Build-A-Bug

Click the picture above to visit Build-a-Bug where you get to assemble your own bug from their head to their thorax.

Study Stack for STAAR Review 13 March PD

Study Stack is an amazing tool for reviewing digital Flash Cards. Today we are going to look at how to use your study stack flash cards to review off line.

Tech Break Printable Board Games

Start at 1:10 watch for 3 minutes to get the point

Republic of Texas Bob Bullock Virtual Field Trip 4th Grade

4.3c Identify leaders important to the founding of Texas as a republic and state, including José Antonio Navarro, Sam Houston, Mirabeau Lamar, and Anson Jones; 4.3dDescribe the successes, problems, and organizations of the Republic of Texas such as the establishment of a constitution, economic struggles, relations with American Indians, and the Texas Rangers; 4.3e Explain the events that led to the annexation of Texas to the United States and the impact of the U.S.‐Mexican War;

Click the image above to reach the Virtual Field Trip tour of artifacts at the Bob Bullock State of Texas Museum. We will examine artifacts related to the Republic of Texas, Annexation, and the Mexican War. The tour is fully voice narrated.

Below is a printable student activity handout to accompany the tour.

U.S. History Academic Vocabulary Bingo Cards

Need to review academic vocabulary with your U.S. History students? Look no further. Here are 100 unique printable bingo cards that contain the 97 terms identified by Lead4Ward as new academic vocabulary introduced to your students in their 8th grade course. I have also generated a call sheet of the terms and definitions in a spread sheet format I also used Flashcard Lab to generate Flash card versions of the terms and definitions so that you can print and cut those out for randomly drawing and calling your Bingo definitions. Here are all the files in .PDF Format.

Quick Checks for Understanding

Here are a few options for quickly assessing your students comprehension of a concept. This is a question I often get so here are my best answers all gathered up for you.

Lumio from Smart tech has a huge portion of it that is designed to be used by students on individual devices and not on SMART boards.

Nearpod offers similar options. To collect responses from students and discuss responses with the class.

Peardeck is very similar to Nearpod. Of course Quick Prompts are not free… I have walk through video of everything that Peadeck can do, there are very usable and useful free options.

Socrative is another option. Which can do Multiple Choice, T/F, and Short Answer in it’s free teacher account.

Mentimeter is another one I have used to collaborate and create a parent night presentation with interactive polling. Mentimeter adds in a word cloud option!

Want to keep it very low effort on your part? How about a Google Classroom discussion question, a Google Form, a Google Jamboard (or what ever they call it now, Figjam?), also a Canva collaborative work space can provide a super simple space for students to share what they know.

Predator v Prey 5.9b 5.9c

Here is a brand new food web activity for you called “Predator or Prey”.  This is an interactive digital activity made in Genially.  It really pushes students to think critically about their understanding of TEKS 5.9b and 5.9c as they relate to food webs.

Phases of the Moon Quiz 4.9b

Once you have finished your lesson on phases of the moon you can challenge your students comprehension with this fun interactive assessment. Record your students scores off of their screen when they are done because getting data from Genially requires a paid premium account.

Flying Spiders RLA, Science, Math Conversions

Here is a learning packed cross-curricular activity that begins with having students read along with narration of an article from Smithsonian Magazine. Then they complete an activity focused on measurement conversions (Math TEK 4.8c) with a sprinkling of science and geography facts related to Lake Tawakoni State Park. This local favorite TSP is mentioned in the article as having a spider species similar to Brazil’s flying spiders. This makes a relevant local connection to a fascinating story from Brazil. The button below takes you to the Genially digital activity that you can assign to your students. For the read along portion a link to download a printable version or the on line link for the article are provided.

Sky Scrapers Ruler Measuring Activity

Here is a Genially activity which challenges your students to prove their proficiency using a ruler to measure. Students must measure the tallest building to find the correct answer for each question. No, the biggest number on the list isn’t the correct answer. I tried to ensure the distractors are plausible to avoid estimated guesses.

Francie’s Fancy Fans Measuring Activity

Here is an activity to help your students practice their skills at measuring with a ruler. This is a Genially activity that is designed to be assigned to your students through Google Classroom or it can be completed on a smart touch panel as a group activity. Both together at the same time might even be the best.

What’s New with Translation Tools

Technology is always improving and it has been a few years since I took a deep dive into the latest translation tools. We have talked about Google and Microsoft Translate apps and they have been very impressive but I wanted to know what is newer and better. I reached out to my friend Gemini (not the American Gladiator) and he recommended I look into a product by Timekettle. I remember Leslie Fisher demoing Microsoft translate when it was new, down at the TCEA conference in Central Texas.  It was like the future had arrived.  As time would have it the future is here again and the future is Timekettle.  

Timekettle has been brewing up some new tech based around earbud translation tools. Thankfully this new cutting edge tech doesn’t demand an arm and a leg to translate words into your ears. Their most popular product is actually around two years old now and prices have dropped to less than $150. The M3 Translation earbuds work with a mobile application on a phone or tablet to translate spoken words into other languages in near real time. Having always been impressed with products named M3 I decided this must be worth a look.

Timekettle’s website describes their M3 earbuds as the ultimate 3 in 1 device (translation, music, and phone calls). These translation smart earbuds have the ability to function as common everyday dumb earbuds as well as being a translation master tool. Your students could use these earbuds for accommodations that require listening to text to speech or speech to text functions when working on assignments or for… TESTING! 

Notice in the image of the M3 device that the charging case for these wireless bluetooth earbuds splits into two separate pieces as opposed to the common form of having a hinged lid.  The case portions can be used as additional microphones to listen to the language being spoken by one party and spits it back out through its corresponding earbud in the new language to the listener.  

These can be used in conversation mode where two users each take a half of the kit.  The translation occurs once one party stops talking, similarly to the usual translation suspects however the earbud listening is what sets this apart.  You won’t need to be in a perfectly quiet environment so that you can both take turns listening to a speaker phone trying its best to announce your conversation to the world.  A busy and effective learning environment is rarely the quietest place around so that makes this feature a game changer.  Now if you want to be as fancy as a United Nations Delegate with your own personal real time translator speaking into your ear as they listen to someone bloviating at a microphone you can upgrade to the WT2 Edge for instant real time translation.  Be ready to fork out $350 a set for that privilege. 

The M3 can also operate in a lecture style called Listen Mode.  This is probably going to be the most popular use case for our students.  With the earbud case on their desk both microphones will work together to focus on the lesson coming from the teacher and broadcast its translation to the student through both earbuds simultaneously.  This is FAR more effective then a student trying to keep up with learning by reading captions on the bottom of a Google slide or through text translations on a more common application.  

The dollars to donuts the M3 is a great compromise in my opinion over the more advanced WT2 Edge device.   If you have pockets deep enough to take it to the edge then it would only be a more effective option.   In education, remember that affordability significantly increases the likelihood of product approval.  From my research there appears to be no cost for the accompanying mobile app. There is also no monthly subscription fee, I’m going to have to see who I can get to fund a pair of these for me to demo around the district and hopefully prove their worth.  

Arabic / Bulgarian / Cantonese / Catalan / Chinese / Croatian / Czech / Danish / Dutch / English / Finnish / Filipino / French / German / Greek / Hebrew / Hindi / Hungarian / Icelandic / Indonesian / Italian /Japanese / Korean /Malay / Norwegian / Polish / Portuguese / Romanian / Russian / Slovak / Slovenian / Spanish / Swedish / Tamil / Telugu / Thai / Turkish / Ukrainian / Urdu / Vietnamese

Really Little Racers Ruler Measuring Activity

In this activity students will manipulate a digital ruler to practice their measuring skills by investigating the length of the toys cars they are presented with. This is a digital activity created in Genially. It is designed for students to complete on individual devices or on a interactive smart display.

Mars Attacks 3rd Grade Map Skills

Get ready to use your knowledge and map skills to dispatch Help across the SpaceX Mars Colony.

3rd Grade TEKS
RLA: 26a3; Collect information from maps
Science: b2C ; construct maps,
Social Studies: 5A use cardinal and intermediate directions to locate places on maps; 5B use a scale to determine the distance between places on maps; 5C identify and use the compass rose, grid system, and symbols to locate places on maps; 5D interpret maps of places and regions that contain map elements, including a title, compass rose, legend, scale, and grid system; 17E interpret and create visuals, including graphs, charts, tables, timelines, illustrations, and maps; 17F use appropriate mathematical skills to interpret social studies information such as maps and graphs; 18B use technology to create written and visual material such as stories, poems, pictures, maps,

Classwize Focus Library

Check out this two minute introduction to Classwize Focus Library

Classwize is coming through from semi-pro to the big time with a life improving Focus Library.  When you log into Classwize next you might notice a pop up announcing the launch of this fantastic new feature.  

You may now set up focus session lists ahead of time for different purposes and use them in any of your class period sessions!  I logged in to check it out and was very impressed with this new feature. You are able to go back and edit your focus sessions once they have been saved.  If you make a focus session on the fly during class you can save that session to your library for future use.

This will make Classwize even more efficient and quicker to get kids focused where you need them leaving you free to teach.  

As a practice example I created a focus session and saved it to my library for a daily warm up routine.  I was then able to launch any class session and apply the focus!  What kind of regular routine Classwize focus sessions will you be setting up?

Google Classroom Late Work Solution

​Finding and grading late work in Google Classroom is a terrible pain in the patootie. make sure your Google Classroom assignments stop accepting submissions after the due date then implement this strategy.  Follow this guide for a detailed step by step walkthrough on implementing a fool proof solution.

Book Creator Updates and STAAR ECR

We had a virtual visit from Jen Cousins over at Book Creator. She introduced us to the new STAAR ECR practice activities in Book Creator. The first five minutes of the video cover the STAAR ECR tools. She also showed off some other new updates in Book Creator including translation tools, STEM Notebooks, Alphabet Books. There are now up to 800 templates for teachers to use when creating content or pushing out templates to students.

Fun? Math Stuff

Here are some tech based math activities to keep your students engaged in those days before the break.

Print Job Hold Queue

Experience how to send your print job to a hold queue for the copier. Then you can select it for print when you are ready. Thank you to Mrs. Hall, Shey, and Zschau for telling me about this. Enjoy!

Padlet is the New Flipgrid

In less than 4 minutes of your precious time we will create a Padlet Prompt, export it to Google Classroom, and answer the prompt from the student perspective. **Spoilers** It goes really well! Padlet is definitely an easy replacement for Flipgrid.

Unplugged Activities for Computer Class

Computer Lab Bingo

Login Race Game

So this one does use the computer but it is a fun way to learn logging in quickly.