Tuesday, 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) 



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.

Wednesday, December 7, 2016

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.


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.


Made with Padlet

Wednesday, November 30, 2016

December 2016 Updates

It's the most wonderful time of the year! Students and teachers are filled with the excitement and gratitude of the holiday season, and busy days seem to make the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks fly by. Relevant and authentic reading, writing, and math opportunities are abundant during these couple of weeks. Please let me know if I can help you in your classroom or during your planning in the weeks ahead!

Resources for This Month



Technology Integration Check Up Form

I will be meeting with many of you over the next few weeks, but please don't hesitate to click on the link to my Book Me Calendar if you need to make an appointment. If you'd like to earn a tech credit for the innovative strategies and tools you are trying this month, please click HERE to complete the Self-Reflection Form for December!

Tech the Halls

One of my favorite things about this month is getting to see all of the wonderful displays of student work for our annual Tech the Halls competition! Please check out the Thinglink below for more information.





Tuesday, November 29, 2016

November Guided Math Follow-Up

For my follow up session at Powdersville Elementary, we decided to focus on how to utilize Dreambox Learning as a tool to differentiate independent work for students. I also used this time to share a few more Math Station Task Cards, which I've posted below.



At Concrete Primary, I hosted another Grab & Go session to share the task cards for Guided Math and Guided Reading Stations (posted below). These sessions have also allowed me to meet one-on-one with teachers to discuss their individual needs in the classroom.

Task Cards for Guided Math & 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. 




Task Completed! (All Grades)




Wednesday, November 9, 2016

SC EdTech 2016

Last week, Kristen Gunter and I had an opportunity to attend SC EdTech in Myrtle Beach, where we facilitated a BreakoutEDU session. It was a great chance to connect with other Instructional Technologists across South Carolina and to grab ideas for future PD sessions. One attendee created the Padlet below to share session resources:

Made with Padlet

Looking ahead to future sessions, we really liked Greta Flinn's Iron Chef Technology session. In between sessions and fun in the vendor hall, Gunter and I brainstormed ideas for Tech Speed Dating, Technado, and Tech Trivia sessions. As a teacher, I always loved feeling renewed and full of fresh ideas leaving a conference, and SC EdTech did not disappoint!

Thursday, November 3, 2016

BreakoutEDU: A Classroom Challenge Inspired by Escape Rooms

For SC EdTech this year, Kristen Gunter and I put together a Breakout Game based on the Dr. Johnson's Lab shared on the BreakoutEDU site. The experience of participating in a Breakout game to begin the session made it much easier to discuss and plan for games to use in the classroom.



After arriving early to set up the room, Kristen and I began to get nervous as more and more people began to arrive. Though we've done this Breakout before with a group of around 30 adults, we were excited to see what would happen with a group as large as 75 people!


We started the session with a PowToon to introduce the story line and some quick tips on the importance of communication and teamwork. Since the group was so big, I created a Today's Meet backchannel for participants to share clues and ask questions to the group. This was a great solution for such a large group, and I'll likely suggest this for my teachers using Breakout in the classroom.

Though there were some who became frustrated during the session (which also happens with students in the classroom), our group was able to breakout in just under 20 minutes using one hint! This allowed us plenty of time to debrief the session, share ideas based on our own experience, and review the resources posted in our shared slides presentation. It made me so happy to see such a positive response from our session today!