Quizizz is an online, free gamified quiz platform that can be used from anywhere. My favorite thing is that the quizzes are student-paced, so while it is a competition, students can still work at their own pace. The questions will show up on each student's screen.
You can search from tons of quizzes that are already created or choose to create your own quiz with your own questions or pull the questions from those quizzes that have already been created. There are 5 question types: multiple choice, check box, fill in the blank, poll, and open ended. The poll and open ended are not graded, but are a great check-in or exit ticket type of question where students can share their opinions, give explanations, or tell you how they are feeling.
Once students are taking a quiz, you can see a very detailed report section in your teacher dashboard live as they are taking it or view it afterwards once they have finished.
This is a great tool for quick, informative assessments, especially during this upcoming school year where you may be teaching virtually, in small groups, or socially distanced in your classroom.
I put this presentation together for my school and thought I would share it with you all.
I've seen people talk about digital escape rooms and decided I wanted to attempt to make one! I decided this would be a fun way for students (and teachers) to learn or remind themselves about Google Classroom and how they will be using it this school year.
I will share the escape room with you all, but I thought I would also take this time to explain how to make an escape room because if you are comfortable with hyperlinks in Google Slides you can handle making one.
Google Slides is always my go-to, but this could also be done in Google Forms by using the option to go to a certain question based on the student's response. When using slides, you can choose to make all of your slides first and then hyperlink them or hyperlink them as you go. If you choose to hyperlink them as you go and you link to another slide, it will always go to that exact slide no matter if you add new slides or change the order of the slides.
I tried about 50 times to type out directions and tips for creating this, but decided it would be WAY easier to use videos to actually show you how to do some of the steps. Now I have to admit, I'm still working on my speaking skills in Screencastify. I like to trip over my words and I sometimes make mistakes, but rather than recording myself 10 times, I just leave them in there and you all can appreciate that I am human. (this is something you should do with your kids too, nothing has to be perfect!)
Creating hyperlinks:
An escape room is FULL of hyperlinks. You can hyperlink text, text box, shape, or image. You can link these to a website by copying and pasting the URL or you can link to another slide in the presentation.
Advancing to a specific slide:
When I created my escape room, I wanted the students to click in a specific location to move forward in the challenge. This video will show you how you can create shapes with hyperlinks so that if they click in the correct place it will advance them to the next part of the challenge, but if they click in the wrong spot it will take them to a try again slide.
Landing slides for wrong choices:
In my escape room, I wanted to have it set up so that if the kids click in a place that is not correct, it will take them to a landing page that lets them know they got it wrong and they can go back and try again. This video will show you how to do that. I want to point out that you will need this landing slide for EACH of your tasks in the escape room.
So now here it is! Here is my Google Classroom Escape Room. This is the first one that I have built so it isn't super fancy. I used a simple word scramble as the "challenge" portion to escape. You can choose to have it timed or untimed. Click on the link below to get your copy!
We are one week from the first day of school! While I am excited to try new things this fall with distance learning I am going to miss seeing and meeting my kids in person. There is just something about that first day of school that feels special when you are in the actual school building.
Once I saw the schedule for our students, I decided it would be nice for them to have everything in once place. I have been trying to think of the easiest way to streamline the necessities to the kids. They are going to have assignments on Google Classroom, live sessions on Zoom or Google Meet, small group sessions with certain teachers, guidance is providing social-emotional learning, and the specialists (PE, music, art, media, and technology) will be meeting with the classes as well.
I designed a Google Slide template that can be used each week to help the students find everything in one place. It will have links to the live Zoom sessions, links to the classwork page on Google Classroom, and any other website or resource they may need to complete their assignments.
Students click on the day of the week and it takes them to the slide for that day.
This is a rough layout for now because I anticipate having to change some things around as we get started this first week. My goal is to have the Zoom icon be a hyperlink to the live teaching session for each subject. The other icon for each subject will take the students to their independent work.
This template will be easy to update every week with the new links! I am also planning to link this Google slides agenda to my Google Site that I created. This will be coming up in a future blog post once I figure out exactly how it is going to be used during distance learning.
Here is another great resource for reading and writing that I created out of all of the many graphic organizers in my Google Drive.
All of these graphic organizers can be used electronically by having students type in the boxes, or they can be printed out on regular 8.5 x 11 paper when you are teaching face-to-face.
This presentation includes the following graphic organizers:
This slide has hyperlinks to each of the graphic organizers so you can jump right to the one you want!
I prefer to keep my graphic organizers simple. I used icons from The Noun Project when I felt they would be helpful.
You can get the presentation with all of the graphic organizers by clicking on the Cause and Effect example above or check out my RELA Resources page.
It's time for another set of word work activities!
Today's blog is all about the short vowel sounds. The activities are all the same, each one just focuses on one short vowel sound. The activity is a self-checking activity, so as students work through the activity, if they choose a wrong answer then they will go to a slide that tells them to try again and will take them back to the slide they were just working on. On each slide is 4 images. They are supposed to choose the image that has the short vowel sound they are working on. If they get it right, it takes them to the next slide.
I added in an independent activity at the end that you could choose to use or not use. With the self-checking portion of the activity, there is no way for the teacher to know what the student is clicking on, so at the end of the activity is a word sort. This requires students to sort words into the short vowel sound or not the short vowel sound. They could then turn the word sort in using whatever method your county uses (ie. Class Dojo, Google Classroom, Seesaw). You could also choose to delete the last slides and just end the activity once they get to the last one.
If you want the students to do the word sort at the end, you will need to give them a copy of the presentation so they can edit. If you choose to delete the word sort slide, you can just allow students to view the presentation rather than make a copy.
There are 10 slides for each short vowel sound. Click on the links below to get your free copy of each activity.
When I first started using Padlet, you could choose between the wall template, grid template, and I think they had the column template. Now they have 8 for you to choose from! They still have the 3 mentioned above, but now they also have the following:
Canvas which allows you to build a hierarchy or link ideas/topics
Stream which allows things to be ordered from top to bottom
Backchannel which shows back and forth communication, great for conversations or FAQs
Map which allows you to mark places on a map and add information
Timeline which allows you to put information along a timeline format
Ways that I have used this tech tool:
Reading responses (use the shelf layout, post each question at top, students respond underneath)
Math Talks (use the wall or grid layout, students can post their responses and/or respond to others)
Sharing finished products, ie. writing pieces or projects (use wall or grid layout, students can post links to their finished products and others can comment or review them)
Creating interactive maps or timelines with stories that are being read, especially if the story takes place over a period of time or the story takes place in different places
I created this presentation for the teachers at my school to help get them started:
Padlet has some resources on their website as well. You can see examples of different ways to use padlet. There is a help section with different questions answered for troubleshooting.
This is a free tech tool, however, it allows you to have 3 active padlets at a time. They do offer different versions that you can pay for. There is a school version, which has enhanced security features.
I typically just delete a padlet whenever I need to create another one. You are able to export the padlet before you delete it. To do this, click on Share and then at the bottom there are different ways to save your padlet.
You guys... I decided to create a digital planner for myself and thought it turned out awesome and wanted to share it with you all!
The planner uses Google Slides and is completely customizable! (did I make that word up because Google doesn't like it??)
The first page you make it your own by adding your name. I used a website called www.textgiraffe.com to create a cool title.
Now, I only teach one subject, math, so I left my name off of the title page because I am planning to share this with the other 5th grade math teacher as a way to collaborate, especially while teaching from home.
The second slide is your yearly overview. The icons are all clickable links which will take you to the monthly view for each month. If you don't like the color of the icon, you can easily change it to a small amount of other options by clicking on it, clicking Format Options, and then clicking Recolor and you can see the original color or some other options available.
Each month has a monthly overview page. This will show you a quick overview of the weeks in the month. I put a little note about any special occasions happening in the textbook below the icon. Each icon is a clickable link that takes you to the weekly view for that week. Each month also has a button in the top right to take you back to the yearly view.
Each week has a weekly view. As I mentioned, I only teach math so my slide is going to look a little different from the one I am sharing with you all. Yours will have the four main content areas listed and then a space to type notes. You may have adjust the fonts and sizes depending on how much you plan to put in each box. I plan to make this a crazy hyperdoc by putting links to all of my lesson materials for each day. Each weekly view page has a button in the top right to take you back to the monthly view page.
For some reason the flowers made me happy and so I chose those for this school year. You can easily change the background to fit your personality! I have put 2 options at the bottom of the presentation, but if you don't like either of those, you can easily find a background of your choice from free websites on the internet. Just insert a new slide, upload or paste the image on the slide. You will then want to create a white rectangle for the background of your text.
To update the background for the entire presentation at once, go to the slide that has the background you want to use and right click, then copy. Next click on View and then Master. Make sure you are on the slide in the top left corner that says Master and right click and paste your background on the slide. You should see all of the slides change to that background! When you have finished, go to View and click on Master again to go back to the presentation.
First up is a beginning sounds matching game that goes along with a word sort that includes beginning sounds K, QU, TW, WH.
Students will need a copy of the document so that they have editing rights. This allows them to move the cards once they have made a match.
To play the game, students will click on a card from the game board. It will take them to a slide with an image. They determine the beginning letter sound, then click on the arrow to go back to the game board. They then click on another card on the game board to try and find another image with the same beginning letter sound. If the 2 cards have the same beginning letter sound, they will move the 2 cards over to the grey area. The players continue taking turns until all of the cards have been matched.
The second activity is a drag and drop activity working on contractions.
The students will look at the two words inside of the heart and find the contraction that matches the two words. They drag the arrow on top of the heart.
This is an activity that can be assigned to the students through Google Classroom or something similar and then they would turn it in when it is done to be checked. If you just want it to be an independent activity, I have included an answer key that you could share with students to check their work after they are done.
Make sure to delete the answer key from the copy you assign to students! :-)
Click on the images above to get your free download or check out the RELA resources page.
To see my other word work resources, click on Word Work underneath labels.
By special request you are getting a bonus post this week!!
I just completed my 2nd grade math anchor charts to share with you all.
I have to be honest, I have been teaching 5th grade too long... it was a challenge to put on my primary hat and make sure that the anchor charts were accessible to 2nd graders.
Click on any image above to get your free copy!
As always, please let me know if I left something out or if there is an additional strategy or topic you would like to see added!
Now that we know that we will be starting off the new school year in a virtual format, I am starting to look at our math curriculum to see what activities I can make digital.
I have attempted to make a few of the games in our first unit using Google Slides so that the students can try to play them with each other.
Students will need a copy of the document so that they have editing rights. You can choose to have students work on the same presentation so that they can show their work on the same slide, or choose to have them have their own presentations and they can do 2 rounds of the game on one slide.
I have made enough slides for 3 rounds (or 6 if they are working on their own presentation), but you can always add more by going to the last slide and clicking on Slide then Duplicate.
I give students information on how to type an exponent using the keyboard shortcut, but I am also thinking of including a version with text boxes in case they have issues with the exponent.
Students will need a copy of the document so that they have editing rights. You can choose to have students work on the same presentation so that they can show their work on the same slide, or choose to have them have their own presentations and they can do 2 rounds of the game on one slide.
I have made enough slides for 6 rounds (or 3 rounds if they are sharing a presentation), but you can always add more by going to the last slide and clicking on Slide then Duplicate.
There is an example on slide 3.
Both of these games are adapted from our math curriculum, which was adapted from the SFUSD grade 5 curriculum.
**fun fact - I started this post 3 years ago. I stumbled across it today and decided that this year is the PERFECT year to complete it.
I recently finished the book Letters to a Young Teacher by Jonathan Kozol and it inspired me to write my own letter to young/new teachers. My school actually chose this book as a book study throughout the year during staff meetings and to be completely honest, I did not read it then. This summer I have been on a kick reading educational books that I have had on my shelf, as well as, some new ones that I have been wanting to read. I read another one of Kozol's book in college titled Savage Inequalities and enjoyed how he gave eye-opening, honest facts of the inequalities in schools across the United States. This book does very much of the same when it comes to things that first year teachers may/will experience in their own classroom.
*you may have the perfect lesson plan and nothing will go as planned
*some of the best lessons you will teach, won't have a lesson plan written up at all
*those memes about your students are absolutely true, there's always that one student who you will need a break from that is never absent
*the students who need your attention the most, will ask for it in the worst ways
*there will be parents that you will never meet, it isn't because they don't care or aren't supportive
*there will be parents who you will meet too much
*just when you think you have the curriculum down, the county, state, or country will change something
*there are SO many acronyms in the education world (don't know what something means, just ask, we've all been there)
*there is a lot of "educational jargon" which is basically 5 different ways to say one thing
