A New Year-- Reflection, Resolutions, Growth

2017 is upon us and like every other person I am thinking about New Years Resolutions. What will I do to make 2017 the best year yet? Will I join a gym, or find workout classes to attend? Will I start that diet I have been putting off? Will I take a budgeting class and truly begin saving money for that Disney trip?

At the beginning of the year, we are always so hopeful about the new year and what we can do to be the best we can be. This year, I am not only thinking personally, but also professionally. What can I do to make my classroom the best place ever?

I think this year I will start with changing things I know are not working. My husband began blogging this year and one of his blogs talked about throwing out the things you know are not working in your classroom, and I have decided I will do just that. Forever, I have done novel studies with my students. I have done this in many different ways, but for the past few years, I have given the students a novel and then given them chapter by chapter questions, vocabulary, and quizzes. Although I feel like the questions can be very thought provoking, because I wrote them myself... it isn't working with this group. Last school year, at the end of the year, I gave students a list of novels as a choice and then they had assignments that went along with their choice novel. The kids loved it! Why I didn't begin this school year with that... I'm not sure. I think a lot of times as educators, we fall into the rut of, "I already have these things created so why not!"

So, when we get back we are tossing out the teacher selected novels, and moving into student selected novels. We are tossing out the teacher created questions and I am going to allow the students to be their own "moderators" for novel discussions. They can come up with the questions for their classmates in their novel groups and they can lead the discussions.

If you have a class that would like to collaborate with my students on novel studies, please let me know, my students love an authentic audience! Also, I am open to any 4th grade novel suggestions!!

Below is the list of novels I used at the end of the year last year:

Extension for Reading and Writing Support

This was stolen from the JCS Tech Leaders Blog:

A wonderful Chrome extension called Read&Write for Google is now available with all advanced features for FREE to teachers! Read&Write works with Google Docs to provide additional supports for students including highlighting, vocabulary help, read aloud features, translator, and access to talking and picture dictionaries.

To unlock the premium features of this Chrome extension:

1. Install it from the Chrome Store by clicking HERE and clicking on the +Free button. 
2. You must register at http://rw.texthelp.com/drive/home/RegisterTeacher with your school email to unlock the premium features.

(Written by: Pam Batchelor)

Chalkup

This post was taken directly from freetech4teachers.com written by Richard Byrne:

Chalkup - Distribute & Grade Assignments in Google Drive Without Using Scripts

Chalkup is a neat service that combines the concepts of Google Drive and Edmodo into one slick package. In Chalkup you can create classes to which you distribute announcements and assignments in the message board style that you find in Edmodo. Your students can sign-in to see what you post, reply to your posts, and submit assignments. The best aspect of Chalkup is found in its Google Drive integration.

Through Chalkup you can distribute Google Drive files to your students and they can submit Google Drive files to you. Rather than running a script like Doctopus when you want to distribute an assignment template to your students, you can simply select a file from your Google Drive account and share it through Chalkup. When students submit assignments to you in Chalkup you can comment and draw on their Google Documents as well as give them a numeric grade for their assignments. Watch the video below to see how easy it is to distribute and grade assignments in Chalkup.

Go Social Studies Go

I found this site through freetech4teachers.com. (You probably could have guessed that!)

This site is great for 5th grade. It is created for middle school kids, but has a section on US History. The section on US History has every historical event of importance that 5th graders would study. (In my opinion, but I could be wrong.) The text is easy and interesting to read and some of the sections include videos. 

I thought it would be great to use in a center or as a whole group introduction to a topic. 

Stick Around

Stick Around is a great app for your iPad that allows you to create and play sorting, matching, and labeling puzzles. To get a better idea of what the app can do, click on the picture above and watch the video!

Reading Bear

Reading Bear is a great resource for helping kids learn to read! They have instructional videos for students to watch that will help them with their letter sounds, blends, and also with how to read whole words. After each instructional video they have a quiz the kids can take. This would be a great resource to link to your website for parents to use at home!

ClassDojo Messaging System

For those of you using ClassDojo, this came from freetech4teachers.com!

ClassDojo has added a service that allows teachers to message parents about student behavior from the app. This messaging service hides the contact information of the teacher and of the parents. You can send individual messages or whole group messages. "Direct Messaging" is for individual messages and "Broadcast Messaging" is for whole group.

This would be a great tool to use to send parents positive messages about their kids! You can also use the app to send out due dates or homework announcements. It is very similar to remind101. Parents do have to decide to be a part of this messaging system.