A Teacher Without a Class and Teachingisagift are hosting a Back to School Bloglovin Blog Hop.
Make sure you pop over to visit A Teacher Without a Class, she’s having an awesome GIVEAWAY!
Teaching Is A Gift is giving away her awesome Chalkboard Style Classroom Quotes Posters!
If I were you, I’d head on over right now……I definitely did! LOL!
Until the next time,
Happy Thursday! I’m joining up with Erin at I’m Lovin’ Lit for her Thursday Thrown Down! This linky party is all about getting interactive with your students! You can share your ideas and strategies for anything interactive – manipulatives, group work, music, interactive whiteboards, interactive notebooks – ANYTHING that makes your lessons interactive!
These beauties are a work of art! They are guaranteed to get the most reluctant student involved in your classroom lesson. That’s right…..I’m talking about my ActivExpression Devices!
I remember the first day we got them. The kids were so giggly. So was their teacher! 🙂 The great thing about it is I see the same excitement year after year when I get these babies in their hands. The most dismal task becomes exciting and new when we use the devices.
With the ActivExpression devices students can answer in the following formats: multiple choice, true/false, likert scale, sequential order, and text entry. I use them everyday for almost everything: entering bellwork and homework, a quick checking for understanding during a lesson, mini-assessments, even as a reading log.
Surviving Sixth Grade
The students are totally engaged! 🙂
What I really love about them is the immediate feedback. We follow the EDI (Explicit Direct Instruction) model, and so we frequently “check for understanding” when reviewing skills and concepts. Once students put their answers in, I immediately know what percentage of the class knows the information we are discussing. And the best part? All the information that they put in is automatically graded and can be exported into an Excel spreadsheet with an item analysis! Boo-yah!
Specific Question Data
Individual Student Data
But we don’t have Promethean?! I can almost hear you shout. Don’t worry, there are a plethora of options for you. Have a cellphone (SMS), smartphone, laptop, desktop, or tablet? There’s Socrative and Poll Everywhere! Have a SMART board? There’s the SMART response system! There’s also the CPR IR and CPR Pulse Don’t have anything? Have them get out those whiteboards! LOL! What I do know is that the person who is doing most of the work is doing most of the learning…..with my ActivExpression devices the students are giving me just as much information as I’m giving them – if not more.
So if your school lives in a “Promethean World”, find the tech person, media specialist, or whoever handles your technology; grab a bag of ActivExpression devices and give it a try! You won’t regret it!
Until the next time,
It takes someone special to be a middle school teacher. These angels require someone who is just as insane as they are – and I definitely fit! 🙂 I spend hours perusing blogs that are for middle school teachers and students and it thrills me when I am able to make a connection!
Jamie, over at Sixth Grade Tales is hosting a Bloglovin’ Middle Grades Blog Hop!
If you’re a middle school teacher, click on the link above, follow some great middle school teachers, and link up your own blog if you have one. We middle school teachers have to stick together! 🙂
Until the next time,
Every time I hear that phrase, I think of The Five Heartbeats….you know where they perform in the beginning of the movie and Eddie King, Jr. was running from those thugs? He runs into the club, slides on the floor and begins singing “I Got Nothing But Love For You, Baby”? They kill it but at the end of the show the announcer says, “We have a winner! We have a winner! Flash and the Ebony Sparks!”? Do you know the scene I’m talking about? If not, go watch The Five Heartbeats RIGHT NOW!
But I digress…..seeing as I’m new at rafflecopter aaannnnd instead of one choosing one winner…..I chose two. Those lucky winners are:
So here’s the deal……instead of 1 prize – there are now TWO!
#1 – $10 Amazon Gift Card
#2 – Anything from my TpT store
If that’s your name on the winner’s board, please contact me with your choice of prize! You can email me at mrsjeff2u@gmail.com or leave a comment on the blog with your choice and your email. First come – first served!
Until the next time,
My blogging buddy, Allison, over at Eberopolis shared this awesome resource which was originally posted over at OnlineUniversities. I thought that it was absolutely amazing, and I just had to share it! 16 years ago when I started teaching, I had one desktop computer in my classroom (which was for my use only). Four years later I purchased our school’s first laptops for teachers in our 21st Century grant, one projector, one document camera, and our very first SMARTboard. By that time we also had one computer lab that teachers could sign up for once a week. Now each teacher has a laptop, each content area teacher has a Promethean board, we have 3 mobile netbook carts and each of our sixth graders will receive their own personal iPad for during school use. What a difference a day makes!
Until the next time,