Little Bird Tales

by recesstec classroom management writing

Sunday Sit, Sip, and “Sync” ~ 3-25-2012

“Little Bird Tales” is a site that supports and encourages digital storytelling for younger children.

The only thing necessary is
an email address to create a free account,
a microphone,
and an imagination. 

Teachers can set up an account to generate a “School Code” which provides a platform to manage teachers, classrooms, and students.

Stories can be illustrated using uploaded images, but it also provides an “Art Pad” that allows younger students an easy way to create original pictures to illustrate their personal stories.

Stories can be embedded into class websites and easily shared with families. They also have the option to purchase the stories as an mp4.

This little video will provide more information,

and after viewing it,
we invite you to take a minute to visit  “Little Bird Tales”.

Other additional questions can be answered on the FAQ page.

If showers are in your forecast today,
and if you have a little one close by,
make this day a memory to record and keep after visiting

GradeCam

by recesstec classroom management

Sunday Sit, Sip, and “Sync” ~ 2-19-2012

GradeCam + Your Document Camera

Sometimes you want and need a multiple-choice assessment.

Without discussing the merits of grading, or not grading student work,
most of us can agree that at some point, our students need to practice using multiple-choice assessment forms.

I can’t tell you how many times a student has come up to my desk to ask me what “All of the above” meant.

In a perfect world teachers could teach, students would learn, and it will all be done without hours of grading.

As a student, I can remember, after days of hard work, turning in a paper and enduring the long wait to receive the results.

As a teacher, I can’t deny that grading the little multiple-choice assessment was a lot easier to endure than the 5-paragraph essay.

Just sayin’…

One of the benefits of the multiple-choice is the quick feed-back.

If you have a document camera, that feed-back just got quicker.

GradeCam is a website that will provide even faster results, and is easy to use.
Although there is a package that costs, they do have a free option that includes:

  • quizzes with ten multiple-choice questions,
  • instant item analysis, and
  • class reports.

GradeCam’s “Home Page” includes a little video to help explain its merits,
but I’ve also embedded another video that will help you understand how teachers are using this program.

The plug-in is free to download, and creating an account is quick, easy, and free.

This page includes a confirmed/compatible list of cameras that work with this program.

We would love to read in the comments, how you use this program, how it works for you, and whether or not you would recommend it.

Grade Essays Faster?!

by recesstec classroom management tips writing

Sunday Sit, Sip, and “Sync” ~ 1-15-2012

There it was.
In BIG, BOLD font.

“Grade Essays Faster”.

“Look, we can’t grade the essays for you, but we can reduce the repetitive, inefficient manual labor involved — and in doing so we open up a new world of invaluable student data.

Welcome to the future.”

Really?

I have friends who are English teachers.
I know how much time they spend grading papers.

Rough drafts.
Revised copies.
Final copies.

I don’t claim to know much more beyond fifth grade essays,
and what I had to write as a student, myself.

(Please don’t judge them. They tried.)

I do know that my teachers,
those who guided me, taught me, and encouraged me,
had to have put in countless hours reading and suggesting and correcting what I had written.

When I discovered this website, I thought it surely would be a tool that, as an English teacher, could be as valuable and indispensable as a calculator must be for a Math teacher.

Essaytagger.com is free during their “Beta Period”,
and that ends on February 1st.

Essaytagger.com is developed by Keith Mukai, M.Ed., a high school English teacher who is now the founder and CEO of EssayTagger.com.

Once the “Beta Period” ends, there will be a cost that is described here, in the FAQ Section.
Early adopters during this period will be “rewarded”.

Here are some quick links to videos that describe the program in more detail.

So, those of you who teach English,
or those of you who know English teachers,
I encourage you to check out this site and “share the love”.

Wouldn’t it be nice if more of us could “have a life”?

FREE Online Grading

by recesstec classroom management tips

Monday Morning Message ~ 9-19-2011

We have just been introduced to a new website that offers a multitude of classroom management options!

The best part of it is the word “FREE”!

LearnBoost…

could very well be exactly what you have been looking for.

It offers free gradebook accounts to allow teachers to manage their classrooms in one place by keeping track of student grades and attendance, maintaining schedules, importing Google calendars, creating and managing lesson plans and curriculum, tagging standards to assignments and lesson plans, and much more.

Learn Boost offers a safe and secure platform where you can also share student progress with both your students and their parents.

Once again, it is FREE!

In the past we have struggled with grading programs that were installed on your computer at school and all of the work had to be completed at school.

We all know how much work is done at home, and now you can have an online program that can be accessed from any computer with just a login.

If you want to save time with parent/teacher conferences, communication, and grade reporting, this might be a perfect FREE solution.

It’s not too late to enter those grades for the first mid-term reports.

If you are interested, and would like to learn more about Learn Boost,
visit their “Tour Page” where you can view a short video. We would love to hear how this works if you choose to sample it, and what your opinions are.

Have a great week,
and remember to spend some time outside with your students as we begin to move into the fall season.

Sharing Safely

by recesstec classroom management tips

Monday Morning Message ~ 9-12-2011

You have just received a link to a YouTube video.

You watched it, enjoyed it, laughed, cried, or were moved in some way that you wanted to share.

Then you notice the comments below, or the sidebar with videos that were digitally linked…

and they are not things you want to share.

One solution is a website that allows you to share just the video.

SafeShareTV  provides a link that will place your video into a nice viewer without comments and without other videos.

In addition, you have the option of choosing a theme, setting the starting and ending point of your video, and editing the title.

Finally, there is an option to email or share your “Safe View” to all the major social websites.

Now, go and share something,

and have a great week!

Label, Label, Label!

by recesstec classroom management tips

Monday Morning Message ~ 8-8-2011

As I skim through recent posts on Facebook and Twitter, many involve “THE Class List”.

Posted last week: “Any people out there know when we are going to get class lists? It seems like we usually get them on Friday. I’m trying to mentally prepare myself for my last week of vacation.”
Posted last week: “I’ve hired my babysitter to help write names as soon as I get my class list.”
Posted last week: “I just found out we won’t have our class list until the day before school. How am I going to get it done???”

This week’s tip is a solution I have been using for years.

I make a trip to an office supply store, or that aisle in my local discount store, to buy plain, blank address labels. I choose the label size that has enough labels to fit one class per sheet.

Next, using the label template suited for the brand I purchased, I make a “Label Template” with my student names using Microsoft Word. Finally, I save naming it “11-12Labels”.

This little video will help, and instead of continuing to the “Mail Merge” option, I just type my students’ names.

Microsoft Office Video – Labels

Remember, you need to click on the “Tools” tab, or in some versions, the “Mailings” option.

So as to not waste any of my labels, I always print the first sheet on plain printer paper, and hold it up in front of the labels to make sure they line up.

I also have the option of changing the font properties, (style, color, and size) to match whatever workbook or article I was planning to attach the label.

I always save my sheets when there are a few unused labels left after printing. If a new student is added, I can then type the new student’s name as many times as needed on the extra labels.

We were always required to keep a Ziploc bag attached to our emergency clipboard with large blank labels and a permanent marker. The plan was that in the event of a real emergency, they would be used to generate a name label for each student. I could never imagine having to do that in a true emergency, so I always print off a sheet to attach to these “Conference Labels”. Next year, I will just attach the new label on top of the previous year’s.

Some of the things in my classroom that are labeled are:

   1. Consumable workbooks

   2. On tag-board for my “Classroom Jobs Bulletin Board”, and my

   3. A.R. Bulletin Board to move students up the “Goal Post”

   4. Cubby or coat hooks

   5. Supplies Baskets or Boxes

   6. Emergency Labels

If you want the names specifically aligned or colored, just select them all (Control key + A) and format them.

We would love to hear other ways you have used your class names, or could use labels.

It really is time to get serious and help each other out! 

The Old New World…

by recesstec classroom management reflections tips

Monday Morning Message ~ 5-16-2011

Our district has just adopted a new Language Arts series,
and it will require lots of room to house and store.

So it began…
the cleaning of the shelves.

I have had a set of encyclopedias on one set of shelves for over 25 years.
I honestly cannot remember the last time we used them.

Last Tuesday I piled them high on a table,
wondering what should be done with them.

“Mrs. Brachbill, can we have them?”

Reply: “May we have them…”

And after investigation/permission,
the “Great Raffle” began.

Now here comes the amazing part.
I told my students that as I pulled their names,
and they didn’t want one,
just to say, “No, thank you,” and I would continue on.

Looking up, I saw 25 students with their eyes closed and fingers crossed.

And the excitement when they got a 2-for-1 (a.k.a. “The Q-R Volume”) was amazing!

At the end of the day, I asked them to please take them home.
(We are near the end of the year, and are trying to clean out, right?)

And, indeed, they did take them home, but returned the next day, carrying them with little slips of paper marking places they wanted to investigate.

They took them outside to read during recess.

They were reading them under their desks when they should have been following along in their Social Studies book.

They carried them almost reverently;
not in their book-bags.

So on this Monday morning, if you are in need of space, and you have one of these old sets taking up valuable room on a shelf, make a memory, and give a book. 

Random Word Generator

by recesstec classroom management SMARTBoard tips

Monday Morning Message ~ 4-4-2011

And it’s free… 

This is a quick way to randomly choose students.

If you have a SMARTBoard, we suggest you use the “Random Word Generator”.
Add your students’ names, and save it in your “My Content” folder within a sub-folder labeled “Management”.

If you don’t have a SMARTBoard, we suggest a website called classtools.net.
This is a free resource, and you have a choice of two “generators”.

With the “Fruit Picker”, a name is chosen and you have the option of removing it, after it is chosen.

With the “Typewriter” generator, you do not have that option, but it also eliminates the “Casino” theme.
Once your names are typed in, you can save it to your desktop as a shortcut.

To watch a quick video for each of these…

Add some fun to your week!

Is Anyone Listening? (Part 4 of 4)

by recesstec classroom management email tips writing

Monday Morning Message ~ 2-28-2011

Your Distribution List is made, and you are ready to send out your first note.

Remember, you promised your parents that you would keep their email addresses confidential!

It’s easy and the secret is…

Bcc (or “Blind Carbon Copy”).

The benefits of sending emails to recipients using the Bcc Option is that it

   1. keeps addresses confidential;

   2. protects recipients from receiving spam; and

   3. protects recipients from receiving a reply when
someone accidentally selects “Reply All”.

When writing your note, address it to yourself using your school address.
Next, choose the Bcc Option, and use the Distribution List contact name as the recipient.

Another benefit of using this option is that you will also receive a copy of your note, in addition to the one that is in your “Sent Folder”.

One more reminder:

You might want to use the day/date as your Subject.
This also helps parents keep track of notes/reminders.
If your note contains important information or deadline reminders, you might want to use that as your subject to get their attention.

You are now on the road to being heard, and more important, they are listening!

Have a great week!