All posts by edtechmrbrown

Gimkit Creative World Bosses

Gimkit has always been awesome and engaging. It’s level of awesome and engaging has multiplied by unmeasurable magnitudes!!

With Gimkit Creative’s custom map and game designing tool I was able to build a map that is a replica of our own Mattei and Southard Middle Schools!

This game, World Bosses 3: Southard Mattei, incorporates actual STAAR reviews for all 4 core content areas. When you play this from your account you can use these Gimkit sets (linked below) or attach your own sets. I upgraded my Gimkit account so I was able to publish these on their public “discover” database of custom maps.

8th grade US History STAAR Review Gimkit set
7th Grade Writing STAAR Review Gimkit Set
8th Grade Science STAAR Review Gimkit Set
MS Math Vocabulary Review Gimkit Set

Links to all three versions of World Bosses are available below.

ClassEquity

I love these types of programs which not only teach children about budgeting and financial literacy but they are just fun, engaging, and student centered. They are a way to transform your classroom for the better while teaching the most relevant real world skills. You assign responsibilities to students as jobs. There are default jobs built in or you can add custom jobs.


Students earn a salary with their job and use that salary to pay their bills. There are fines for undesired behaviors. More importantly students can earn bonuses so you can reinforce positive behaviors!

Students can spend some of their salary on rewards in the class store. Those can be as simple as special privileges or physical prizes you keep in your class.

There is an awful lot available for free without the pro subscription. Below are the extra features you can get with a pro-plan. Those features include giving a student job access to run the bank and rewards store. Most of it looks rather automatic though with the salaries and bills. It should be easy to catch up on fines and bonuses every now and then.

HMH Writable

Let’s dive into Writable by HMH. We are going to access it through ClassLink. It is not called Writable or HMH though. It is called ED: Your Friend in Learning. ClassLink logs us straight in. You may have to choose your grade level taught and content area if you are logging in for the first time.

The view other pathways drop down menu lets you select Writable. Then you will have access to some teacher training modules.

Writable is a web based writing program that will help your students develop their writing skills. It offers daily practice activities as well feedback tools to drive revision. There are also assessments to monitor students goal progress.

The second video in Topic 1 walks you through connecting your classes to writable. You will roster your students through our LMS (Learning Management System) which is Google Classroom. You will be able to push out Writable activities through Google Classroom.

High Five Quick Writes looks to be a major feature of Writable. This gives your students a daily 5 minute writing assignment. You select a prompt from Writable but you can also edit the prompt before assigning it.

The specific writing skill you choose for your students to practice will change the rubric to focus their efforts.

You can offer your students choices of High-Five Prompts.

There are also lessons to help your students practice specific writing skills such as sentence fragments, run-on sentences, parts of speech and more.

Below are two super quick videos from Writable about the program. Please take a few minutes to watch these.

Then start High Fiving your kids!!!

What is Writable?

Lewis and Clark Expedition Barge Pilot TEK 5.4c

TEK 5.4(C) identify significant events and concepts associated with U.S. territorial expansion, including the Louisiana Purchase, the expedition of Lewis and Clark, and Manifest Destiny

Join the Lewis and Clark Expedition as the river barge pilot. Can you successfully navigate the river systems while learning about the expeditions experiences? Click the image above to get started.

Bitmoji Custom Shirt

I saw a video recently, that featured a lady’s Bitmoji who was wearing a very unique shirt with a custom logo on it. I thought, that is cool. How can WE do that? SO I figured it out. Check out this quick walkthrough.

Google Form QR Code

Need to get the QR Code for your Google Form?

Start from the active version of your form that the respondent completes.

Then go to the the three dots menu.

Then select Save and Share.

Create QR Code is on that next menu screen

Chromebook User Updates

Did you know!?! There is a “delete” key stroke on a Chromebook!

Chromebooks have their own built in Read Aloud feature with NO Extensions needed!!

ALSO in a Chrome browser you can turn on Live Captions and Chrome generates closed captions in a little overlay window for videos and audio that are playing in Chrome! IT WORKS!!!

K10A Plant and animal sorting

Here is a Kinder sorting activity. This activity is created in teachermade. It would be a very good activity for a SMART board or a teacher led group activity. It could also be assigned individually in Google Classroom if devices are available. The animal sorting slide has specific categories to sort the animals into. The leaf sorting page is designed to be sorted repeatedly by size, shape, color, or leaf edge.

Career Prep 1D Interview Techniques

Career Prep I 1(D) demonstrate proper interview techniques in various situations

The word of the day is job, J.O.B! Your students play the role of a young man who is wearing out his welcome at home and his parents need him to get a job and do something with his life. This activity is an engaging and relevant escape room style adventure in which students must survive a job interview and land the position by choosing the correct responses to interview questions. This activity is assembled in Google Slides and should be shared in published or present mode for students to best experience it.

Inspector Inaya in Texas

4.6(B) compare the physical regions of Texas (Mountains and Basins, Great Plains, North Central Plains, Coastal Plains)

Here is our 3rd installment in the Inspector Inaya series. This time Inaya is invited down to Texas to help use her skills to infer the Texas region and era the 6 letters below originated from. The activity includes a video intro as well as slides of each story for your students to read. This is a teachermade activity which has students select the correct answer choices for each letter.

2nd math 2.9G Telling Time to the minute

2(9)(G) read and write time to the nearest one-minute increment using analog and digital clocks and distinguish between a.m. and p.m.

Here is a quick and simple activity that requires students to know how to tell time to the nearest minute on both digital and analog clocks in order to make matching pairs. Join the dance crew: Past, Present, and Funky! Bust moves and sort clocks into matching pairs of digital and analog with the same time. This activity can be completed on a SMART touch screen, On the front screen with a wireless mouse, or assigned in Google Classroom to be done individually on a Chromebook.

PK Counting Safari

Let’s go on a counting Safari! I have safari hats and a tour ready to go. Amy I come to your PK class and take your kids on a virtual counting safari? We will visit different environments and count the different species of animals in each. I even have an adventure log for students to record their findings in. Below is everything you need to go on this adventure. As a bonus this would be extra special interactive on s SMART board but it is not at all required.

Pirate Booty Pakapoo Probability 7.6i

7.6I: Determine experimental and theoretical probabilities related to simple and compound events using data and sample spaces.

Welcome to another Pirate adventure! This time Petyr the Portuguese Pirate will have your students count inventory and calculate probability for his crew. These pirates like to hold a pakapoo raffle to sell off the booty they gather in their travels. Students will calculate the probability that each treasure type would be chosen at random from the total amount of treasures.

Pirate Activity 7.3b Rational Numbers

7.3b Solve mathematical problems using multi-step order of operations with rational numbers including grouping symbols, whole-number exponents and absolute value.

Peripatetic Pirate Petyr from Portugal needs your students to prepare his ship’s port logs for the preparation of plundering. Students will need to perform multi step calculations to convert the distances the ship will travel into different scales of measurement. This activity is available as a Teachermade digital activity or in a printable pdf format.

Reading and Roaming Caribbean

https://sites.google.com/view/roamingandreading/home

I am back again with another virtual voyage for your students. This time we are focused on the TEKS listed in the chart below. Students will explore 6 stops in the Caribbean sea where they will demonstrate their mastery of one TEK below at each stop. This activity is accompanied by a Google Form answer document that you will post in your Google Classroom for you students to access. The Roaming and Reading home page has a button that you can click to download your own copy of the Google Form.

R/STEKTEK description
S8.2Ause print or digital resources to determine the meaning, syllabication, pronunciation, word origin, and part of speech
R8.5Fmake inferences and use evidence tosupport understanding 
R8.5Gevaluate details read to determine key ideas 
S8.9Ddescribe how the author’s use of figurative language such as extended metaphor achieve specific purpose
S8.9Fanalyze how theauthor’s use of language contributes to mood, voice,and tone
R8.10Dviicorrect spelling, including commonly confused terms such as its/it’s, affect/effect, there/their/they’re, and to/two/too