Coffee, Teach, Grade, Repeat!

Snapchat in the Classroom? (Image Source: Snapchat)      Snapchat is one of the most popular social media apps. Snapchat is a social storytelling platform that lets you easily talk with friends, view Live Stories from around the world or in your location, and explore news in Discover. When I asked my students mostly ever student with a phone had a Snapchat account, but 3. Even I have a Snapchat. I enjoy sharing my stories with my friends. KQED wrote an article Getting Started with Snapchat in your Classroom . Before I read this article I never really thought about Snapchat being an appropriate Social media app for a classroom, but after reading this article I really would like to start one or something like it for my class next year. I think it will be a cool way to communicate with the students. The article provided many ways to implement the app into your classroom. Here are some of the easy ways listed to start incorporating Snapchat into your classroom t...

Digital Tattoo Image Source: Parent Info      A tattoo is defined as a mark (a person or a part of the body) with an indelible design. Indelible means a mark that that cannot be removed. Have you ever thought about your "digital tattoo?"  The marks you have made on the Internet that cannot be removed.  Interestingly enough, my thoughts on tattoos follow my same thoughts on my Digital Tattoo. I always said if I was going to get a tattoo, it was going to have to be something very meaningful to me. Especially because it was a mark on my body I cannot remove. I thought about it multiple times but I could not think of something I wanted on my body forever, therefore I have no tattoos. Plain Jane, I know! My same mindset follows my Digital Tattoo. Since I was a young girl I knew I wanted to become a teacher. It was my passion. Social media was on the rise my freshmen year of college. Our professors quickly warned us to be careful what we post on social medi...

Professional Learning Network       I have recently been working on building my Professional Learning Network. I quickly learned the importance for teachers to not only have useful resources, but to have their own “network” of fellow educators.  It has been amazing to see how much I have learned in the little time I have been networking. It has helped me become  a better teacher. In my previous class I had to create a professional twitter page. After diving deeper into my PLN, I found amazing education accounts to follow, here are some that I am following... (Image Source: All Personal Photos)      When I became more proactive with my PLN I realized Twitter is a beneficial resource. All of the organizations I follow post so many research articles and activities. I have read so many insightful articles and I have found many resources that I can use in my classroom. One resource that impacted me was  W...

Nearpod Being a part of this class this semester has opened my eyes to all of the amazing web tools that are out there. There were so many to choose from I found myself checking out all of them until my teacher-friend sent me a text asking if I have ever used Nearpod. I told her no and her response was I needed to check it out! Once she sent me that message it was a no brainer, I chose Nearpod.  (Image Source: Nearpod Website)  What is Nearpod? Nearpod is an interactive classroom tool for teachers to engage students with interactive lessons.  A teacher can create presentations that can contain interactive features such as Virtual Field Trips, 3D Objects, Videos, Images, Drawing-Boards, Web Content, Quizzes, Polls, Open Ended Questions + more!  You can create your own lesson or you can c hoose from thousands of free or paid lessons from expert educators and our educational partners.  You can also customize any lesson to fit your students’ ...

News and America's Kids As our world and technology change rapidly so does the manner in which we receive our daily news. We now have Facebook live, and Snapchat stories, along with twitter conversations. We get information a lot faster than we ever did and honestly, it can be harsh at times. We know the information we are fed depends on the news station we are watching. Although the news is suppose to be informational, we know the stories that are being shared are still being told from someone's perspective. As I was searching the researched based sites provided to us, I couldn't help but be intrigued by this topic. I know I view the news through many different lenses, a woman, a mother, a wife, a teacher, etc, but I always wanted to know how kids view the news. As I was scrolling through Common Sense Media this title spoke volumes to me,  News and America's Kids: How Young People Perceive and Are Impacted by the News , and it was then I knew exactly what I would ...

Active Learning: A School Year in Six Words Summing up a school year in 6 words is challenging yet engaging! My group and I examined an active learning assignment done by students at Coonley School. Students from first to seventh grade were asked to sum up their school year in a six word Memoir. The  students were provided were the following prompts... Tell something you like about Coonley What activity did you really enjoy this school year? Write about yourself Give advice to others The students then used Google slides to share their memoir. Some inserted pictures or drawing they thought tied well with their memoir. This is active learning because it engaged students in deep thinking rather than surface learning. It promotes higher order thinking skills. The students had to analyze their school year and create their memoir.  (Image Source: Padlet) We started our Padlet our with a summary of the activity. Then we listed the active learning traits displa...