a huge timesaver!  BloomBoard is a place for educators to learn, share, and discuss educational topics, resources, and ideas!

Instead of digging around the web for quality sites, games, articles, videos, etc., BloomBoard has collections created by educators that focus on topics relevant to education.  There are content-specific categories with awesome resources, but what drew me in even more, was the focus on broader topics like: Educating the Whole Child, Maintaining Professional Happiness, Building Strong School Culture, etc. What’s even cooler is that you can follow certain topics of interests, save and share resources, and even earn micro-credentials, which some school districts are using for PD credits.

I created a collection on Formative Assessment called “Formative Assessment Can Be Fun” highlighting two of my favorite tools, Plickers and Kahoot, as well as several articles and videos showcasing ways students can have fun while being assessed.  Here are some of the highlighted tools.

• If your students don’t have access to devices, Plickers is the tool for you.  Also, they just launched an amazing new feature with Scoresheet, which makes data collection far more flexible and user-friendly!
• Kahoot has been a student favorite for several years. My students are now creating their own Kahoots to quiz fellow classmates, as well as lead book club discussions.
• C. Ross Flatt and his sixth-grade students were featured in an Edutopia video highlighting game-based assessment.  He not only showcases the fun way assessment can be administered, but he also has links to his game for teachers to print off from the main blog post.
• David Wees, a formative assessment specialist, shared a presentation with 56 ways to assess, complete with visual examples.

Overall, my collection has many great resources featured that will help you in finding the formative assessment tool(s) that are right for you!  Like many of the BloomBoard collections, you can find resources to help you everyday needs in education, connect with like-minded educators, and help improve your practices.

Check out the BloomBoard blog. You can check it out to get links to the blogs that that have already been featured, as well as check out the schedule of featured bloggers for next week that will be posted on Monday. You can also follow along daily on Facebook and Twitter.

Tomorrow's featured blogger is Jennifer Gonzalez. Jennifer Gonzalez is a National Board Certified Teacher, a former middle-school language arts teacher and college-level teacher of teachers, and the creator of Cult of Pedagogy, a website devoted to helping teachers do their work better.

Scoresheet: Plickers Newest Feature!

For the past couple of years, I have used Plickers as a formative assessment tool.  It was one of those tools that hooked me the first time I used it, and I have integrated it into my classroom ever since.  If you are not familiar with Plickers, here is a quick overview.

• You can print off Plicker cards (or purchase a durable set) for each student in your class. Each card has options for an A-D multiple choice answer. Students make sure the correct answer is pointed up. 
• You can create questions and answers ahead of time and schedule them for a specific group, or you can create questions on the spot through the app. 
• Once you communicate the question to your class, you can use the app and your devices camera to scan the cards the students are holding. As you scan, the data pops up on the screen creating a bar graph with the overall progress, but also shows the answers of each student. This allows you to reteach on the spot or spark a conversation for students to explain their thinking. 

The great thing about Plickers is that all of the questions that you assign and scan are archived.  When you go to your www.Plickers.com account, you are able to see the answers and data collected. I have been able to use the data for report cards, conversations with parents, and for curriculum planning. Last month, Plickers added an awesome new feature called Scoresheet in their reports menu.  This has made Plickers even better! Why you ask?

1. The data from each question is now displayed in a gradebook format that allows many questions to viewed at the same time and can be customized for date ranges. 
2. I now have the ability to check the boxes of the questions I would like to use and a total percentage or point value will be calculated.  This is helpful for standards based grading, as I am able to choose the questions that match the standard and see the overall score, regardless if the the questions were all assigned at the same time.
3. While looking at the Scoresheet, you can still get a view of the question in a sidebar, along with the overall progress of the class displayed in bar graph form. 
4. Finally, the scores can now be exported into a .csv file and can be used for other gradebook  programs. 

Here is what the gradebook looks like...minus my students' names. 

They have scored big with me in this new update!  Go and check it out for yourself! 

Smore and Plickers...Great Tools for Teachers!

Smore is a great way to create digital newsletters and flyers.  I have been using Smore for almost 2 years now, and I just can't say enough good things about it!  With Smore, you can easily create attractive flyers and newsletters that include video, photos, titles with hyperlinks, text, buttons, forms, and many other neat tools! In addition, you can easily share your flyers using social media, unique urls, or embed codes.  My families enjoy reading these, especially when they include fun videos and photos!

Plickers was mentioned briefly last weekend on Edmodo, and I wanted to give it a try.  Unfortunately,  I did not remember the name of the app and spent quite a while trying to come across it online.  Luckily, someone else posted a reply to it on Edmodo, and it came up in my notifications again!  I jumped right in to pilot mode yesterday, and we gave it a whirl.  After reading a passage about the Detroit Flag, I typed questions right into the app.  It was great and worked very well!  I was so excited I immediately went next door to show my coworker Jennifer!  We then used it with our read aloud, and I asked questions while we read.  It was a very easy way to assess!

To combine both of these tools, I created a Smore with the theme of Plickers.  Take a look!