Tuesday Teacher Tips - Oct 1, 2013 - Getting Connected

These were tips I sent out to my faculty this week with a focus on helping them see ways to get connected for Connected Educator Month.  Look for a discussion about PBL soon!

Get Connected ! It’s Connected Educator Month!

Connected Educators, according to the website, which you can find [here], is a project started by the Office of Education Technology at the US Department of Education.  The goal of the initiative is to “Help educators thrive in a connected world”.

Join us Tuesday, Oct 8, 2013 - 8 pm ET

This might be a good month to try out a new way of connecting with others through technology.  Create a Pinterest board and invite your team, grade level or department to post to it so you can curate ideas together.  Give Twitter chats a try; #KyEdChat happens every Thursday from 8-9 ET, and #KyLChat happens every other Tuesday from 8-9 ET, with our next chat being Tuesday Oct 8. Use LYNC to connect with teachers in other schools.  Check out Google Communities and find one that meets your interest—or start your own. Click [here] to learn more about it. Connect with other teachers on Edmodo. Try out a free webinar, and learn about everything from creating a connected classroom to Digital Citizenship in the connected classroom.  Edudemic has a great list [here].   Or just make it a point to try to share one technology idea with your colleagues this month.

Follow  the conversation on Twitter using #ce13 and Connected Educators @edcocp

Teaching Channel—An Easy Way to Get Connected

According to the website, Teaching Channel is a “video showcase — on the internet and TV — of innovative and effective teaching practices in America’s schools”.  Check it out [here] .The design of the website is extremely streamlined and easy to navigate.  For a new teacher, or just a teacher looking for new ideas, there is a lot of content to explore.

The site includes videos, tips for differentiation, a Q&A community where you can post and respond to questions and Common Core related materials.  You can search for materials by subject, grade level and even Common Core standard.   View lessons on everything from Multiplying Whole Numbers and Fractions to Text Analysis Questions & Symbols to Literacy in Physics.

You can create an account for free and keep track of resources you  view, and interact on the Q&A board to find out answers to things like: What’s the difference between a claim and thesis,  and what are some examples of good rewards for positive class behavior.

Promoting Positive Behavior Ideas for using Class Dojo

If you haven’t checked out Class Dojo yet, now is the time!  Check it out [here].

Class Dojo is a behavior management system that you can use in your classroom to award students points for positive behaviors or assign a penalty for the negative.   With access through your desktop or handheld device and apps, you can pretty much track behavior from any point in the classroom.

Let students customize their

avatars

It’s easy to create a  (currently free) teacher account and to set up a class.  You can be as involved with it as you want.  There is an option to share behavior reports with students and parents through the use of student and parent accounts, or limit your use to just data collecting.  You can even give your students access to creating their own monster avatar.

Thanks to the ability you have to customize targeted behaviors, Class Dojo could be a good way for you to keep track of students who are on behavior charts or who are participating in RTI.  The reports can be generated per student or for the whole class, and a particularly helpful report will allow you to create a trend report that identifies times of the day where students are really struggling. 

Checkout the resource page [here] or their YouTube channel with how to videos [here].  The videos are really helpful.  On their YouTube channel you can find help for everything from creating a class competition using Class Dojo to Building Individual Learning Habits using Class Dojo, to managing the class and adding behaviors.

 

Doll Bones: Creepy Read-aloud

Looking for a new, creepy read-aloud for the month of October?  Check out Holly Black’s DollBones.  Follow along as Zach, Poppy and Alice, embark on an epic adventure to return the ashes of a little girl, they found in the body of a bone-china doll, to her resting place. 

Along the way the friends must also figure out a way to retain their imagination filled childhood while entering  into the many unknowns of middle school.

Holly Black is on Twitter, follow her here: @hollyblack Or find her webpage [here].