Looking to try something new in the month of February? My suggestion: Kahoot!
We just can't get enough of Kahoot around these parts!
Before Christmas, I took the plunge and created a study guide for our solar system assessment on Kahoot's game-based response system. Since then, my students have been begging and begging to play again! I knew the end of our animal classification unit was around the corner, so I created another study session for this week.
Engagement was through the roof! My students love the instant feedback and competition. I love the excitement over the content, how easy it is to create, and the feedback I receive from the teacher's perspective.
So far, I've only utilized the "Quiz" portion of Kahoot. I haven't used the "Discussion" or "Survey" features yet.
Do you have any great quizzes to share? I love to share! Share with me and I'll share with you!
It's amazing how, when I'm relaxing on my couch, my to-do list seems so bare... then the moment school kicks off, things are rolling at full speed again! Whew.. deep breaths!
This year, our 5th grade has been fortunate to have 6 iPads put into every class as a replacement for our laptops. As each day passes, we are finding more and more ways to utilize our iPads to impact our instruction. One of the apps I'm a BIG fan of is Socrative. One of my colleagues wrote an awesome post on our "Tech Tidbits" blog at my school about using Socrative. Check it out here ----> UETechTidbits. In the post, she gives an overview of Socrative and how to use it in the classroom.
If you're curious about Socrative, I would watch this informational video or simply follow their posts on Twitter. I'm always gaining ideas just from their tweets!
One of the huge benefits of Socrative is that it is not limited to just one device - even if my classroom wasn't equipped with iPads, I could still utilize this response system in my classroom. Pretty fancy, huh?
In science, we are starting our animal classification unit. Based on a consensagram from the beginning of the year, this is the unit my students are HIGHLY anticipating and they haven't let me forget about it. Which means.. I've got to up the anty and make it worth the wait!
Pretty remarkable stuff here: my least favorite subject to teach is the one my kids are most interested in. pic.twitter.com/ZHZk4lSBxp — Jordon (@furnelly) August 22, 2014
Now, all of my blabbing and going on and on leads me to an eight digit number. This post was was simply a ploy to get to you snag this number and use my "Shared Socrative Quiz". If you are a teacher in need of a pre-test over the five classes of vertebrates - look no more! I've got you covered!
Vertebrates Pre-Test:
SOC #:
14406769
Now... share with me find educators! How have you utilized Socrative in the classroom? I'm eager to learn more!
The majority of my students have an Instagram account. I don't blame them! I love Instagram just as much as the next guy, I'm constantly sharing pictures of my daily happenings and putting my dog in weird clothing or strange scenarios.
Exhibit A:
OR! Finding adorable pictures of my boyfriend at his parent's house and posting them for other people's enjoyment.
Exhibit B:
Earlier this year, I wanted to try and connect with my students through Instagram. During our conversations about digital citizenship, I wanted to show my kids Instagram can be more than selfies and regramming weird pictures they find on the internet. I'm always encouraging them to follow noteworthy accounts (ex: National Geographic, NASA, etc.).
We had to start somewhere, so I started an Instagram account for the 5th grade. I encouraged students to follow the account. When I originally began, we were in our weather unit. I challenged students to post pictures of the clouds and use the hashtag #sotoscience (note to teachers: check your hashtag FIRST, I learned this the hard way).
Slowly but surely, students were taking pictures of the clouds, uploading the images to IG, and using the hashtag! We had a winner! I even had a parent come to me and say, "You made taking pictures of the clouds COOL, way to go!" I was excited to see students using their phones and tablets for science and connecting outside of school. For those students who don't have an IG account, I was able to pull up the images on my SmartBoard for students to look at during the day. We all benefited from it!
#sotoscience
Throughout our next unit, I utilized the video feature and posted 15-second videos of activities we were doing in science to spark interest. Plus, I hoped it may start a conversation at home. Perhaps they forgot after the bus ride home, but seeing it on Instagram may jolt a conversation with a family member.
Since we've been back to school, we have completed our Animal Classification unit. Through the IG account, I issued a challenge for students to photograph examples of all five classes of vertebrates. I jump started the challenge with Chip as my model. Watch out David Beckham!
Thanks to my PLN and Twitter, I stumbled upon another fantastic idea for Instagram! Challenge students to create a 15-second book trailer. I posted an example one for Origami Yoda a few weeks ago. I haven't had many students jump on board, yet. Rome wasn't built in a day!
Slowly by surely, I am searching for practical ways to use one iPad (without an internet connection) with 19 students. Let me tell you, this has been rather tricky.
At the start of our new semester, I introduced a new project to my students where we would use my iPad to record video clips of our week. Each week, two students are in charge of filming and editing our "Peek at our Week" video. At the end of the week, I upload the video to YouTube and share it with families and post it on our class webpage. We are three weeks in and I've gotten a huge response from parents so far. My goal for the videos are to give parents another vision of our classroom - seeing it through the eyes of their child. What is really going on while we are at school all day? Yes, video clips of us dancing have been included in all three videos so far. Fine by me!
This year, I've really been taking advantage of all of the goodies Google has to offer. For example, my classroom has a Google Drive account where we create and keep our documents and create presentations. This has been a HUGE relief for many reasons. Now students aren't saving things in random folders, losing documents, messing with read-only files, etc. etc. Through YouTube (and Google), I started a YouTube channel for my classroom. Not only can I upload our classroom videos to this location, but I can create playlists for different subjects, events, or our favorite 5th grade things.
Below you will find week one's video. This was our demo video and created by yours truly. I promised the parents more creativity in the future because their children would be in control. Needless to say, each week gets a little more wacky - and creative!
Do you create movies in your classroom? Right now we are using iMovie and I'm hoping to find a different application with more editing options (text, music, themes, etc.) I would love to hear suggestions on how you incorporate movie making into the classroom, too!
Eventually I will "get over" the fact that I can't take my students on a field trip to Outer Space - not exactly in the budget this year. Until then, I will continue hunting for ways to share the excitement of space with them. I am ashamed to say that, until this year, I wasn't up to date on the missions and expeditions of the International Space Station. This year, our school has been tracking and following NASA Astronaut Mike Hopkins and his crew members of Expedition 37/38 as he lives in space until February. Mike Hopkins is an alumni of our high school and we've all been cheering for him since he departed earlier this Fall.
This got me thinking, if we can follow Mike on Twitter - who else can we find that's in space? A few clicks later, I was uncovering several Twitter accounts of astronauts who were preparing for space travel, had been to space, or currently residing on the I.S.S.
Earlier this week, I posed the question, "what's life like in space? What would it be like to live on the International Space Station?" We brainstormed how life would be different and started asking questions about daily routines that would change because of zero gravity.
The goal of the day was simple: find out what life is like in space! I let my students explore Twitter accounts and reminded them to take notes so we could share at the end of class.
Screenshot of Mac: Mike Hopkins' Twitter Page
Screenshot of Mac: @NASA_Astronauts Twitter Page
Oh, but wait.... there are VIDEOS, too. TONS of videos! Ever wonder what it is like to brush your teeth in space?
What about washing your hair in space?
What's it like to sleep in space? Do you float?
Okay, okay... I know you're wondering, what happens if you get sick?
That's only the beginning. Once I started searching for videos, I found TONS from several Expeditions on the I.S.S. Who better to teach my students about life on the I.S.S. than residents of the I.S.S.?
We're constantly checking in our favorite astronauts through Twitter and reading their updates in our classroom. It's truly remarkable to be able to share with my students what is happening on the I.S.S. through Twitter and live feeds. AMAZING!
Just last week, we started our Outer Space unit. We will be reaching for the stars and floating along the Milky Way until Christmas and I couldn't be happier! A friend of mine introduced me to the app "SkyView Free" for iPhone and I introduced it to my students on day during science while we were chatting about galaxies and constellations. My kids were passing around my phone spotting different constellations, satellites, International Space Station, and the Moon!
Screenshot from my iPhone After Spotting the MOON!
What story can you tell in six seconds? I gave my students the challenge of creating a six-second Vine video filled with examples of solids, liquids, and gases. I got many shocked expressions and several "huh??" replies. Once they started brainstorming, I was very impressed with their thinking and creativity.
Have you used Vine in the classroom? Follow our classroom fun at "Miss Furnell".
I've started planning my first few days of school and my mind has been spinning with ideas. My mind is racing so much that it's started to affect my dreams. Each night they get a little weirder and complicated. Once, I dreamt I arrived at school to find the entire hallway decorated like a farm. Everyone was dressed in farm attire with cows and goats. I missed the memo and barely remembered to put on pants! I was distraught because my classroom looked nothing like a farm... Weird, huh?
Back to planning... :)
In one of my Specialist classes this summer, our icebreaker activity was to post on the discussion board a photo that represents us and write a brief explanation. Why not have 5th graders do the same? Since I don't use a discussion board format, I thought it would be fun to get a jumpstart with Padlet (formally Wallwisher). This activity will introduce my students to the functions of padlet: uploading images, writing text, and posting on the board as well as introducing themselves to one another. Not too shabby if you ask me!
I've started our Padlet wall with my own intro and image. I'm excited to see what unique posts my students create!
Do you blog with your students? I can officially say we're bloggers now! Last week, I gave my students the task of identifying one scientist, inventor, or discovery to research and write and informational blog post on. I'll be honest, when I FIRST introduced the project you could hear crickets in the room. Even after a few failed attempts at pumping them up... I still heard crickets. I'm fairly certain the only thing they heard me say was "research".
As a class, we used the blogging platform KidBlog.org. I created an account (for free) and entered all of my students. The great part about KidBlog - you must have a password to read ALL of the posts. You can see the title of the blog, but in order to read anything a password must be entered.
The first question I had to tackle was, "what is blogging?". I relied on my good friends, Tim and Moby to do that for me. In their short BrainPOP, they hit the big ideas of a weblog being an online journal. They even go as far to describe different purposes for blogging. Perfect jumpstart for our project.
Click here to take you to the BrainPOP about blogging. The best news is that it's FREE!
After giving my students the rundown on blogging and KidBlog, I gave both of my science classes this task:
You will research the biography of one famous scientist and inventor. Determine the nature of their work, ethnic background, gender, and area of study. In a typed blog post, you will describe how their work contributed to science and technology.
In 5th grade, we have several GLEs regarding the impact of science, technology, and human activity. I was (and still am!) confident that this project was a successful one to cover those areas.
On our first day of class, I had my kids identify who they wanted to research. We started small and gathered resources. If you would like a copy of our research page, email me! [jordon.furnell@gmail.com]. I love sharing resources!
Each day of class, we spent about a week on this, I gave a mini lesson on different features of blogging. One day, I showed them how to edit and publish their blog. On Friday, our mini lesson was about inserting an image into the blog. For the most part, students really got the hang of things. While I was explaining our blog, I even had a student leave me comment that said, "okey dokey." Clearly, he had things figured out.
Do you blog with your students? What types of things do you blog about? What other social media outlets do you use? I would love to expand our blogging outside of science and biographies. Share your ideas!
I'd like to give a special shout out to Felix Baumgartner for making my job extra easy today. Because of his recent jump from the edge of space, we had fun talking about the layers of the atmosphere. First, we ironed out the basics. We started from the bottom (on the edge of Earth) and worked our way out to space. Using a handy little guide I found here. We talked about what happens in each layer: clouds, meteors, northern lights, satellites, etc. Thanks to a colleague's suggestion, I taught my kids the mnemonic device: Tuna (Troposphere), Sandwiches (Stratosphere), Make (Mesosphere), Tongues (Thermosphere), Excited (Exosphere). Once we had figured out how each layer worked, we moved on to discuss Mr. Baumgartner. The exciting part!
Along with the little images included on the printable, I had each student sketch a little stick figure and write FELIX'S SPACE JUMP in the box. I told them predict where they thought Felix jumped from. I warned them not to glue just yet because I would reveal the correct answer later. The student below got a little excited and glued too soon. If you look closely, you can see the "NOT" on the Felix hanging out in the Exosphere.
Oh, Tuna.
Thanks to the power of the world wide web, I was able to show my students incredible footage of Baumgartner's previous missions (incredible!!) and the unforgettable space jump. Below are the videos I used from YouTube.
Thanks to Krissy Venosdale for making this awesome poster for classrooms. Check out her incredibly inspirational blog here. I downloaded one and have had it hanging up since the jump. You should too!!
I, again, must thank Felix. You made my Monday very exciting and kept my students completly captivated by your daredevil stunts. Keep it up, Felix! We're all rooting for you!
Last week, September 17, was Constitution Day! I'm sure that many of you took time throughout the day to observe our nation's constitution and our Founding Fathers. This year, I wanted to include a little time travel into Constitution Day. First, I had a replica of the constitution out for the kids to observe. They loved the signatures and the fact that it was barely legible to them.
I bought this replica at the St. Louis Arch Museum. It was the best $10.00 I've spent in awhile!
Next, I told the students that we would be focusing in on the delegates of the Constitutional Convention. Five groups in my classroom were assigned a delegate to research. Their goal was to create a Facebook page for their Founding Father. The essential question was, "what would [insert delegate's name here] post on Facebook?" All of my students, in 5th grade, are familiar with Facebook and how it's used. The difficult part of the project was convincing them that the year was 1787 and we were taking Facebook back in time with us. See? Time travel! I had to remind them that George Washington didn't "Like" the same activities that we do now, such as playing x-box, which means that wouldn't show up on his Facebook wall.
This activity wouldn't have been possible without my extremely talented friend, Ali. You should take the time and check out her incredible online portfolio here. I told her my vision and with the whooosh of her wand, she had emailed me a file perfect for our activity. Thanks to her my kids were able to have an extraordinary paper version of a Facebook page fit with a map of the 13 colonies!!
I gave each group a black and white version for a rough draft. After they double checked the sloppy copy with me, they jumped into their final copies in color.
Through a few google searches, I found incredible sites for my students to use. Of course the internet wasn't exactly working on ALL 6 computers Monday, so we had to improvise. Despite the internet madness, students were able to get the basic facts from the site. To help with common questions, I provided each student with a checklist. There were six different tasks on the checklists. First, groups divided up the responsibilities then they got to work.
Here was the checklist:
-->
______ Cover photo should
represent a painting from the convention
______ Profile picture
and basic information (name, occupation, lives in, and relationship) should
come from biography page.
______ Wall posts can be
from family members, delegates, or children. Wall posts must relate to the
current time period or an event that has happened in the delegate's life.
______ “Likes” and
interests should be picked from the biography page.
______ “Friends” can
include pictures of family members, spouses, children, or other delegates.
______ “Places I’ve Been
Map” should include HOME state. (The map may also include: college location,
convention location, etc.)
*Remember,
your page should represent the LIFE of the delegate. It’s the year 1787! Good
luck!
At the conclusion of the project, I laminated the pages and hung them in the hallway in a fancy red, white, and blue display. I included a little blurb about our activity and another replica constitution. Now, while kids are waiting to use the restroom they can learn a little bit about our Founding Fathers.
Displaying our Facebook Pages.
George Washington
John Langdon
Ben Franklin
I really enjoyed talking to my students about writing the wall posts. I encouraged them to teach our readers in the hallway something about the convention through the wall posts. First, I got several blank looks. Then the spark of creativity started to light in several groups. I was very excited by the results.
As a result of this two day activity, several students were reminded that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are two different documents. When we study the American Revolution later, we will be able to reference this activity. Hopefully, they'll remember the names studied because several of them worked on the Declaration of Independence as well.
My blog has managed to open up several opportunities for me in the classroom. This summer, a wonderful teacher from the Chicago suburbs emailed me about collaboration work. I said, "why not!?" Now, we are in the beginning stages of our pen pal exchange. Except, this is no ordinary run of the mill snail mail exchange. Well, we're starting with snail mail but moving towards more technological interfaces.
Today, my students were given the name of their pen pal. Then, as a class we found their school using Google Earth. All of our school computers have Google Earth downloaded already, so most of my students were familiar with the program. First, we found our school in Missouri then zoooooomed over to Illinois to find out pals. Of course, everyone wanted to show me their house, their Grandma's house, what pool they swam at this summer, and where they want to go on vacation. BUT, that has to wait for Wednesday.
Generic Shot of Google Earth via Google.
We began scoping out the area of our pen pals neighborhood. Side note: this is a random google image of Google Earth. This is not our pen pal's location!! Anyway, we were checking out the area of our pen pals and the students were firing off several similarities and differences of our schools. One being that THEIR school is surrounded by houses. Which means students are more likely to possibly walk to school? In our community, all students have to ride a bus or be dropped off. Walking isn't an option because of our location. The students were amazed!
Then, the question was asked, "can we visit our pen pals?" I mean the kids were ready to jump into these friendships head first. They barely had their names written down and they were packing their bags for a road trip. I pulled up Google maps and got directions to their school. We found that it would take us about 6 hours to get there. The class was super excited - I'm pretty sure they think I'm going to load up a van and drive them all there. I'll break the news to them tomorrow.
Random Generic Map.
Next, each student was given a checklist for writing their letter. Mrs. Larson and I decided to start with regular snail mail. We wanted to show a comparison between mail through the postal service and electronic mail (aka e-mail). The kids don't know this part yet. Shhh! It's a secret. I could barely stop the kids from writing their letters. I was reviewing them tonight and most of them told their entire life story. I had to caution a few to only include necessary information.
After we receive our letters, I'm probably going to have to rent a bus and drive my kids to Chicago. Just kidding. Actually, we plan on *hopefully* skyping with one another and/or creating Gaggle.net accounts. I'm looking forward to this experience!!
Have you ever had pen pals? How about electronic pen pals? Do share!
This afternoon, I came home after another awesome day in my classroom and fell into my usual routine. I turned on the tube, watched Friends, caught up on blogs and Pinterest, and ate dinner around 4:30. Okay, I'm kidding.. I don't eat that early!! It's usually about 5:00 (early bird special).
Anyway, I was stopped in my tracks by the website: Tagxedo. It's very similar to Wordle. In a nut shell, wordles are online tools to create word clouds. You plug in a text and the wordle jumbles it together in a fancy looking design. Usually, the more prominent words are larger and the lesser words are smaller. You can then change the color and shape of them. Last night, I was testing out a Wordle on my computer, but it wouldn't work on my Mac. Ugh. I surrendered.
Then, an angel introduced me to Tagxedo. I promise I'm not getting paid for this post. It's the same idea of a Wordle: plug in your text and click create! After the computer jumbles your words, you can change the shape, font, color and whatnot.
Naturally, I started experimenting and creating. It's safe to say that I had a good time.
First, I started with my blog. I plugged in my URL and hit create. Then, I made it into the shape of an apple. Cute, huh?
Here are some the words that stick out to me the most (the non obvious ones): family, brain, party, glitter, and wonderful.
I couldn't stop there. I had to continue experimenting. So I made my word cloud into the shape of my favorite historical figure, who happens to be one of our former Presidents: Abraham Lincoln.
Did your jaw drop like mine? Yes, I'm in love. This Abraham Lincoln word cloud has officially rocked my world.
I couldn't stop there. I needed MORE! Next, I plugged in our school's webpage. I even made it into the shape of a school bus with our school colors. Unfortunately, the school bus still looked too much like Abe Lincoln. I stuck with the basic "cloud" for this one.
At this point, I started to reach the point of borderline obsessed. Oh well, I kept plugging in information. Next, I went with my twitter feed....
...but it wouldn't work. Darn.
I took the loss like a champion and continued on with the search, "London 2012".
I changed the colors to red, white, and blue and fashioned this search into a star. Lovely. Just lovely.
Now, it's your turn! Share with me the fun and interactive websites you use in the classroom.
Who else started cracking up you saw this little gem? I lost it last night. Not only have I been called Mom but Grandma as been slipped in there a few times too. The best part is the kid's reaction after it happens. Usually "Mom..er I mean Ms. Furnell" is followed by flushed cheeks.
This week, I've been blogging about my awesome literacy conference that I attended in St. Louis last week. Catch up on the conference fun with these links:
Today, I'm going to share the information I gained from the Critical Literacy and Blogging session. The presentation was done by educators from Georgia State University. First, they outlined what critical literacy was and how it was relevant to their research. I snagged this quote from their powerpoint, "Critical literacy is the use of language in powerful ways to get things down in the world, enhance life in school, and to question privilege and injustice."
After an in-depth look at what critical literacy actually is, one teacher-presenter shared how she used blogging the classroom. She used it as a tool to respond to deep questions after books. I was hooked! What a great idea. The teacher posed a question on the blog and students would respond through comments to one another and the teacher.
To begin this process, she started basic with paper and pencil. Then, moved to the bloggy world with a simple question about the holidays. After the kids became familiar with how the blog worked... they were rollin' with communcation.
I plan to utilize this strategy in my room next week. My question is this:
How do YOU use blogging with your students? Do they post? Respond? Please share! I would love to hear how my fellow teachers are using technology.
Once upon a time, I wanted to a be a big wig journalist. Quicky, I realized I wasn't cut out for the field of journalism. I barely made it a semester in college, the only "journalism" aspect that stuck with me was my trusty Mac computer. This weekend, my trusty Mac came to my rescue after movie maker failed me. I'm getting ahead of myself.
As an end of the year writing project, I wanted my students to engage in an authentic writing task. I wanted them to create a product for a purpose. So! That's exactly what we did. My students had the task of creating How To videos for the upcoming 5th graders. These How To videos were to give advice on how to survive 5th grade.
We started as a whole group and brainstormed what information was necessary at the beginning of 5th grade. As a group, we came up with several bits of information that is important for 5th graders to know. Over the next couple days, small groups of students worked together to come up with a topic and began brainstorming. Groups were instructed to fill out a template (with supplies and step by step directions) to get the ball rolling for their videos.
Our topics are:
How to Tackle the MAP Test
How to Organize Your Binder
How to Be a Role Model
How to Survive DARE
How to Survive Fractions
Next, we jumped into storyboards and scripts. This was so fun! The students came up with scripts on their own that included humor, costumes, props, and advice! I did have to guide a few groups in a different direction and encourage them to actually SAY the advice they wrote about. Once we got over that hump, we started practicing practicing practicing.
Once we practiced a gazillion (yes, that's a word) times, we started filming. This was so fun! I wish I could make a blooper reel of all the funny outtakes. My little actors are made for the stage! Although.. I did have to remind them often, that laughing at their own jokes wasn't necessary. I said this line continuously, "You WROTE the jokes, you know they are funny! Don't laugh at them!!" Nonetheless, we made it through.. several... several..several takes.
Click here to purchase my How To Writing kit on Teachers Pay Teachers! Or you can email me and I'll send it to you for free! :)
We were on a roll, filming everyday and just as I thought this project was going to be a major success - we ran into a little hiccup or two. Apparently, Windows Movie Maker hates Flip cameras and me. Yes, I'm at the point where I'm taking this personally. Let me break this down for you-
Plan A: Edit the clips in Movie Maker and publish to SchoolTube.com
Plan B: Edit the clips in Picassa and publish to Schooltube.com
......did either of these work? No. Keep chugging along!
Plan C, D, E, F: Install new converting software on my computer and edit the clips
Did this work? ALMOST! But no.
Plan W: Load all of the clips on my home computer and edit them at home and publish to SchoolTube.com
Did this work? YES! YES! It worked! God Bless iMovie and my trusty 'ol Mac!
All of my students signed a consent form to have their video published online and viola! You have the final products. Enjoy! Try not to learn too much now! Check out the rest on School Tube. Click the title for the link to the video.
