Create Your Own Spelling List

We are down to only a few more spelling lists and tests for this school year! This week instead of our usual pre-assessment to determine which list students will study for the week, students came up with their own spelling lists.

Students broke into small groups and scoured the dictionary looking for words they thought would be appropriate. They added the words to a shared Google doc. When all groups finished we reviewed the lists to make sure we didn't have any duplicates, words we had already studied this year or words deemed to be "too easy" or "too difficult."

Not surprisingly, none of the words were determined to be too difficult because this is a group that likes a challenge! Students took a survey after this activity and almost unanimously students said they were excited to have some ownership of the list and they hoped they would be able to challenge their classmates with the words they chose. 

Turkey Recipes Via Google Classroom

Every year of my teaching career I have had my students write Thanksgiving turkey recipes to create a funny class book. However, over the years this project has changed fairly dramatically. I used to have students write their recipes by hand. I would take the stack of recipes home and laboriously retype them all. I loved the finished project but did not love how much extra work it created for me.

This year I am extremely lucky to have 1:1 Chromebooks in my classroom and amazingly tech savvy students! I posted the turkey recipe assignment in Google Classroom (a fairly new feature of Google Apps For Education), students each created a document using a recipe template and virtually turned in their completed recipe. Google Classroom neatly tucked them all away in a beautifully organized folder for me! 

Then, we took the project a step further and created a class video about these books. Once it was uploaded to YouTube, a couple of students took the link and created a QR Code for us. We embedded the QR Code on the cover of the book so anyone reading the book can easily scan and view the adorable video.  

Skype With Mrs. P

  Today we participated in our very first Skype of the year, with the one and only Mrs. P!

She gave us some wonderful tips on how to be a writer. My favorite quote was, "If you can tell a story, you can write a story!" She also talked a lot about the importance of reading and reminded us that, "reading is cool and so are you!"

During our discussion she told us some silly stories and took lots of questions from the class. At the very end she told us about her "Be A Famous Writer" contest. The topic this year is time travel, which just so happens to tie in with our spelling lists from last week. 

We didn't want to say goodbye because we were having such a great time with Mrs. P, but eventually we had to. Once we finally did, we got out our Chromebooks and got to work writing time travel stories using Google docs!

This writing project is something we will continue to work on in class and students are welcome to work on it at home if they choose, too. All the details of the writing contest can be found in the flyer below!

Back to School Selfies

Last week was Parent Curriculum Night, and I always like to have some sort of student created project on every desk for the parents to admire while they are waiting for the presentation to begin.

I tried something new this year, having each student take a selfie and edit it using a fun photo editing app called PicCollage, adding the hashtag of their current grade. 

We discussed what a hashtag was and why someone might use one, although many of the students already knew all about hashtags since we used Twitter in class quite a bit last year.

Once each student created and edited their selfie, they emailed it to themselves via pvLearners. From there, they added it to a Google doc, made the doc public, copied the link and went to my favorite URL shortener and QR Code creator, goo.gl.

From goo.gl, they created a QR Code, which they then pasted into another Google doc. They made sure to label their QR Code with their name, since QR Codes all look very similar, and had fun experimenting with different fonts. We printed the QR Codes and mounted them to a piece of construction paper so they were waiting for parents when they walked in on Curriculum Night. 

There were a lot of steps to this project, but most students impressed me with their ability to handle the project with ease. I especially enjoyed watching many of my returning students assist the new students. It was exciting to witness such fantastic communication and collaboration skills!

Quick recap of skills learned and demonstrated during this fun back to school project: using the camera of an iPad, photo editing, adding an appropriate hashtag, emailing, Google docs, URL shortening, QR Code creation, collaboration, communication, and creativity. We hit three out of the "Four C's!"

It's going to be a fabulous year!

Happy Thanksgiving!

 I hope everyone has an enjoyable break, and that you were entertained by our turkey recipe books (sent home last Friday.) Students wrote their recipes using shared Google documents.

Congratulations to our two "Turkey Trot" winners, pictured above. These students were honored during morning announcements and won a bag full of goodies. 

Nice job!