The Great Virtual Teacher Adventure!

  Systematic and Explicit Phonics Instruction The most recent report from our National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP, 2019) showed that nationwide 66% of our 4th students scored below proficient in reading. The highest-performing state showed 55% below proficiency. We know from decades of research how students learn to read, how to assess to identify those at risk, and what and how to teach so that the majority of our students can be successful, and systematic and explicit phonics instruction is a critical part of building literacy .  Phonological awareness is the foundation for orthographic mapping, which in turn is critical to meaningful reading. “ Orthographic mapping is the brain’s process of linking sounds to letter sequences that establishes a memory of printed words, turning unfamiliar words into familiar words.” Students must “learn to read” before they can “read to learn” and need explicit and systematic teaching. ” Unfortunately, many of our students do no...

Did you know that you can link web addresses or even other pages of a book in your Book Creator creations? You can!  My students were working on making a book about various states in the United States of America and one of my students wanted to find out about this. After some research, we figured out how to make a table of contents with direct links to pages within her book!   Here is a video that demonstrates . . . 

  Digital Portfolio Landing Pages Ending my second year of virtual school and preparing for the third, I've thought about our digital portfolios.  It would be very helpful for students to have a landing page with portfolio's from each year collected in one spot to display their continual growth.  Step 1: Create a landing page design Basic is best.  The landing page isn't the highlight, just the storage facility.  In Google Sites, I created a template of just a single page website where links will be added to each year's portfolio. Step 2:  Share landing page with student and publish Next, go ahead and make a copy for each student, retitling it with their name.  Share with the student and publish, adjusting the settings as you prefer.  See the video at the bottom for a step-by-step of this process as well as Step 3. Step 3:  Link already created digital portfolios Finally, you, or the student, can insert links/buttons for their already existin...

  There is so much content out there.... would it not be nice to see a brief summary of a YouTube video before you watch it?   Seeing a brief summary would allow you to streamline your time to watch only what you are looking for. The Chromebook extension YouTube Summary allows you to do that! It works with ChatGPT to provide a summarized version of the YouTube video in bullet points. Download your Chromebook extension today and try it out! Rebecca Minerd

  The  latest feature that our county added to Go Guadian is the ability to  "Call a student " .  When you are on the tab where you would message them, there is a call button.  It has just recently been activated.  When you push the call button the student has the option to answer.  This allows you to a verbally speak to a student in a meet individually intead of having to type in the Go Guardian chat box.  You can still see the other students because you didn't leave to go to a break out room.  You just have to mute yourself on the meet, so the other students don't hear your individual conversation.  You can even share your screen to show something in that call.    Great addition and very helpful! 

 "Go To" Resources for the Latest Edtech News Do you have a favorite podcast?  Do you follow specific people or accounts on Twitter? Are you a member of any groups on social media that share innovative ideas and resources? One of my favorite podcasts is The EdTech News Brief with Jake Miller.   Each episode is focused on just a couple of resources - short, sweet, and to the point!  Check it out! Share all of your FAVORITES! 

 Have you ever wished you had more time in the day and/or had more opportunities to simply read to your students? I know our students have access to Epic and myON and some books can be read-aloud to them, BUT....wouldn't it be cool if they could have a book read to them by a familiar voice and person??  Well, great news! I have created a digital read-aloud library using Google slides and Flip (Flip really is great) ! I'm still working on adding books every week, but that's the beauty of it - I can keep adding and adding! I can even change out the themes of the books depending the month, holiday or time of year. Click the picture below to check out Ms. Moore's Library and feel free to put it on your Google Classroom for your students! Once on the library, students can click on the name or picture of a specific library and it will take them to a slide just for that topic or character. Then, they can click on the picture of the book they want to have read to them and it ...

 

  Free for teachers! I have found that students benefit greatly through learning mindfulness.  This app allows teachers to find and use resources for teaching meditation, breathing exercises, and relaxation techniques.  It also has an area for teachers to use outside of the classroom.  It is very easy to use in both the virtual classroom and the traditional face to face class. Here's a sample: If you would like to try it, you just need to sign up with your school email address. Calm Schools

⏰ Don't Forget! ⏰  Set custom reminders throughout the day to help with the millions of things on your To-Do List!

 Quick tip on organization:  

Take a look at how to change your Google Forms to a fun, game-based Quizizz activity~ Click Read More...then click image to take a look!

I've had the opportunity to do a Reading Club with our elementary aged students this year. It is divided into two groups: a K-2 Reading Club and a 3-5 Reading Club. Each group meets once a week for about 45 minutes.  A big part of Reading Club is, of course, reading, but specifically read-alouds. I do one or two read-alouds with each group each time. Why read-alouds? Read-alouds have many benefits for students! (YES, even middle school students!) Check these benefits out:  Teacher read-alouds are not all we do in Reading Club, though! The last part of our Club is spent letting students read a book outloud to the group. They absolutely love this! As soon as they join our Reading Club meet, they raise their hands and ask, "Can I read a book when you're done?!" It has been a joy to see students get excited about reading! Students who may not volunteer to read during class are gaining confidence and are wanting to read during our Club time.  The only problem? We run out o...

Spoiler Alert: I am a talker... and thus a writer.  You're not a big reader... d on't worry.  I've been teaching 22 years, I got you and your different learning styles (no matter how debunked those are, lol).   If you prefer visuals, scroll down to the bottom for video directions!  Okay, so I know AI is the educational buzzword of the moment.  I also know that some of you probably want to run from this post screaming at the very mention of the term; but don't.  I'm not going to overwhelm or scare you.  I promise. Instead, what I'd like to do is show you in one teeny, tiny way, how AI can make your teacher life so much easier.  Now, I'm not saying fire up ChatGPT for your next lesson; this is a baby step, folks. You're going to love this!  Promise!   So let's get down to it. Last month I asked that you go ahead and set up your schoolytics account so that you were ready to roll with me this month.  I know.  Teaching is ...

Is your inbox cluttered with emails you haven't had the time to read?  Do you dread opening your inbox because the amount of mail is overwhelming and stressful?  Can you even fathom achieving "Inbox Zero" - when your inbox is completely empty, and your mail is dealt with as soon as it comes in? Watch this video for a couple of quick and easy tips for organizing your inbox and preventing it from getting overloaded on a regular basis.  Directions for creating an email filter: Create a label for the person you are creating a filter for. Click on “More.” Click on “Manage labels.” Click on “Filters and Blocked Addresses.” Click on “Create a new filter.” “From:” Type in the email of the person you are creating the filter for. Click on “Create filter.” (middle bottom) Choose “Skip the Inbox (Archive it).” Choose “Apply the label: Choose label dropdown.” Choose “Also apply filter to _ matching conversations.” Click on “Create filter.”

 Nearpod is a very engaging tool that I love my students to use for every subject area and every topic!! It's always an extension of our lesson, and sometimes it serves as an introduction. Nearpod provides real-time insights into student understanding through interactive lessons, videos, and gamification (all in one single platform). Students can work in several formats: live participation, student-paced, and front of the class support blending learning across any and all learning environments. They're at least 22,000 plus premade standards-aligned lessons, videos, and activities. I also make Nearpods to accentuate specific lessons or novels that I teach more closely. At times, when I want to administer a quick formative assessment; I will change the Google Slides to a Nearpod and the students aren't even aware that their testing. It definitely lowers their testing anxiety when I do this! Try Nearpod it's a game changer for teachers and students! 

  Desmos- Looking for a fun way to practice vocabulary in math? Try Desmos Polygraph activities. This is a "partner guessing game, designed to foster the pleasure and power of words, and develop informal language into formal vocabulary.” Click on the link for an example of how it works!

  (Illustration by Cathryn Cunningham/Albuquerque Journal Dyslexia That word that makes everyone cringe. The teacher cringes because we fear, do I really know what this is and how to help students who are dyslexic? The parent cringes thinking, Is there something wrong with my child?  The student has been cringing because they’ve known for a long time that reading is just SO hard for them and thinking, Am I ever going to be able to read like my classmates? How can we learn to spot students who may potentially be dyslexic? The article, Common Signs of Dyslexia , on Orton-Gillingham’s website provides some very insightful checklists that teachers can use to help guide them in the quest of finding help for struggling readers.  If we can move towards identifying students with dyslexia, we can know more specifically how to help them. The article points out common indicators of different aged children: preschool, elementary, high school, and even adults.  I, for one, will ...

 Canva+Quizizz = Love Design by Christie Thompson Four Days ago at FETC, Canva and Quizizz announced to the world their new partnership, and I am so here for it! You can now make your quizizz assignments even more engaging using the power of Canva! The possibilities are endless when appsmashing these great tools.  You can completely personalize your student's meme experience or even try making one of your own awesome escape rooms like those quizizz gives us on holidays and special occasions! You can read all about it in this canva blog post as well as get access to a few templates canva already has going. Wanna explore on your own, check out all the quizizz templates here . Like check this one out!

       Assigning classwork other than writing through Book Creator         Are you using Book Creator in your classroom? Up until this point, I have just grazed the surface of all the amazing tools that Book Creator has to offer. Last year I allowed my students to use my library as a space to free write and create books for their own enjoyment. That was the extent of the Book Creator use in my classroom.      This year I had the opportunity to attend several sessions on Book Creator at the Georgia Educational Technology Conference. Through these sessions I learned about tools and tricks that made me LOVE Book Creator. Who knew Book Creator was so user friendly? My favorite feature that I learned during GAETC that Book Creator offers is the ability to push out a page you create to all of your student's books!       Pushing out assignments students       One of the cool aspects of this tool...

At the GAETC in November 2022, I learned how to create a color palette in Canva from two presenters (Christie Thompson and  Leslie Fisher). Video: How to Create a Color Palette in Canva Canva Slides Step by Step:

  Link in cse the embed video does not work for you: MOON STOP GAP ANIMATION

  How to create an interactive lesson from Google Slides. It can be difficult in the virtual setting for teachers to see the work of their students.  You can easily convert any Google Slides presentation to an interactive Nearpod! Benefits- Students are actively involved Teachers can see their student's work in real time Teachers can share student exemplars without showing student names Students get immediate feedback Students can fix and resubmit answers How to video- 

Are you an overwhelmed teacher creating new games and lessons?   Don't worry!!  Now, you can flip the classrooom and put the students in charge of creation through collaborative GIMKITS.  Students in my class have been creating vocabulary journals in www.bookcreator.com adding new words each week throughout the year.  Every month we do a spiral review of words by making a collaborative Gimkit using www.gimkit.com.  Students go back to beginning of their journals and add questions based on their words.  We discussed multiple choice questioning and how to create challenging questions.  Then we play the gimkit!!!  They have lots of fun playing the game and they take great pride in having ownership in the creation.  So, the next time you are working tirelessly to create all of those lessons, ask yourself which part of the lesson you can hand over!   You will be amazed how they take ownership of their own learning! Vocabulary Journa...