Anchor Charts and Exit Slips - Great Low-tech Tools

While we love integrating technology into our lessons, sometimes we go low-tech. I introduced our division unit by using an anchor chart and exit slips. 

I created this anchor chart to share with my students as we began the unit. They can refer to it when they need the proper vocabulary word for their written math responses. They also like to use different strategies that are listed on the chart. Doing a search on Pinterest for anchor chart is a great way to find some inspiration. 

Want an easy way to assess what your students got from your lesson? Try using exit slips. Hand the student an index card or half sheet of paper and have them respond to a prompt like this:

• What are five things you  learned in class today?
• Write three things you learned, two things you found interesting, and one question you have.
• What do we need to discuss in the next class?

Or you might prefer using printed ones such as these:

• My Math Class Exit Ticket from Paula Naugle
• 3-2-1 Exit Slip from Paula Naugle
• Exit Slips from Adlit.org

• Exit Slips from ReadWriteThink
• Cute Elementary Exit Slips from Mandy

Either way using exit slips is a quick and easy classroom strategy.

When I recently used them with my students at the end of a math lesson I discovered that several were struggling with division equation that are written in algebraic form. Why is it that variables unnerve them? Well, I used the information from the exit slips to teach further lessons on division where each equation was written as an algebraic expression. Several also informed me that they still needed to learn the vocabulary associated with a division problem. We started the next class with a review of my division anchor chart.

My students were required to write a sentence about their learning or ask a question on the back of their exit slip. They handed them to me on their way to lunch.

Do you use anchor charts or exit slips? Please share links in the comment section.

Taylor Swift Webcast

Today we were so excited to watch the webcast with Taylor Swift speaking about reading. The live webcast which lasted about 30 minutes, was sponsored by Scholastic and hosted by national radio personality Trey Morgan. Taylor was interviewed about her favorite childhood books and she shared how reading influences her song writing. Several students from around the country were even able to ask Taylor a question during the webcast.

Here are some pictures of us watching the webcast.

I learned that both Taylor and I grew up on a Christmas tree farm. How cool it that? 

If you missed the live webcast, you can watched the recording here. 

Did Taylor inspire you to go RED - Read Every Day? 

Our First Mystery Location Call Using Google Hangout

Today we did our first Mystery Location call of the year. While most teachers use Skype for doing Mystery calls, we used Google Hangout instead. Mr. Krakower's class sent us a GHO invite and we accepted it and joined his hangout. We had several groups that we worked in as we participated in the Mystery Location call.

One group used our netbooks and were logged into a collaborative Edmodo group called Flattening the World, that we will be using this year with many other classes. This is known as "backchanneling". Gabby wrote a welcome message to Mr. K's class.

Another group were using the atlas in our social studies book to figure out what yes/no questions we should ask Mr. K.'s to help us discover where they are located. They also had a paper copy of a US map and were crossing off states as our questions were answered and some states were being eliminated.

A third group of students were the ones who sat in the "hot seat" in front of the webcam and asked the questions of Mr. K's class. They had to use the previous information and the work of the researchers to come up with the next question to ask.

In the end Mr. K.'s class guessed our location, right before we finally figured out their location. I love that my students cheered when the other class was successful.

As we ended the hangout, our students were commenting on how much fun this activity was. They really enjoyed the "learning" call and improved their geography skills, research skills, writing skills, and speaking and listening skills too.

Thank you Mr. Krakower. We enjoyed meeting you and your students today, and look forward to more collaboration with you during the year.

Have you done a Mystery Location call? Do you prefer using Skype or Google Hangouts? 

**Update - I edited this post after writing this one since I am now using the term Mystery Location call. **

Greetings to Our Quadblogging Buddies

Hello from New Orleans, Louisiana. I am Ms. Paula Naugle and I teach two groups of fourth graders (9 and 10 year olds) math, science, and social studies. I have 19 students in my morning block and 24 students in my afternoon block. This is the first time we have participated in quad blogging. I am writing this post because we missed a whole week of school due to Hurricane Isaac and are on vacation today because it is Labor Day.

Do you have hurricanes where you live? Let me tell you a little bit about this last week. Isaac started as a tropical depression off the coast of Africa two weeks ago and traveled across the Atlantic Ocean and into the Gulf of Mexico. The Gulf forms the southern border of Louisiana. As he got closer to us, he became a tropical storm. The weather forecasters predicted he would become a category 1 hurricane and was headed directly for the mouth of the Mississippi River and New Orleans. We have a system of levees which were built to keep flood waters from the storm surge out of most of the city and surrounding suburbs. But there are many low lying areas which are not protected by the levee system. People in the low areas were told to evacuate because the flood waters could be as high as 15 feet.

Several of my students evacuated to Texas because they did not want to be here after the hurricane blew through because we would probably be without electricity for several days due to the high winds knocking down power lines. Isaac came onshore late Tuesday night and continued to have strong wind gusts and rain until late Wednesday.

I lost my electricity at my house at 1:11am on Wednesday morning. It is very scary to hear the wind gusting up to 100 miles per hour and not have any lights. Luckily my house was cool through Wednesday because the temperature outside didn't get too high. We were also lucky that Hurricane Isaac didn't dump too much rain on us, so it did not flood where I live. The worst damage at my house was part of my backyard fence was blown down.

My electricity was not restored until late in the afternoon on Saturday. Living in a house with no air conditioning when the temperatures outside get over 90 degrees is not a pleasant experience. Luckily we were able to plug our refrigerator into a generator one of my neighbors had, so we did not lose all of our food. Close to 600,000 people lost electricity during Hurricane Isaac. Homes in some of the unprotected areas got as much as twelve feet of water in them.

Slowly our area is returning to normal. School is due to reopen tomorrow and I hope all of my students have returned safe and sound. We'll write more about their experiences next time. By the way hurricane season is not over until November 1. I hope we don't get another one this year.

What is the longest amount of time you ever had to go without electricity? What is the worst kind of weather your area experiences? 

A Summer Face-Lift for My Classroom Blog - Part 1

I was doing some web surfing and came to a spot where teachers were sharing their classroom blogs and sharing ways to improve them. Well, that made me what to update my much neglected classroom blog. I can't believe that I haven't posted anything since March. I guess that what happens when I put more time and energy into my students' blogs, my gets neglected.

Well, now that I'm on summer vacation and I'm reflecting on how best to keep my blog a resource that my students will want to keep coming back to. I had an online friend suggest adding the Wonderopolis widget to our classroom blog, so I did. I went here to get the HTML code from Wonderopolis and then went into the design mode for my blog. On the right side I clicked on add a widget and selected the HTML - Java script one from the options that opened. I named the widget, pasted the code in that I had copied and clicked on save. When I clicked on View Blog, I saw that it was too big to display properly in the right sidebar. So I went back into design and clicked on the Wonderopolis widget and changed the width and height in the code. I set the width for 200 and the height for 400 and saved the changes. When I viewed the blog this time it looked great in the sidebar.

I have a feeling that I will be making more updates to the look of my blog, but I feel a late afternoon nap coming on.

Are you giving your classroom blog a face-lift this summer? Share in the comments any other suggestions you might have to improve my classroom blog. 

They're Back - Decorah Eagle Cam

I learn many things from my PLN members, either on Twitter and from their blog posts. I share many of these "gems" with others at my school, but most of them don't cause much of a stir. Well, one of my discovered "gems" caused quite a stir last year in our school. The eagle cam!

I learned about the eagle cam from this post by Nancy Carroll and I was hooked the first time I logged on. I spent much of that weekend checking in on the eagles' nest and couldn't wait to share this discovery at school on Monday You can read about how we used the eagle cam and some of the things we learned last year in this post.

I have checked in a couple of times over the last several weeks hoping that the eagles had returned. They have and I'm excited to begin watching this drama unfold for us again this year. We missed the egg laying, but we will be able to experience all of the eggs hatching this year. This is such a great learning experience. I hope you and your students will be among those that follow this adventure.

What can you learn from watching the eagle cam? Do you know of any other cams like this?

Day 1 of Mardi Gras Skype Calls

There was a definite buzz in the air today in HR222. Purple, green, and gold was everywhere you looked. The back of the classroom looked like an annex for Beads by the Dozen. Today was going to be a great day of collaboration and communication for us. We had five Skype calls planned back to back from 8:45 until 10:30. The students had researched, created Glogsters, practiced their parts, and learned how to properly do a "second line" all in preparation for today's Mardi Gras Skype calls. They were now the "experts" who were going to educate other classrooms around the country about Mardi Gras.

Our first call was with Mrs. Grayson's 4th grade in Virginia. We loved the fact that Mrs. Grayson donned a wonderful Mardi Gras themed hat for the call. Her students and mine backchanneled on an Skype Collaboration group I had set up in Edmodo during the call. The students in Virginia learned about Mardi Gras through both the presentation done via Skype and by viewing the Glogsters my students had embedded into the Edmodo group. What a great way to start a day of learning.

We then traveled virtually to Minnesota, and connected with Mr. Kruger's 3rd graders. Unfortunately there were some technically difficulties with this Skype connection, but Mr. Kruger assured me through Twitter that our presentation sparked a lot of follow up conversation among his students. We wrapped up this call with our closing second line, and we know this class in Minnesota learned a lot about Mardi Gras when they answered our verbal quiz questions with flying colors. Check out Mr. Kruger's post about the call.                                                                      

Mrs. Mercier's 3rd grade class in Connecticut was not able to connect with us today due to a scheduling conflict. We hope to be able to connect with them at some date in the future. Ah, the life of an elementary school teacher. We have to remain flexible because schedules can change quickly. During the time we would have been Skyping with Mrs; Mercier's class, my students took their social studies test.

Our next connection was with Mrs. Seibel's 4th grade class in Kansas. My students' level of confidence had greatly increased from the first call, and they spoke with more assured voices during this call. We showed them various trinkets that are prized "catches" from different Mardi Gras krewes - a play sword, a Mardi Gras football, and a prized Zulu coconut.

We rounded out our Skype collaboration with Mrs. Yollis' 3rd graders in California. We were greeted by Mrs. Yollis and one of her students who was wearing a Mardi Gras mask. We had to disconnect and place the call a couple of times before we had a stable connection. Mrs. Yollis' students are Skype experts and have various jobs they perform during Skype calls. Read about the Mardi Gras Skype Call from their perspective on her blog here.

Her students also had a few questions they were dying to ask us, so we did a Q&A about non-Mardi Gras things at the end of our presentation. One of her students wanted to know if my students had ever seen an alligator up close and personal. Imagine his excitement when Raegan told him that she went alligator hunting with her grandpa and caught a 12 foot gator. She also shared that she is related to one of the featured people on The History Channel series "Swamp People". Another question was about our Hurricane Katrina experience. Mrs. Yollis' students learned that every one of my students had to evacuate the city during the storm and that at least three of them were gone for more than two years before they returned.

(Lesson learned - take a picture of the Skype call on the computer screen instead of the imagine displayed on the Promethean board. While what we saw during the calls was very clear, the photos leave a lot to be desired.)

So are you ready to let the good times roll? What celebration is unique to your area?

Let the Good Times Roll

I'm so excited to announce that my 4th graders with be sharing their Mardi Gras expertise with at least 14 other classes in the United States and Canada. While my students have been busy doing research, writing, creating Glogsters, writing blog posts, and gathering props to share during our Skype calls, I've been busy getting our Skype call schedule set.

My part was pretty easy. First I decided which days we could Skype. Then I created a Google doc to have others sign up, and tweeted about it on Twitter.

Viola, in less than 24 hours we had 14 eager participants. My students will also be back channeling on our Skype Collaboration group in Edmodo. If the other class wants to join in on that activity, I will share the code to join the group with them.

I will be adding updates to our blog as this awesome activity unfolds. So stay tuned.