Happy New School Year!

The beginning of the school year always seems to fill my mind up so much that I walk around in a haze. The haze is slowly dissipating and my mind is starting to work again! I am excited to challenge myself this year to keep using technology in my classroom. So far I have been using the Smartboard to help teach and practice math concepts and have set up reading listening centers on ipods. I also created a film with my class where each student set a goal for the year. It was a fun project which we did together on the Smartboard. It introduced my students to film-making and got them excited to be making films this year. As always I am inspired by my colleagues and other Global Learners and am looking forward to another great year!



cross-posted at: http://principianteglobal.blogspot.com/

Research Writing with Podcasts

At the end of the year my students have been growing a little too comfortable with each other, me, and everything we do regularly in the classroom. The best thing to do seems to spice things up and add a little more variety to our learning! That's why I decided to have my students publish their expository paragraphs in a new way. They wrote about a topic they researched on the internet and with books. They created podcasts to publish their work. This motivated them to complete their paragraphs in a timely fashion and to do a good job with them. They loved recording their voices, even if most of them were a bit nervous at first. We used iPods with iTalks to create some voice memos. I then posted them on my website. Next we are going to listen to each podcast and the students are going to help assess each others' work using a rubric from Write Source for expository writing. I found this was an easy and fun way for students to publish their writing. Check them out on our classroom website. Does anyone have any other ideas on fun ways for students to publish writing?

lesson plan