Beyond Integration

How do you introduce a new unit or any lesson to capture the attention of your students? Do you pose a question? Was it creative and unexpected? Maybe it was a simple review of what they learned in the previous lesson. There is a purpose of hooking your students for that fresh learning and setting the objective for each lesson. It can help activate prior knowledge, set the learning expectations and allow students to make connections between the content and real world. The use of images can be that creative and unexpected way to capture your student’s attention with the anticipation of new learning. Strategy 1 - Half the picture Locate an image that shows a big idea of the unit or lesson. Make a copy of the image in order to edit using a photo editing tool to cover half of the picture. Display the image that only shows ½ of the picture. Using the 3-2-1 strategy, a great AVID strategy, have students organize their thoughts about what they think is happening in the picture. ...

In a time-honored “beginning of the year tradition,” teachers are going to start the year off going over classroom rules, procedures, and expectations for the year. They will cover everything from bathroom passes, sharpening pencils, turning in assignments, entering and exiting the classroom along with many other expectations.  How much time will classroom teachers spend talking about their digital expectations for students? With schools moving to a 1:1 environment and more and more students showing up with cell phones, it is time to spend just as much time on students' online behavior as you do on their physical actions.  As the teacher, you establish the culture of your classroom with high expectations for student behavior and student to student interactions, both online and face-to-face.   Because accessing devices for learning is an integral part of teaching and learning in Richland 2, it is important that conversations about behavior and consequences h...

Source: http://dailyutahchronicle.com/2015/11/29/a-brief-history-of-memes-and-how-theyre-destroying-our-political-culture/ Everybody loves a good meme.  From teachers to students, these days memes provide a lot of entertainment.  Have you ever thought about assigning memes as student work, though?  Asking kids to make and share memes could get us further in the engagement battle and really the kids are doing much more than creating memes.  See some examples below: My Favorite Mistake Meme So often teachers spend tons of time reviewing student work and providing feedback only to have it be ignored by the kids.  What if you asked students to meme their favorite mistakes?  This would force them to review the work and the feedback, and if you as a teacher only identified where the mistake was rather than what the mistake was, it could force them to do some focused error analysis.  Teachers can then anonymously share memes that addre...

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Gone are the days that students must memorize facts, dates, and people. Nowadays most educators would agree they want their students to not only “know” the information but be able to do something with the new knowledge. Simply put, students need to be able to critically think about the content and put it into application. However, as a veteran educator or even a novice educator, what does that type of “active” learning look like? It was certainly not how we learned when we were going through school, nor did our colleges prepare us for this type of teaching. I want to share a few strategies that can be applied in any subject and any grade, though you may need to modify them to meet the needs of your students in order to get your them critically thinking about the subject matter. “ Tweet This ” Bring the idea of social media tools to help students formulate their own understanding or opinion on a topic they are learning. At the end of your lesson, ask students to create a “tweet” r...

We are excited about this year's SC Midlands Summit lineup. This year we have 2 new featured speakers and 2 returning featured speakers. Here is a peek at their topics they will focus on at the Summit, June 12-13th. There is something for you... Tom Murray, Learning Transformed: 8 Keys to Designing Tomorrow's Schools, Today Leading with Purpose From Research to Practice, How to Create the Learning Spaces Kids Need Tech Tools for Student Engagement and Teacher Effectiveness Robert Corbin Keynote Speaker from Discovery Education - STEM and STEAM Focus Eric Curts Google Tools for Art and Music Education Google Tools for Struggling Students Holy Sheets! Google Sheets activities for all Subjects 360 Degree Learning with Google Tour Creator Googley Activities for Primary Students Awesome Google Drawings in your Classrooms Beth Holland The Pen is NOT Mightier than the Keyboard: Strategies to Embrace & Scaffold Digital...

I recently worked with our middle school math teachers to increase opportunities for students to use technology to collaborate and communicate their learning. I pre-planned with our middle school content specialist to really determine what students should be doing in a math class when it came to collaboration and communication and how technology would enhance these opportunities. We decided to focus on the following: Effective mathematical teaching practices: facilitate meaningful discourse and elicit and use evidence of student thinking. Mathematical process standards: Use critical thinking skills to justify mathematical reasoning & critique the reasoning of others. Use a variety of mathematical tools effectively and strategically. Communicate mathematically & approach mathematical situations with precision. With these skills in mind, I felt VoiceThread was a perfect tool that would give our students opportunities to build and use these skills as well as become ...