Cool Extension and Assessments!

Currently I am taking a course through St. Francis University called “Engaging e-Learning”. The idea behind this course is to create lessons that are engaging and provide some sort of online engagement. We are working to build an online community within our classrooms that has both traditional and blended learning opportunities for our students.

One of the reason’s I have enjoyed this class is because we are building on a unit we have already created. All of the assignments have been connected to one idea and not done in isolation. As stated in the syllabus we have created some things and then had to go back and adjust those because they weren’t exactly what we wanted for the unit, but that has made this unit so much better.

I also love the fact that our teacher provides us with “tech tips” for the week. There is so much out there and I tend to forget some of the great things. With that said, it is a nice reminder that there are great resources out there!

I have been blessed to work with a lot of amazing teachers in the past 4 years! Teachers that have a growth mindset and love to challenge themselves and push themselves out of their comfort zone knowing that I will be there each step of the way to encourage them through laughter or tears! :)

Some of them have become very good friends and that is definitely the best part. My relationship with a certain 5th-grade teacher is no exception. We have worked over the past 2 years to create a pretty awesome Ancient Civilization Unit where the students are in charge of their own learning. Students are able to choose the civilization they want to learn about and then use the resources we have created and gathered to help them with their research. In the end, the students need to share what they have learned. We provide them with a rubric/expectations, but how they choose to share their knowledge is up to them. You can find the assessment here.

We decided that note taking was a skill we wanted to focus on during this unit. With that said, I created a screencast that shows the students how to use the Chrome Extension Read&Write (click here for the screencast). This extension will allow students to simplify the site they are on and then highlight main ideas using 4 different colors. When they are done highlighting students can collect the highlights and they will open in a new Google Doc. It is here that students can begin to formulate their own sentences describing what they had learned. Warning: This is a paid feature.

We are still working as a district to see if we are able to purchase the paid version of Read&Write. There are so many other features that I feel will help out students with the paid version, but the free version is worth checking out as well. Click here for info on Read&Write.