"Appy Holidays" at Powdersville Middle

Teaching sixth grade math for ten years was a transformative, fulfilling, and challenging experience. It was a job that became my passion, and I continue to reflect upon my work in the classroom as I strive to make a difference in my current role as an instructional technologist.

Because of my years spent teaching at the middle school level, I know all about the challenges of teaching during the week leading up to Winter Break! With that in mind, I pulled together a collection of holiday themed formative assessment options that my teachers can use during this final stretch. 

Segments of time during a modified schedule can be an excellent time to try out some new tools and websites with fun content. Hopefully, teachers will find that they can use these same tools for standards-based content when we return in January. 

Please check out the Thinglink below for some great shared resources from Kahoot, Quizizz, Quizalize, Quizlet Live, and Yummy Math.

Ts @PVMSPatriot have some fun with @quizizz during planning time this morning #pvms #asd1 #christmastrivia pic.twitter.com/QuX0rh3RlM

— Jessica D. Preisig (@PreisigJessica) December 13, 2016

Task Cards for Guided Math and Guided Reading Stations

Please click on the links to create your own editable version of the task cards. These can be adapted to meet your needs, laminated, and reused for stations. 

CPS Fact Fluency (K-2) 

CPS Make a Model (K-2)

CPS Number Collection (K-2)

CPS Tell Me About It (K-2)
CPS Number Builder (K-2)
CPS Show Me the Money (K-2)

PVES Create a Comic (3-5)

PVES Fact Fluency (3-5)

PVES Make a Model (3-5)

PVES Number Collection (3-5)

PVES Tell Me About It (3-5)
PVES Create a Context (3-5)
PVES Fraction Challenge (3-5)
PVES Show Me the Money (3-5)

Book "Shelfie" Task Card

Book Review Task Card

Writing Center Task Card
Book Snap Task Card
Character Traits Task Card
Retelling Task Card

Task Completed! (All Grades)

Vocabulary Task Card

The goal in creating these was to make them generic enough to be laminated and reused for a variety of specific standards-related skills. I will continue to add cards to this post, so please come visit again for new ideas!

December Guided Math Follow-Up

This month's session at Powdersville Elementary connected recent teacher learning from our district's Foundations of Reading course with content from Laney Sammon's Guided Math. Based on teacher requests and classroom observations, we chose to focus on crafting the mini-lesson and planning for what happens at the small group table. The slides below highlight our main talking points and contain links to valuable resources.



I also created and shared a lesson plan template to tie it all together, which is also linked in the slides.

December Digital Playground ~ "Appy Holidays"

Throughout the school year, I have scheduled a few Digital Playground sessions to go along with faculty meetings at Concrete Primary. Since my regular, ongoing professional development is provided in small groups, the goal of these playground sessions is to bring teachers together for fun, sharing, and learning! I believe that it is in these informal sharing sessions where the real magic happens... where teachers have an opportunity to talk and share with one another across grade levels and content areas.



For this "Appy Holidays" session, we used Today's Meet as a backchannel for a lively group share session. Click HERE for the list of discussion questions. These sparked some great conversations within each group, and the format was a great way to help teachers feel comfortable with the language used in a Twitter chat.

Lots of fun using @TodaysMeet and sharing ideas! @CPSCrickets #appyholidays #supercrickets #asd1 pic.twitter.com/f2N2Yj6sIT

— Jessica D. Preisig (@PreisigJessica) December 7, 2016

To end the session, teachers were asked to use a Christmas Photo Booth app or Chatterpix to decorate a selfie. These funny Christmas selfies were posted to the "All I want for Christmas" Padlet posted below.