Tech Tuesday on a Monday: Using Gmail for Student Email Accounts

I didn't intend for this to be it's own post, but as I was writing my post about using a program called Piazza in the classroom, I realized how important this was on it's own if you didn't already know how to use it. Using technology in the classroom is awesome, but many times we come to the realization that for every single student account we need to have an email for them. In high school and maybe even middle school for some of you out there, this isn't a problem; but many of my elementary kids don't have email. Even if they do have email, maybe you don't want them to be using it in school. Who knows what is on there!

An easy way to have different email accounts for each student is to use your ONE gmail account. 

For instance, my gmail is misshayden26@gmail.com. When I wanted to get all ten of my students Haiku Deck accounts, I used my gmail to set it up. 

By giving each student the email of misshayden26+InsertIdentifier@gmail.com, they all have their "own" email address, but all correspondence goes to my one account. You don't have to do anything online for this to work, simply tell your students their assigned email address.  Gmail does not recognize anything after the "+". For my students this summer, I simply used "Student1" and changed the number for each student. For the students I work with all year, I will use their names as identifiers. 

When the email comes to your inbox, you can see who it is for:

You can see that the email is to "misshayden26+David@gmail.com", but it and all of the other emails are still sent to the single email account. 

This is just a very simple tip that can help a lot in your classroom. When I found out about it a few years ago, my mind was blown! 

Is there a simple tip that made a big difference in your classroom?

Hope everyone is have a good end to their summer! I  know that Chloe and I are so excited to finally get to sleep in this weekend. She is doing a bit of napping to make up for her early morning as we speak. 

Happy teaching!

Now Introducing: Tech Tuesday

One of the things that I strive to do most with my teaching is to involve technology. From my student teaching experience through my first two years of teaching I have been in Title I schools. Especially for these students, I think that it is important that we give them experiences using technology so that they have those 21st century skills that are vital for them in the future. I have found a lot of new technology resources that teachers can use in the classrooms and want to be able to share them, so here goes nothing!

I want to be sure to be sharing ideas, but also want to take them to include some basic tutorials. Two of the people that impacted my teaching life the most are my mentors Kelly and Mitzi. They both love to incorporate technology, but Mitzi especially can sometimes be a bit daunted from figuring things out on her own. Here's to helping all of the Kellys and Mitzis in the world get some technology going in their classroom!

Wordless Wednesdays: Haiku Deck

This summer has been off to a crazy start! More to come about this in a post later this week. For now, I'm linking up with Sugar and Spice for Wordless Wednesdays:

Today we are using an app called Haiku Deck in class! More to come about this later...

What technology have you found to incorporate into your classrooms?

Five For Friday: Young Scholars Edition

Happy Friday Y'all!

Hope everyone has had a great week and start to their summer! The end of the school year and start of the summer was a blur for me. I had been doing so well with actually updating the blog (as opposed to my first year teaching) and then it got away from me!  Hoping to get better throughout the summer which is already half way over for us. :( Can you believe it?

This summer I've been fortunate enough to be working with our new programs summer kickoff, Young Scholars. We all know that traditionally, students who come from culturally and economically diverse backgrounds are generally less represented in our populations of gifted students. Young Scholars aims to find these students, immerse them in different learning opportunities that make them really think outside of the box, and to then hopefully change the statistic. (My words, not theirs). 

In honor of surviving the first two weeks (out of three!) of Young Scholars, i'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday!

Here goes nothing!

The summer curriculum we are using for Young Scholars focuses on Systems, specifically on Wetlands. We have talked about all sorts of systems from families, to life cycles, to our classroom, and finally to wetlands.  On our first day we decided how we would experiment with our seeds and also made "Gardens in a Glove" to watch as the program progressed.

It's really easy if you haven't done it before, but here is a Link with directions for Garden in a Glove from the Kansas Farm Bureau. There are lots of different ones online, but this is what we used. 

One of the systems that we looked at in depth was the water cycle. We played an awesome water cycle game and made bracelets to track where we went as a "drop of water". 

In the picture  you can see the station signs that I used for each of the stations, the station specific dice, and an example of one of the bracelets that the students created. I paired the students up and sent them to start at the stations. They took the specific color bead for their station  (see the bottom of the sign) and then rolled the dice. The dice told them what station they should go to next. They then grabbed a bead for their new station and rolled again. Each time they rolled the dice, it explained what process they were going through (as a water droplet) and where they needed to go next or if they were staying. Each time they rolled, they got a new bead for their bracelet. 

There are a lot of different places with directions for this activity, but I used the one from the National Park Service. I printed out a blank die template onto pieces of cardstock and wrote it all out. I used a different color of Sharpie to coordinate with the bead used for each station. At the bottom of each station sign, I taped the colors of beads that they would potentially use at that station. 

The kids (even the boys) LOVED this activity and their new bracelets. Even one of my most reluctant boys said, "this looked like a lot of work, but it was actually a ton of fun!". Music to my ears! :)

Another thing that we played around with this week was an app called Haiku Deck. We love it! The students that I am working with are rising fourth and fifth graders and they have been doing so great with this App. They researched Wetlands by looking through some books and then are presenting their information in a Haiku Deck. It's a really simple app to use and their presentations are beautiful! I will be sharing some next week. 

The app gives them different layouts for each slide and has a search tool so they can find images that go with their pictures.

 It also lets them do a bit of customization from deciding on white or black font and then also choosing one of six different fonts for the whole Haiku Deck. This is a huge  relief to teachers who get frustrated with students taking the most time on trying to figure out which font and color they like best out of the 100 different options. 

We also went ahead and created a class mural about everything that we have learned so far! It was great to actually have some time not focusing on tests to be able to let the kids get creative! We have a dinosaur expert in here so our mural is similar to a timeline. We started in the prehistoric times with the dinosaurs that lived in the wetlands and continued to get closer to present day eventually showing our wetland as a Walmart and parking lot. It was great to see the kids all working together on this! 

Last but not least is our field trips next week! Because of the "Arctic Vortex" that was supposed to come last week, we had to reschedule but next week we are taking two awesome field trips!  The first is to a place called Dyke's Marsh in Alexandria, VA. The students will get to have a boating experience, test water quality, learn about boating, and go on a hike. The next field trip will be to Kenilworth Gardens in Washington, D.C. So excited to see what the students get out of these trips! 

I also have to share this super cute bulletin board that is in my friend Lauren's classroom. Love the interactive wheels on the board! 

What have you all been up to this summer? Any one else doing summer school and trying to find ways to make it fun?

Five for Friday!

WOW. This week has been really long. Welcome to SOL testing. Haven't been on here all week. But I didn't want to miss out on Five for Friday with Doodle Bugs Teaching, so here goes nothing!

We are an Success for All school. There are certainly some great things about the program, but at this time of year, myself and the kids are starting to get a bit frustrated with the same thing every day. On Wednesday, all of my fourth graders were at Jamestown and this meant that the best plan for SFA would be to do an alternative project with my fifth graders! 

Since we are reading a Wrinkle in Time right now, we are creating our own planet and then writing about it. Figuring out how to show the reader our planet in our writing instead of telling about it is certainly going to be exciting! I can't wait to see how they turn out! Here is some of our planning:

Students have to answer a bunch of questions about their planet and then have a few other things to do to complete their projects. I think the writing is really going to push them. If you want to check out the project, head on over to the TPT store and see my Wrinkle in Time Planet Creation Project!

It has really been a LONG week of SOL testing. So far this week I have tested third, fifth, and sixth grade math. Being a specialist at this time of the year is hard! I miss seeing my math kids! :( Although we can't read during testing, we can read after! During the past two days week I have managed to read two great ones! 

Today's book of choice was Wonder by R.J. Palacio

What a read! I couldn't put it down and was crying at my desk. Our county uses this as one of the fifth grade reading titles and I see why! We don't use the reading curriculum since we are an SFA school but I will definitely be assigning this as reading with my students next year. It teaches you so much!

Yesterday's choice was Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson. 

This was another excellent book! A colleague had a class set in her classroom that she had never read. Our library just got it in and I couldn't put it down! What an excellent book. I read for four hours last night and stayed up way later than I should have because I had to see what Isabel's fate was. I highly recommend it and I will be getting the second book in the series, Forge from my library this weekend, AMAZING!

I am also proud of myself for getting so much done this week! At the beginning of the year I made SOL checklists to help me make sure that I covered everything with my kids. I teach 4th and 6th grade math at the same time and sometimes needing an at a glance way to make sure I was getting everything done. I wanted to go ahead and make this for the other subjects as well, but this year got away from me. I finally motivated myself this week and realized that one of my buyers on TPT is one of my sorority sisters from Radford, what a small world!

Finally, I am so very excited for this weekend! I get to enjoy some relaxation but also will be going to my Little's Bridal Shower on Sunday. I am so excited to see her and give her a gift that I believe will be quite entertaining. More about that next week! 

Now it's time for me to get back to that relaxing thing. Hope everyone has a wonderful Memorial Day weekend! 

Happy teaching y'all!

Mathematical Monday: Blowing Bubbles to Learn About Circles

Today I am linking up with I Heart Recess  for Mathematical Monday to share one of my most favorite math activities that we do all year long! I have done this activity the past two years and I... my kids love it. My math coach told me about it last year and I now have brought it to my new school and done it with my TAG students and some of the fifth graders. It is so much fun!

 

Educators like to have pi day and to use food to study circles. I love pi day too, but many schools are changing to where you can no longer give students food. Because of this, this is a great alternate or additional activity to give your students some time to have fun with circles on a hands on way. Not only do they have a blast, but boy your desks will never be cleaner!

Materials Needed: liquid hand soap, straw for each student, measuring tapes (the ones that tailors use), a cup or measuring cup, and cleared off desks. 

I make up a bucket of the soapy solution (just some liquid soap and water (Dawn works well)) and go ahead and pour some (a small cup or measuring cup works well) on an area where all students can see so that I can model the activity. I have a straw and put it down in the middle of some suds(it is important that you water is very sudsy). You want to make sure that you are holding the straw straight up and down. Then, you should blow lightly and a large bubble will appear on the desk. Once the bubble pops, show students how to measure the diameter and how you expect them to record it. 

Once your expectations are set and students are aware of how to do it, set them off! Put a scoop of the bubble solution on each desk. They will want to spread it around and then go ahead and start trying to blow bubbles. 

This is one of my fifth graders blowing his bubble, they get really big!

Another excellent bubble blown!

 This student  is measuring her diameter, you can see the ring of suds that they measure really well int this picture!

Important Things to Remember:

1. Make sure the straw is straight up and down when you try to blow.

2. Make sure you are sticking your straw into some suds.

3. If you already have a bubble partially  blown and want to make it bigger, put the straw straight up and down on the desk and drag it over to the edge of the bubble. Once it is touching, you can start blowing to make it larger. 

4. Make sure you keep track of what side of the straw has been touching the desk and what side you have been blowing with. Nobody wants to taste the soap! 

5. If there are not many suds on the desk, they can use their hands to scoop all of the mixture back to the middle of the desk.

6. A 5 minute practice bubble blowing session (without measuring the diameter each time) is always fun a good way to make sure students are ready to go. 

I have done this activity with two fifth grade classes. Both times it has been very successful, but there are always a few students that say they can not get a bubble. For these students, I demonstrate on their desk and then take a scoop of just suds from the top of the mixture to put onto their desk. They normally get it right afterwards. It will be a hectic lesson for you, your job will be to scoop more sud mixture onto their desks and they will always be asking for it. The hard work pays off though, with an excellent lesson and a ton of fun!  After a certain amount of time (I generally give them 5 minutes of practice and 10 minutes of blow and record time), have the students clean up. I then have them do the actual calculations with the circumference formula to find the circumference of the their bubble circles. Largest circumference gets a prize! 

I definitely recommend doing this activity with your students if you study the area or circumference of circles. It's a ton of fun. Just make sure you practice a bit with the bubble mixture before the lesson.

Happy Teaching Y'all!