Google Forms to Organize Classroom Library

I have A LOT of books in my classroom library and have them organized by category, author, series, etc., but there are times that I would love to make suggestions to my students based on their interests, but I have NO idea what is even in my library anymore. Between buying new books each year to those books that like to grow legs and leave my classroom (to be quite honest, if a student borrows a book or even takes it on purpose, I'm okay with it because my hope is that they are actually reading it!), I have lost track of which books I actually own.

I have been searching around for a good database or app that would organize all of my books and just didn't seem to find one, so now enters the good ole trusted Google Sheets. Once the books are in Sheets that I can easily sort them or filter them to help find books on a certain topic or interest (and level although I never tell my students that). Now the question is getting them into Sheets.

Before packing up my classroom at the end of the summer, I downloaded the Scholastic Book Wizard and had a couple of students organize my books and scan all of them into this app. (One perk to teaching 5th grade) However, once they are in the app there isn't much to do with it, other than keep track of which students borrow each book. It allows you to email the list of books, but it is literally an e-mail with the books in a LONG list with no other data.

Now enter... Google Forms!

I created a form with the categories that I felt were important to me as a teacher. These included Title, Author, Series, Topic, Location in Class Library, and Level (we use Lexile at my school, but you can use whatever leveling system works for you). Typing all of the books into forms can be time consuming, but once it is done the list that you will have will be worth it!  You could always get an older student to type in the book information for you.

See my Google Form here!

Once the list is compiled in Google Sheets, you can sort or filter the results quite easily. 

First, I will hide the Timestamp column because that has no importance to me. To do this Right Click on the grey area near the A or click on the little drop-down arrow next to the A and click Hide Column.

Next, I do a little clean-up, but adjusting the column widths (click on the line between the two columns and drag to desired width), made the headings in the first row centered (click on the grey area with the 1 to highlight the entire row then click on Center Align on the toolbar), and made the Lexile levels centered (click on grey area with the F to highlight the column then click on Center Align on the toolbar).

To be able to Filter the results, click on the grey area above the 1 (to the left of the B column). This allows you to highlight the entire sheet. Then click on Data in the menu bar, then Turn On Filter. You should now see a little grey triangle shape next to the headings in each column. By clicking on the triangle you can sort A-Z, Z-A, or type in the search bar to find something specific.

This database is not only great for the teacher to keep track or suggest books in the classroom, but if you teach older students, they can use the database to search for books as well. You could even add an additional column with a checkbox to keep track if a student checks out a book from the library.

Maniac Magee Project Choice Board

In my previous blog post I mentioned that my students will complete a project from the choice board after finishing the novel, Maniac Magee. All of these projects will use some type of digital tool that the students will then be able to share with others, as well as, add to their digital portfolio for the novel study.

Click on the image above to visit the choice board.

Novel Study Digital Portfolio

We may have just finished our Maniac Magee novel study at the end of Quarter 3, but after learning more about Hyperdocs a couple of weekends agos I decided I wanted to try out something new while it was all fresh in my brain.

I used Google Slides and Google Sites (among other Google Suite apps) to create a completely digital novel study for Maniac Magee using my county's reading curriculum. While it took a decent amount of time to put everything together and make sure that everything was hyperlinked to the correct link, next year when this unit comes up I will be good to go!

To set it up, I started with a Google Slides presentation. The first few slides explain how the students should set up their Google Site. The site will be used to create their digital portfolio of all of their assignments. Next, each slide in the presentation represents a different day the students will work on the novel. Each day has a set of chapters the students are to read, information they need to review or learn (usually linked to an anchor chart), sometimes an assignment for them to complete (for example, completing a graphic organizer where the students will use the text to find evidence of how two characters are similar), and then a Google Form where the students will complete their routine writing assignment for that set of chapters. The one slide has all of the directions and hyperlinks to everything the student needs. I also included a link to another Google Slide presentation that has tier 3 vocabulary for each set of chapters.

Here is an image of what a slide may look like:

The icons at the top of the slide let the students know which apps they will use each day.

At the end of the unit, the students will complete a project from the choice board:

After their project is completed and uploaded to their Google Site, then the students will have a finished digital portfolio on Google Sites that they can share with parents, grandparents, teachers, classmates, etc.. This will really allow them to take ownership and be proud of their work.

Google Draw - Interactive Ecosystem

Today was Day 1 of the Maryland EdTechTeam Summit and as with the previous years I have attended this awesome conference, I am full of ideas. While most of these ideas will have to come in a later blog post, this post is going to be about an idea I came up with about 30 minutes before I presented on Google Draw.

This is the second time I have presented on this app and I always love coming up with new ways to use it. While sitting in another session today, I had one of those aha moments and out came two ideas for Google Draw that I then threw together and presented.

In my 5th grade science class, we have been learning about life science and different ecosystems. With Google Draw, students could create an interactive ecosystem. One way they can do this is to find an image of the ecosystem and paste it into their Drawing. Next students should research different animals and plants that would be found in that ecosystem. Students then find images of each of these animals/plants and insert them onto the ecosystem image. To make this Drawing interactive, students could then insert a hyperlink for each animal and/or plant that links to a website with more information. The hyperlink could also link to a Google Doc or Slide with information that the student has researched.

Click on the image below to see an example