"Wonder" Literacy Chat featuring @avillalon4 and @CarrollColts

Recently, my 4th grade ELA teacher approached me and out of the blue, told me that she had set up a Literacy Chat with a 4th Grade teacher at a neighboring elementary campus. She mentioned that students would be discussing the book "Wonder."After the initial excitement of hearing that she set it up all on her own, we sat down and talked about how she wanted it to flow. After talking it over with her class, students wrote in depth questions that they would be asking the other class. Both classes were extremely engaged in the discussion! We were both worried that there would be a lot of awkward silence, however, there was anything but that! Once students were done, they reflected on a shared Padlet.

Created with Padlet

Fact and Opinion via G-Classroom featuring @avillalon4 #4thchat

Today, students in Villalon's 4th Grade Class continued reviewing Cause and Effect as well as Fact/Opinion. A very powrful tool that the class is using is Google Classroom. Students are able to go at their own pace to individualize their learning. Students are starting to willingly work outside of class on assignments that the teacher posts online! 

3d Figures in 1st Grade featuring @Rivera_005 #1stchat

Our 1st Grade Teachers are just wrapping up their unit on Geometry. When talking to the team, they wanted to see how they could incorporate technology. They explained that students would be using marshmallows and toothpicks to create 3-D shapes. As we were talking, they had the idea of having students creating Pic Collages in which they had to snap a picture, then label the characteristics of what that figure was. Students had a BLAST with this activity! Students worked really hard on creating these figures- we also learned that we had to rely on partners so that the figures would remain upright!

5th Grade Science Review via @quizizz

Let's step back a year ago. A year ago around this time, students and teachers were preparing for their annual state assessment test. To be honest, it was pretty difficult for me to find ways to integrate technology into the classroom. Flash forward to this year, we have found some incredible tools to help students (and teachers!) check for understanding. One of these tools is Quizizz. Quizizz lets you run fun formative assessment quizzes for students. One major thing that I like about this tool is its ability to be used at home. The week before Spring Break, we gave students access codes in which they could run the quiz / reviews from home. These reviews consisted of 3 groups of 50 questions- yes I know that is quite a lot! However, I made a deal with the 5th graders that whoever gets above 95% on them will earn a Milk Shake from Chic Fil A! I am looking forward to looking at the data!