The Walking Classroom - The First Few Weeks

There was nothing more exciting this school year than announcing to my class and their parents that we would be participating in The Walking Classroom program this year.  If you have never heard of this amazing program, I highly encourage you go to their website and check it out.  The whole idea behind it is to get students out there doing aerobic activity multiple times a week to help build brain cells WHILE listening to a podcast on subjects ranging from language arts, science and social studies.  The best part? Each podcast is tied into the standards, making it easy to justify spending this time.


I had been on the waiting list for a few years hoping (praying!) that I would be able to get a class set donated to my 5th grade.  I was beyond elated when I got an email during the summer that my wait was over!  The Walking Classroom Organization themselves, were providing a grant to my school and would send me the walk kits. I'm telling you the day I received that box in the mail it was like Christmas!!

You get a binder full of lesson plans that go with each of the podcasts on the walk kits.  Each of the lesson plans come with a comprehension quiz to go a long with it.  The walk kits come preloaded with the content on them, so there is no extra work (with the exception of putting the batteries in and strapping on the lanyards!) Easy peasy!   The Walking Classroom was developed by former 5th grade teacher, Laura Fenn, M.S., Ed when she saw there was a need for student activity during the day.

And student activity is what you get with this program!  My students and I venture out into our neighborhood taking a the same 1.1 mile walk three times every week.  Yes, you read that right!  Three times a week my students and I are out there Walking, Listening, and Learning!!   That is over 3 miles that I am working into class time EVERY SINGLE WEEK.

Labeled and stored in cubbies in the classroom

If you were to ask my students how they felt about the walking classroom you would get an array of answers.  But the most commonly said phrase is, "I love it!"   And they aren't kidding.  My students have really come to enjoy this time of the day where we get to take a break from the classroom walls and get outside.



A couple of weeks ago, we were even featured on ABC 7 Los Angeles for our participation in this awesome program.  It was exciting to see my students get their moment of fame for something so positive!  Even better, is the support we get from our school community about it.  Students who aren't in 5th grade are looking forward to participating when they are, and those who are past 5th grade in our middle school are sad they didn't get the opportunity.  Even better is they have recently developed the curriculum for 4th grade, which our school is looking into purchasing.

So far, my class has walked over 25 miles this school year and it's only the end of October!  Already, I am seeing a difference in my kids and their fitness level, as well as their attentiveness when we get back.  This is a program I would recommend for every school!

Head on over and check it out!  This program is definitely worth looking into.


Have you ever heard of The Walking Classroom?  If you are interested in applying for your own grant or purchasing the program, check out this link.

Katie

Classroom Economy: Student Paychecks

I've been teaching for ten years and have been doing a classroom economy since my second year.  I fondly remember my own fourth grade teacher having classroom cash and thinking how cool it was.  As the years have gone on, my classroom economy has become more complex (not in terms of work for me) to imitate the real world for my students.

The Classroom Bank

One of their (and their parents!) all time FAVORITE elements of my classroom economy are the paychecks they earn.  Yep, that's right.  They earn paychecks that look like a real check!  This allows me to add the element of banking to my classroom economy.  We go over how checks work, what all those numbers mean, and I even invite a guest speaker into my classroom from a bank to answer the students questions.  We use the online platform called My Kids Bank which is FREE!  You can easily create accounts for all your students, create bankers, do direct deposits and more. It is such as awesome resource that I'm in awe that it is FREE.

The paychecks that my students earn not only look like real checks but they also have taxes taken out....just like real life!!  This adds a whole new teachable element which allows me to talk about with my kids.  What taxes pay for, who gets the money, why do we pay them...etc.  It's an eye opener for many of them.  :-)

In the beginning, I would spend quite a bit of time doing payroll.  It really became time consuming because I wanted my students to have accurate YTD information (especially for when tax season came around).  After some wasted time, I knew I had to find a new way to do payroll that wouldn't take me more than 3 minutes. I searched high and low and was unable to find what I needed.  So I finally sat down with a friend of mine and created exactly what I needed.  Enter my mail merge and spreadsheet using Excel and Word!  This handy tool allows me to easily input each students name, what pay period it is (which will automatically calculate the YTD information), and their pay.  After I enter that information, the formulas automatically calculate the taxes that are taken out which is about 25% of their pay.  :-)

Sample Paycheck

I'm happy to share this awesome spreadsheet and mail merge with you through my TpT store!  The zip file also includes an easy tutorial video to walk you through how to run your own classroom payroll.

Do you have a classroom economy?  What are some special ways you make it more real?

Enjoy!

Katie

How to turn Wikipedia Pages Into eBooks

Did you know that you can turn any Wikipedia page/article into it's own ebook?  This past week I spent 5 days up in Cupertino, CA at Apple Academy.  It was an awesome experience and I highly recommend my fellow educators to apply themselves and try to attend. I learned a lot and am ready to amp up my professional development training at my school.

Wikipedia page turned into an eBook

While I learned so many things, one of the coolest was how to turn a Wikipedia page into an ebook.  And the best part about it?  IT'S SUPER EASY!  I created a quick tutorial video for you below.  Let me know if you have any questions.

Enjoy!
Katie

Book Creator - An app for the writing classroom!

Do you write whole class stories with your students?  Do your students write their own stories or write papers?  I'm sure the answer to at least one of these questions is YES!  If so and you have access to either iPads or tables with Android, I highly recommend you check out the app called Book Creator.  In my last post, I spoke about the Poetry Cafe I did with my students and mentioned how I had them use Book Creator to create their final poetry books.  Some of you emailed me with questions regarding this app, so I thought I'd be a little more detailed on how it works.

First, it's important to note that Book Creator has two versions - the Free one and the paid one.  The free version limits you to being able to create only one book.  Which is perfect to allow you to try it out first and see if you like it.  I like how the free version just limits you that way and not on using all of the features that are available.  The paid version is only $4.99 and if you get the education discount, you can get 50% off 20 or more licenses making it well worth it!

The features that are available on Book Creator are awesome!  Way better than some of the other book creation apps I've tried.  And it only took my students about a day to quickly get used to it and

quickly become authors.  Once you open that app, you choose to create a new book.  You get the choices of choosing your book shape from portrait, square, and landscape.  I found that when printing the book, that using portrait was the best choice. But if you aren't printing and just using them as e-books, any shape would work.  You have the ability to add photos, text, writing, and sound.  I was really excited about the sound feature!  You can't currently do a highlighted with read along but that wasn't too big of a deal for me.  I can see how in the younger grades that would be very useful though. Hopefully it's something the creators of the app are looking into.  You can also adjust the background color of the pages.   One feature that my students particularly liked was being able to move the pages after you created them.  This allowed my students to work on their poetry in any order and then move them to the appropriate location when done.

My students' poetry books.

The best part was when my students were all done with their books, I was easily able to have them send them to me and COMBINE them into one large 5th grade poetry book.  At first I didn't really think about the possibilities of this until I came across this teacher (it's actually posted on the app creators webpage) idea on creating a global book where people all over the world create a page and you combine them all together.  How neat would that be!?!  I started to think about how I could have my students and their pen pals create books together and so much more.
and her

Next year....  How would you use Book Creator in your classroom?

Katie

****I took the screenshots right off their website.  You can see just by looking at those how amazing and professional your books can look.  :-)

Going Paperless in the Classroom

Now that my class and I have 1:1 iPads, I have slowly begun the process of going paperless in my classroom.  This has been a slow process for me, as it is a major change from what we (students, parents, and I) know as "normal".  However, the more I have played around with Google Drive, the more I am finding just how easy it is.

For years, I have used Google Docs and Forms in my classroom. But for this week's part of Google Bootcamp for Teachers, I have decided to focus my efforts on the many ways you can use the Docs and Spreadsheets portion of Google in the classroom.  But be sure to check out all the posts that relate to Google Drive below.  I know that Jen, from Tech with Jen, did a fabulous post on creating quizzes using Google Forms so be sure to look at that!  She geared it towards primary teachers but trust me, you can easily adapt it to the older grades too.

Let's cover the basics on what Google Docs and Spreadsheets does allow you to do:

• You can create Microsoft Word like documents (complete with images, tables, etc).
• You can share these documents with other teachers, students, parents, etc.
• You can choose to allow others to just view the documents, edit them, or allow them to comment on them.  
• You can share these documents without email address but with a URL.

There is a lot of different things you can do but those are the basics of it.  :-)  

I'm huge in creating rubrics right now and one of my favorite ways of doing it is through spreadsheets.  I input all the information I want into the form and then in the last few columns I create a way for the student to self-assess themselves (I'm starting to do this on all my newer rubrics and slowly switching over my older ones to include it) and another column for me to assess them.  Depending on how I weighted the specific component, I may have another column with a formula to calculate it all.  Below is an example of the science fair rubric. 

You can see how whatever I input in the orange column is then multiplied by the weight I've decided on and computed into the blue column.  It is then calculated into a total score and percentage at the bottom.

The students like when I do the rubrics on Spreadsheets and share them with them so they always have a record of how they scored (parents like it too). And I like it since it is calculated up for me, saving me that step.

Now with Google Docs, I have used them in a variety of ways, but one of my favorites is with my students writing.  My students will complete a writing assignment and share the document with me, giving me the ability to either edit.  By doing this, I am able to read over their work, highlight certain parts of it and add a comment on the side as your can see below.

Doing this is quite simple.  I made a quick video tutorial to show you exactly how to do it.  :-)  

Hopefully you found some ways to add Google Spreadsheet and Docs within your classroom.  

Enjoy!

An InLinkz Link-up

Gmail Labels

Hello everyone!  I'm excited about a couple new things going on here at Teaching: The Art of Possibility.  The first one, as you may have already noticed is my new blog design.  Kassie, over at Designs By Kassie did it for me.  She is fabulous and I'm loving it!

The second thing is the new Teacher Training Bootcamp that I am particpating in with some fellow teachers out there.  Many of us are working on becoming Google Certified and I'm happy to say I passed the first of five tests.....this first one was on Gmail.  And while I have been using Gmail for quite some time, I'll admit there were quite a few things I didn't either take advantage of or even know about.  So stick around and read about just one of the fabulous features that Gmail has to offer.

 

Now if you have been using Gmail for awhile like I have, you have probably seen the many changes it has been undergoing.  One of my favorites which really helps me get more organized is the Labels feature.  Since I wear multiple hats at my school, I receive emails that fall under a variety of topics.  The labels feature allows me to mark my emails so that I can find them easily later on.  The best part about it, is you can add multiple labels to one email.  

For example, since I'm in charge of all things technology related at my school, I order a lot of things for the teachers at our school.  I use labels to help me keep those organized.  I have the labels for

technology and under that I have additional labels for the different sub-categories that they related to.  Including "teacher iPads", "student iPads", "equipment", etc.   The labels allow me to find what I'm looking for quickly.  And as you can tell from my picture, creating labels and adding nesting titles is super EASY!

Now I was going to create a video tutorial to show you all how to do this, but when I came across this one below, I figured why recreate the wheel?  As a fellow teacher, I'm sure you can all appreciate that mindset.  So without further adio, check out this video and start labeling your emails to increase your productivity!

What are some ways you are going to use the labels feature in Gmail to better assist you at work?

An InLinkz Link-up

Techie Tuesday: Dropbox

Some of you have sent me messages inquiring on how I use certain apps in my classroom with the 1:1 iPad setting.  So today, I want to talk about how I use Dropbox with my kiddos.

In case you didn't know, Dropbox is basically a virtual cloud in which you can upload all sorts of things ranging from documents to pictures and more.  You can share these files with other people, or access them from any device that connects to the internet.  Dropbox is available on the computer at www.dropbox.com or in app form on the iPhone, iPod, iPad and Android products (and more). 

It's safe, it's secure, and best of all it is FREE if you are using their basic subscription. 

Logging into account on iPad

You are given 2 GB with the free plan. This has always been more than enough for my class.  For my classroom setting, I wanted to use Dropbox as another way for students to share their work with me.  In turn, I use it as a place to upload audio files, pictures (commonly pictures of the math notes that I gave for that day), and other files that I want them to access.  I could of course share these things with them through email and Google Drive but I often find that Dropbox is a quick and efficient way for me to do it.  I regularly clean out our Dropbox with files that we no longer need with the exception of our math notes which remain in there all year. 

Cancel this - prevents photos being uploaded.

The first thing I did was create a generic Dropbox account.  (I also have one that is just for my use as a teacher but used a different email.) Since I have access to create email accounts at our school, I was able to create a 5thgrade@ourschooldomain.com email but you could do it using any regular email provider (gmail, hotmail, yahoo) or even use your school email.  I used that email with a generic password when creating our Dropbox account.  After I created the account I then provided the login and password to my students.  Using their iPads, they logged into the account.  I made them all cancel the automatic photo upload so any picture they took on their iPad wouldn't be automatically synced to our Dropbox. 

Easy to upload, create, and select & delete files.

The method is perfect for what I'm using it for.  It gives all of us a central location for things we need in class.  If a student has something on their iPad that doesn't need to be shared with me or the class, they simply use their Google Drive for that instead. 

It's easy to upload things directly from your computer or device.  You can even create folders within your Dropbox to keep things neat and organized. Once you have put files in, you can click on them and choose from a variety of options such as emailing, messaging, etc.  Or you can open the document in another app that you choose from a list. 

If you haven't already used Dropbox I highly recommend you check it out.  Even if you don't have a 1:1 program in place, it can be useful in the classroom and for a teacher!  So check it out today.

Techie Tuesday: DocScan App

Hello Friends!  I'm back to share with you another cool app that you may or may not have heard about. And if you haven't, then trust me when I say, you want to know about it. I learned about it from fellow blogger, Catherine, over at The Brown-Bag Teacher.  If you haven't checked out her blog, I encourage you to do so. 

DocScan is an app which allows you to snap pictures and turn them into PDFs.  The basic app is free but if you want to have more features available to you, it costs only $1.99 to upgrade on your phone or $3.99 on your iPad. Within a matter of minutes of having it, I decided to upgrade so I could export my PDF to different locations.

If you are like me and you have a 1:1 device school this app is AWESOME to allow you to quickly take a picture and send it as a PDF to your student.  It even allows you to decide if you want the PDF to be in color or black and white. You can adjust the brightness of the picture as well. 

What the folder looks like.

Here is an example of how I used it the first time. I took a picture of our Science Lab pages since I typically have to make hard copies for each student.  I created a folder that held both photos of the lab page front and back side.  After I adjusted the cropping (they even let you fix curled pages!), I uploaded my folder to Dropbox.  Since I had put the photos into the same folder, it automatically made it a two page PDF.  After I had the PDF in our class Dropbox, my students were easily able to grab it and open it in Notability (another AMAZING app!).  In Notability they are able to write on the PDF like they would with a pen and paper. After they completed the lab, they uploaded their final assignment onto our class Edmodo page for me to look over and grade.  Easy - easy - easy!!!

I love it because it's easy, saves paper, and allows me to quickly provide my students with what I need them to have WHEN I need them to have it. No more running to the copier room last minute for me!

What the PDF looks like.

My students love it because they get to use their iPad and do what we call App Smash - using multiple apps to complete a project. 

I highly encourage you to check this app out ASAP - and trust me. It's worth the $1.99 or $3.99 (depending on your device) to upgrade. :-)

What apps do you use for PDFs?

Literature Circles - Wiki Style

Literature Circles are a popular activity in many grades, including 5th.  While I, like many teachers, have all the literature circle reflection sheets, I knew I wanted to try something different.  After exploring wikis a bit for my thesis and during my masters program back in 2009, I had finally decided it was time to work with them more by implementing them into my classroom as a means to do a literature study. Now, I must admit, the idea for this wasn't something I picked up on my own but through the book called Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classroom by Will Richardson. This is a wonderful book and I highly encourage you to get a copy when you can. Even though it was last updated in 2010, it still provides useful and relevant information even this day and age of changing technology.  He talked about his experience of using a wiki to do a literature study with his class.

This idea sounded great, as I knew my kids (and I) were tired of the same old worksheet driven literature circles and could use something new and fresh. Without much idea of how and what to put on my pages I began with trepidation into this new world. However, within a day it was easy to see how exciting and engaging this wiki was to my students. That year, we chose a book called Sixth-grade glommers, norks and me in which the main character Allie is entering middle school. This was a book that the students could relate well to, as they themselves would be entering middle school the following year.

When I was thinking of pages to create for the wiki, I used the book as a reference point.  Throughout the book, Allie creates new words to represent situations she is going through. So I thought that would be a great first page to create on our wiki to have the students create words that they made up.  As it stands today, on our "Dictionary" page we have over forty words created by my class of only six students from that year!!! However, because I wanted to have my students discuss with one another the book, I also created a "Chapter Summary" page. On that page we discussed our thoughts and feelings on each chapter and the events in it. The students were required to post one reflection per chapter and one response post in which they respond back to other classmates. Despite having only the requirements of two postings, each students ended up going way above and beyond that.  (You can view all of their discussions here - Discussion Page)

We also discussed book themes and so a new page was born.  The general book themes were listed and then the students were encouraged to again use the discussion tab as a way to communicate about what themes they thought were present in the book.  Some thoughts of themes that fitted really nicely that even I didn't think of!

Additionally, we also created a couple more pages in which we discussed the characters and their attributes and characteristics.  One of my students also came up with a new page called Questions for the Author.  As they were reading the book, they thought of things they would ask the author if they could.  I even sent the author a link to our wiki but sadly never heard back.  Regardless, the students still enjoyed listing what they could ask if given the opportunity.  

While our wiki was pretty basic, I found that my students were much more engaged than with the traditional reflection sheets.  Have you ever used a wiki?  What changes or comments do you have regarding ours?

You can visit our wiki here: Sixth-grade, glommers, norks, and me

Techie Tuesday: Owl Pellets

Every year my students and I dissect owl pellets for one of our Science labs in Life Science.  I purchase my owl pellets from Owl Brand Discovery Kits.  In addition to always being a fair price, they also provide you with free printables.  We watch a quick YouTube video which discusses what exactly a Barn Owl Pellet is since most students mistake it for owl feces. 

After watching the video, I quickly go over how to dissect a pellet carefully.  The students work in groups of two using tweezers and picks to uncover as many bones as possible in their owl pellets.  When they were finished, they spent time sorting the bones and determining which rodent they came from.  In years past, I've always had them use handouts that I provided.  However, this year I purchased and downloaded the app called Owl Pellets which is developed by Carolina Biological Supply (they also have a free version too!).  This app provides charts in which students can classify the bones, a database in which they can enter the data of their discoveries and compare with other students from across the nation.  Additionally, it has videos the students can watch as well. 

After the students sorted and separated out the bones, they then had to try to construct a skeleton on a piece of black construction paper.  The different groups of students would share bones so they could construct as much of a complete skeleton as possible. 


This activity always ends up being one of the class' favorites.  It combines not only science but a hands on opportunity which I find is best when it comes to discovery.  Do you dissect anything in your science class?  Tell me about it below. 

Techie Thursday (delayed): AppsGoneFree

I'm a little late on my Techie Thursday but was so excited about this find that I couldn't wait until next week.  So without further adieu here it is.   Have you heard of AppsGoneFree?  This awesome little app gives you a DAILY list of what paid apps are on special for FREE!

Unlike AppGratis or other ones of it's kind, AppsGoneFree will list more than one app.  As of today, there were 11 apps that were listed for free.  You can also look at past dates and see what apps were free and if they are still available for free, you find that out as well.  

The apps range from educational to art to productivity.  For example, today I was able to download Fiete, which is an interactive picture book that helps children work on their fine motor skills.  Perfect for my 19 month old WHO loves fooling around with the iPad. 

For my students in 5th grade, I downloaded Mozaikr, which will allow them to create mosaics from their photos.  This should be fun to use in art class - not quite sure what I'll do with it but hey I couldn't pass it up. 

It's definitely worth having the notifications sent to you on a daily basis as you never know what will come up.  

Have you ever heard of Apps Gone Free?  What is the best paid App you ever got for free?  What app do you think I should be on the look out for?

Quadrilateral project with the Geoboard app (and a AWESOME Giveaway!)

In math class my students are learning how to identify different types of quadrilaterals and the characteristics that make them all up.  In order to assist them, I created this little handout which they put in their math notebook so they have an easy reference.

Since we have the iPads, I also created a little Quadrilateral booklet project for them to work on.  The project requires the students to create the shapes using the Geoboard app AND be able to identify these shapes in real life and explain how they are use. The students were thrilled to be able to play with the Geoboard app as we've had it on our iPads for sometime but never used it.  Just like if they were using real Geoboards, they have the ability to pick different color rubber bands but unlike the real Geoboards they can also fill in their shapes.  Best part about this app......it's FREE!

The possibilities for using it are practically endless!  Students can represents fractions, figure out area and perimeter, and so on.  It's really easy to use too.  A win win all around. 

You can get a copy of both my free handout and booklet project at my store.  Hopefully your students will enjoy it as much as mine are!



Also, in case you haven't heard or seen it already, my friend, Krystal Mills, over at Lessons from the Middle is having her First Bloggy Birthday!  A bunch of us fellow bloggers got together and donated TONS of products for her to give away ranging in all grade levels.  Head over and enter to win some awesome prize packs whose total worth IS $500!

And don't forget to download the Geoboard App for some virtual rubberband fun! ;-)

Enjoy! 

Techie Thursday: MyHomework App

As my 5th grade class continues the pilot program for the 1:1 iPads which will be in place school-wide next year, we also continue the search for a great homework app.  Of course, each student at my school is provided with an agenda book where they can write out by hand what their homework assignment is.  There are of course pros and cons to this.  In my classroom, I'm all about accountability and responsibility.  So my philosophy was always that the students are RESPONSIBLE to write their homework down.  Of course, as teachers we know that as wonderful of a philosophy that might be, it doesn't always happen.  Which then leads to issues of parents not know what the assignments are, which leads to parent/teacher conferences to try and solve the problem which leads to me having to potentially check EVERY single agenda to make sure students have written down their assignments.  And I'll be honest.....that's just not going to happen.

Sooooooo.....in efforts to save time for us all, still make my students accountable but even more importantly inform parents of what assignments are so they can be sure to provide the support needed at home, I searched out apps for students to record their assignments.  The first app we tested out was called iHomework.  It was nice and had many cool features but I found that it was unreliable at best and didn't work for what I needed.  Many times it would force close, didn't provide a link to parents, tended to confuse students on how to enter in assignments and on top of it all, cost $1.99 per iPad (of course you could get the educator discount if you bought 20 or more of it).  Don't get me wrong - this is probably a perfect app for a high school students or even college students but for 3rd - 8th grade it didn't cut it. However, it may be perfect for some.

So while my students had the option between using the iHomework app or using the traditional paper/pencil agenda, I continued to look.  After doing some research I came across MyHomework.  The app itself is free (however I think if you load it onto a computer it costs money).  The app itself requires students to create a personal login and password (unlike iHomework).  It does request that the students are 13 or older but with parent permission that isn't a problem.  Students have the ability to create different classes (which is great for middle school students) and can enter in Lessons, Assignments and Tests.  They can also download this app onto several devices and it will seamlessly sync between all of them which is what iHomework lacked.  With this ability, my students' parents load the app onto their smartphone or device and login using their child's information.  This way they can see what the assignments are and when they are due.  However, this is only TRUE if the student is recording all the assignments down. 

This is where this app gets EVEN better!  There is also a teacher component available as well (FREE).  As a teacher, I can go in and create my class(es) and add in assignments, lessons, tests, announcements, syllabi, etc.  Students can then search for me and "JOIN" my class.  Instantly providing them with all the information I'm inputting.  When I first signed up for this resource, I still made it the responsibility of the student to input their assignments in.  But I found time and time again that a couple of my students just would not enter them all in.  Which resulted in their parents still not knowing what was due and a lot of incompletes and zeros.  I have since started to input my assignments in daily (it takes me less than 3 minutes!) and still makes my kids accountable for actually doing the work.  Because when it comes down to it, I'd rather them be completing the work instead of just writing it in their agenda.  Again, my students' parents see everything I'm putting in because they either are signed in as their child on their device or they created their own account and "joined" my class.  How awesome is that?!?!

What the students see on their iPads

And again, the best part about this app and all it's fabulous features - it's F-R-E-E!!!  You can't get better than that. :-)

So don't waste anytime - check it out.  (And no - I don't get royalties.....though I should! haha)

Here are the two links you need:

Student Login: https://myhomeworkapp.com/
Teacher Login: https://teachers.io/

When you sign up as a teacher, you need to first input your email and you'll receive an "invitation" via email.  I'm not quite sure why the developer went that route but I found that I received my invitation in a matter of hours of requesting it.  Students can sign up immediately. 

Give it a go and let me know what you think!