Quick Tips

Banker Buyer is a Monopoly themed class activity. Students all receive a cash drawer in the form of a Google Slide. Assign each student their own copy in Google Classroom. The teacher leads the activity from a presentation at the front of the class. The activity has 8 transactions during which students either withdraw or deposit funds in their bank. At the end of the 8 transactions students count up the money in their bank and the money in Free parking. If they have completed all of the transactions correctly their total dollar amounts should match up to the amounts on the teacher Banker Buyer Teacher Resource.

Your assignment is to upload the voice recording below into a blank Canva video project. Then add content (Images, Graphics, Video, etc) to the video that will help someone better understand the narration of the math problem. You will share your completed video with your teacher by the process they establish with you.

This project was created with https://online-voice-recorder.com/
You and your students may use that free tool to record your own problem narratives then challenge each other to create a Canva video and solve the problem.

Yes Canva can edit a pdf. No more struggling to find the program that will give you a free trial to edit your pdf. Canva can do it. It can do it with even greater ease and ability than anything I have ever seen.

Do you teach 7th grade ELAR students? If so check out Weirdos in Windows. This new digital Menu activity is made to support the learning goals of the first 9 weeks. In this activity students complete one task from each flor of the building. Your students could repeat this activity up to 3 times and have a unique experience each time.
The ground floor offers a selection of Verbs and Nouns challenges.
The first floor is about plot elements.
The second floor challenges students to develop thesis statements.
The third floor asks students to retype a paragraph revising and editing along the way to fix all of the mistakes.
The top floor offers four fantastically fun inferencing challenges.

Here is a digital menu review activity for 6th grade ELAR. This menu activity covers topics from the first 9 weeks including Revise and Edit; Inferencing and Text Evidence; Paraphrasing; Compare and Contrast; Theme; Figurative Language; and Plot. This activity is in Google Slides. Assign a copy to each of your students in Google Classroom. Students will interact with the slides by adding text boxes, shapes, and tables. They will also follow links to outside resources. Students can navigate the slide show in presentation mode and escape to edit mode to complete tasks. This Menu Activity could be assigned 3 times and students would have a different experience each time. It would be great to keep advanced students busy while reviewing with other groups. Click the button below to preview then download a copy of the slideshow for yourself.

Search for a video through ClipGrab or copy paste the link.

Grab the Clip and then it will be on your Desktop unless you change it to a folder! It’s ready to go that easily!

Then inside that folder I even have a pair of those that are set to stand out to me as well.

Freckle is a decent looking online skills practice tool that you can use with your students. You can use it pretty well in the free mode. You can manually create classes and get links to assignments that you can post in to Google Classroom for your students. You can also just have them log in and go to skills practice. I was even prompted to take a diagnostic and put on the appropriate practice level. It is worth checking it out.

It’s time to get rolling with Innovation Badges for this new school year. If you are new please check out the quick introduction video above.

We have a fun inter-campus competition each year. Lacy and Lowe had won previous years. Last year Southard MS rocketed to the top and pulled off the win! They plan to bring a strong title defense this year. They have an awesome banner displayed by their front office and the teachers there told me they are going to add a second banner this year.

Campus totals start over each year for the competition but your individual badges earn add up and roll over year after year.

I have always struggled to find a purpose for Google Drawings. It seems less useful than Microsoft paint. My biggest problem is the lack of actual drawing tools. Also there is no paint can tool to fill with colors. If I want to use a program that can’t do those things, I already use Google Slides, I so I just use Google Slides…

I was determined though to find a reason that Google Drawings is useful so I did a little digging. Google drawings can be useful if you want to design an image and download with with a transparent background. You can do that in Canva too though and probably more effectively.

https://www.loom.com/education

UPDATE: When I tried to login in and actually use Loom it was blocked by our School Google accounts. I was blocked from accessing Loom via the PC download as well. I was only able to access Loom with my personal Gmail login, which would not get me the free premium options. ALSO it does not appear that an Education account can download videos. They can only be shared via loom link. That’s a deal breaker for me.

Need to screen record a video for a lesson or activity? You can get free premium access to Loom as a teacher. This includes a lot of really good features including videos up to 45 minutes long (but please don’t) and unlimited videos and views. I want to know if we can download MP$ files of our screen recordings and or upload them to YouTube from Loom. Let us dive in and check that out.

You can use loom to screen record a lesson for your class. It is also a good option for recording directions and expectations for a project so that students can re-watch later.
You could use Loom to create short videos that explain why an answer choice was right or wrong on a Google Form. Use conditional formatting to route students to the necessary video after each question and send the student to the video response or explanation they need.

Today we are going to tackle a controversial topic with the intention of fairly examining the issues and developing a fact based opinion free from the influence of others and based solely and the law and the evidence at hand.

This activity leads students through several articles including a CBS News article in which law makers from each side express their sentiments. A legal analysis of the 6th amendment. As well as a Washington Post article describing the status of the Justice department and their prosecution of the January 6th prisoners.

This activity does not support either side of the issue in any form or fashion.

Life is all about Content Creation these days. At least it is surely a topic your students are passionate about. Kapwing is a tool that your students can use to create their own digital content. Have your students collaborate together to create a video project explaining or showing a concept as a summative project.

WillowBooks has quite a few books available for free especially in the lower levels.

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Dr. Burkins has a collection for you and your students as well.

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There is always the wonderful Epic Books. Which offers thousands of online books for your students to access for free from school.

Here is an interactive Google Slides activity on inferencing. This will hopefully be the first of several activities in a new Inspector Inaya series. In the case of the trashy trucker, Inaya must sort through and analyze evidence collected to identify the correct suspect. Special shout out to Mrs. Figueroa at Godwin for this wonderful idea.

Below you can download the Slides activity and the Google Form. Update slide 15 with the link to YOUR copy of the Google Form before assigning a copy of the Slides presentation to each of your students in Google Classroom.

Here is a cross curricular project that combines social studies, math, and real life skills. This project asks students to plan a complete family summer vacation including all destination stops, travel, accommodations, and food costs.