Spelling City: Your Personal Account

I finally got an opportunity to sign up for a free Spelling City account, and upload one of my own spelling lists for the week. I was amazed at how easy it was!



I found a great website with a 13 minute video posted by a user to demonstrate how to use some of a great features of Spelling City (and how to register for a free account). You can find that video at this website: http://www.iprimary.co.uk/tutorial.php?tutorialID=005. (The link won't work as a clickable link for some reason. If you copy and paste it to your web browser, it will work.)

This is a great way for parents to quickly have access to their child's spelling (or vocabulary) words. This will allow students to sign on from wherever they have computer access to play spelling games with their spelling words. I love that teachers are able to collaborate and share lists, so that one teacher isn't responsible for adding all of the lists every week. A teacher could also use a parent volunteer to upload the lists for them! Here are the lists that I have uploaded for this week's spelling words! I could upload that link, and the parents could visit the link to see the lists that I have uploaded, without searching for them!

Enjoy this great new feature! :)

Here is another link to some explanations of the games on Spelling City.

The Math Blog/Vlog is Ready!

After researching around the web, I found many resources and have a great plan for our 4th grade math blog! A how-to blog that I found to be very helpful was Dummies.com. I also found a math blog that gave me some great ideas for what to include on my own personal blog, Chet’s Math Homework Help. Then I was perusing the Scholastic site when I came across the “Top 20 Teacher Blogs,” which also gave me some great ideas for setting up my own blog.


I am interested in running more of a “vlog” than a “blog” but I hope to incorporate aspects of both to help my students succeed. I know that it is going to take a lot of time at the beginning, but I am starting this project at the same time my student intern from Towson will be coming to our class. I hope to use her to watch over the class while I make the videos. Between this and the added time I will have in my schedule while she is teaching, I think I have picked a great time to get started.

Here is a screenshot of the blog I have created for my class.

I can’t link you to the blog, as it is set to private. I am going to be uploading my first video at the end of this week, but I am currently having problems with the format of the video, so I am still working on that. I will upload it on this blog as soon as I get it working.

I am sending home a permission slip for my students at the end of this week, and I can’t wait to get started using it! Please share any tips/recommendations that you have for me or my math vlog, I’d love to hear them!

Doodle Polling

I have already shared with you the ease of using Doodle.com to schedule appointments or meetings, but Doodle can also be used to easily collect information, in the form of a poll. I spent some time playing around in Google Forms , looking for various ways for students to participate quickly in a lesson. Although Google Forms is great, if you are just looking for a way to quickly poll your audience (or your team members, etc.) Doodle.com is a great option.

First, choose the “Make a Choice” tab on the main page. Just like when you use Doodle to create an event, you start by creating a title, description (include your question here) and your name (and optional e-mail address). Then you simply type in the answer choices that you will be providing your students. Then click next and choose to personally send the invitation, then click “Submit.” When choosing this option, you will get a link to the website where you should send your students to answer the poll. Now your poll is complete!

I think that there is a variety of ways this could be used in the classroom, specifically during the statistics unit. I have created a document with links to various polls. Click on the image below to be linked to this interactive document.

I could then send my students to this document, and have them answer all of the questions. I could then pull up the information and use that to create different types of graphs. It would be much better than the way I currently do it, by going around the class and having each student orally answer each poll. If you would like a copy of this activity, please e-mail me @ Kristen_Bennett@hcpss.org.


I have created a quick “Doodle Poll” for you to participate in, to see how easy this would be for your students. Click here to participate in the survey. To view the results of the survey, click here.

When thinking about telecollaborative projects, I can think of many uses for this technology. Polling using Doodle is a quick way to get a group consensus about any topic (choosing a topic, narrowing the focus, etc.). I think you could also have students create questions or polls for other groups in other locations to answer and then you can get the answers at your own convenience. If you have any other suggestions, I'd love to hear them!

Good luck using Doodle! :)

Awesome Resource for Google Forms!

Now that you know a little information about using Google Forms, you might be thinking… how can I use this in my classroom? I found this great Google Docs slide show with 60 interesting ways to use Google Forms that is very helpful when planning to use Google Forms with your students. It is licensed under Creative Commons, so I would like to share some of the great suggestions with you! A great benefit of Google Forms is that students don’t need an e-mail address to participate, you can just post a link to your “form” on your class or school website, and the students have immediate access to the form.

Online Reading Records- Often times students in elementary school are given the homework assignment of “reading for 20 minutes.” With Google Forms students could sign online and type the book they read and one or two sentences about what they read.

Children creating Reading Surveys/Questions- I spend time teaching my children the skill of “questioning” and we often write questions for each other to answer. It would be great for students to create their own reading survey/reading questions that they could send to each other to answer. I think it would be great for me to use with my students on “worksheet free Wednesday!”

Creating a story- Students can create a template for a “story” that others fill out. Then the student will write a story using the information provided by their classmates. I think this sounds like a writing “mad libs” activity that many students love!

These are just three of the 60 ideas given on the link provided. Many of the ideas can be used with your classmates, or they can be used with the staff at your school. What a great find! Don't forget to check out this valuable resource by Tom Barrett! You can even find him on Twitter and comment about his post, or offer more suggestions!

The idea that I thought I could implement in my class immediately was the use of the "reading record." My students have a piece of paper that they glue into their journals weekly where they record the name of the book they read, and whether they read or wrote for 20 minutes each night from Mon-Thursday. I went onto Google Forms and made this form that my students could use on Thursday night to "hand in" their work. It took me less than 5 minutes to create this form that can be used weekly. I can't wait to use this more in my classroom!

If I were to design my own telecollaborative project, I think I would use Google Forms in many ways. It would be the perfect way to collect data from perspective group participants. I could then look at the information provided (class size, frequency of group meeting time, location and desired location, etc.) and pair classes together easily. It would be a dream from a scheduling standpoint. I also think it would be something that the students could create to send to other classes to get information about the topic they are studying.

There are so many ways to use Google Forms... this is only just the beginning!

Helpful Resources for Doodle.com

Here is a great resource for information about using Doodle to schedule student appointments online. This is also a great way to schedule parent volunteers for special activities!

Student Scheduling

Here is a link to “5 great reasons to use Doodle.” There is also another clear “how to” guide for using doodle at the bottom of the webpage.

Look back later for another use of Doodle, polling your participants!

Doodle.com

Have you ever tried to schedule an appointment or event and needed to find a date that works for everyone? Then you have probably experienced sending and receiving multiple e-mails and changing the date/time more than once. A great website can help make this type of scheduling a lot easier. Head on over to Doodle.com, put in your information and you will be making a date and time in no time. Doodle.com is a free service, and no registration is needed to use the service.

From the main site, you simply choose “Schedule an Event,” enter the title and brief description of your event, and add your name and e-mail address (if you want to be e-mailed when someone participates in your poll).

Then click on the next button. On the next screen you are given a calendar where you are prompted to choose multiple dates that will be sent to your participants (they suggest 5 dates to find a common time).

Once you move on to the next page, you are able to input 5 times per each date you have selected.

Finally, once your poll has been completed you have the option of sending the poll yourself or sending it through Doodle. When sending it through your own e-mail address you have the option of hiding the poll to everyone except yourself, limiting the number of choices a person can make, choosing how many people can choose an option (helpful if you are using it to schedule conferences, etc.). If you have signed up for the premium service, you can also ask for e-mail addresses, postal addresses or cell numbers to be posted on the poll.

I can see where this would be helpful when scheduling parent volunteers or setting up times where parents can choose book report time slots to help ensure that everyone can come when they would like to. I have been sent numerous doodles from my administrator when trying to coordinate team leaders for meetings during summer vacation. I also think it would be useful when scheduling conferences outside of the program HCPSS currently uses. For personal use, it could be used to help find common times for vacations, parties, happy hours, etc. In a telecollaborative project, this could be used to find common meeting times between scheduling teachers, groups of students, etc. I think one of the hardest parts of telecollaborative projects is finding common meeting time, and this would be a great solution to those problems.

I’m looking into how use to use doodle in the classroom, or how using Doodle could be even easier. I’ll post more with some additional information or classroom uses!

4th Grade Math Blog/Vlog

After hearing so much about blogs from my classmates and the classes I have taken so far, I have decided to start my own math blog/vlog for the 3rd and fourth quarter. I often get e-mails or notes from parents about clarification of a concept, or have students ask me for a quick refresher of the previous day's material. Then there are the students who are absent for a day, or even a few days who would like to keep up with the instruction. I think that a daily blog post would be a perfect solution for all of these problems.

Blogs have the unique ability to be updated quickly and frequently, by me or even by the students. I was amazed at how easy it was to get a free blog for my class (there were many options to choose from, such as Edublogs, Blogger.com, TeacherLingo, etc.) and how easy it was for me to set up. I really like the option to upload written posts, as well as video posts.

My teammate and I both teach an above grade level math class, and have decided to work on this project together. Our current plan is to write a script for students to read and then video tape them (not showing their face) demonstrating that day's learning. For example, when teaching long division we would video tape them completing and explaining a long division problem, including any "tricks" or "tips" of the day. Then we would quickly upload the video to the blog to allow all of the students and parents to view the day's recap. If we are unable to film a video one day, we figure we can either film each other, or create a regular blog post about what we learned. We are going to start with a twice a week upload instead of a daily upload until we see how it works and how many people are using it.

We have just begun to explore our options, and have the full support of our administrators, as long as we can keep it private and the parents agree to it. Now it's time to create a "permission slip" and find the perfect hosting site. I'll update you more when I get it up and running!

I also found this website with some blogging tools that I thought you might find useful :)
50 useful blogging tools for teachers