Today was another full day of Professional Development. However, today was filled with lots of ways to engage and motivate students through technology and fun hands on activities.
Session1- What's New in ELA?
This session focused on
Glogs. They introduced the benefits of creating Glogs and how to get to the Glogs created on each Unit of our Treasure books on our school website. These ladies worked hard over the summer to link Discovery Education videos, crossword puzzles, powerpoints, links to Treasure activities and links to inquiry lessons that go with each story. These Glogs will foster teamwork, drive new interest levels around subjects, and bring a fun learning experience to the classroom. Click
here to access the Glogs.
Session 2- Flipcharts for ELA and Math
This session focused on flipcharts created by one of our Tech Integration Specialist for grades 3-5. She created flipcharts that included engaging lessons for each Unit of study in our Treasures text. The flipcharts included pre and post assessments, a vocabulary activity, art integration, comprehension skills and a Spelling lesson. The flipcharts are mostly geared toward small group instruction, but can also be used for whole group. The flipcharts can be accessed
here.
Another resource she shared with us is Flocabulary.
Flocabulary produces educational hip hop music to teach vocabulary, reading, social studies, math and science. My students are going to love this site!
Session 3- From Moaning to Motivated with Movies
This session focused on using Technology to motivate students to write. Some helpful websites that were introduced were
Moviefone,
You Tube and
iTunes. The first trailer she showed was "
For the Birds", which was found in iTunes. This trailer would be a great way to get students to begin discussing feelings and emotions. This trailer is awesome!
The best movie shown and the boys in your class will love it was "
Oktapodi". This movie could be used to get students talking about Characters, Problem and Solution. You could even introduce Cliffhanger.
She then introduced us to 4 Square Writing, which was new to me. I use Thinking Maps when teaching writing, but I loved the
graphic organizer for 4 Square Writing because it was much more age appropriate.You can also use it to retell a story by changing the First to Setting, Next to Characters, Then to Problem and Last to Solution.
Session 4- "Centering" Around ELA Strategies
This session introduced Anticipation guides, which are great to use for making Predictions on a text or to Pre-assess what students know. Then was a Literary Report Card where students choose a character from the story and write three character traits to describe that particular character. They then find supporting details from the book to show why that character received that grade. The teachers or the students can decide on the grade.
Here are a few photos of the handouts that were given. Sorry! They are not the best pictures.
Anticipation Guide
Somebody/Wanted/But/So- ELA Strategy
After the Skype connection, students created a double bubble map comparing and contrasting Louisiana and Ohio. 
After the Skype connection, students created a double bubble map comparing and contrasting Louisiana and Ohio. 
