Learning in Progress

These were the tips I got together to share with my teachers this week.  Links to other websites are in brackets. Focus on Character In the past week, I’ve seen a couple of really good resources about characterization that would go well with Common Core ELA .3. The first is from the blog Workshop Classroom , from an August post “Teaching About Character Traits” , which you can find [ here ]   The post includes a link to a pretty slick handout that is available for free on Teachers Pay Teachers.   The handout is divided into a number of different category that will help students organizer their thoughts.   It includes the categories: nice, mean and sad with a list of synonyms for each word.   It also includes categories for positive and negative character traits, and traits that describe characters who do a lot, and characters who do very little, and finally a section for opposites.   Find the handout on Teachers Pay Teachers [ here ].   A character reference sheet, s

These are the tips I sent out to teachers in my building today.  We had our second Power Lunch on Friday where we discussed ways to use QR Codes, so I followed up today with some of the things we discussed for the teachers who couldn't make it. QR Codes in the Classroom In case you missed our 2nd Power Lunch, we discussed Quick Response (QR) Codes, and ways that you can use them in the classroom.   Check out the QR Code guide with links to QR Code makers and resources [ here ]. QR Codes and Websites Obviously, you can use QR codes to link students and parents to websites quickly.   Add them to your business cards, newsletters to send people to your class website quickly.   Add them to hallway displays to link to sources, or to the back of books to link kids to more resources about the book’s topic or the author.   You can also create a QR code scavenger hunt from a template by clicking [ here ].   Organize your QR codes on index cards clipped on a 1 inch ring for