Snow Days - It's No Problem!

Snow Jam 2014

Between snow days, furlough days, and President's Day, my students will have missed 6 consecutive days of school. Not to mention the fact that we are giving the Writing exam in 3 weeks!
Yes! Just 3 short weeks. But I can get by with a little help from my friends. Who are my friends you might ask? They are: Edmodo, Google Drive, Remind101, and Learn Zillion to name a few.

In January our class started using Google Drive during writing workshop. Students shared their writing folder with me and gave me permission to edit their work. I can view their writing "real time" and make comments as they are writing. For several of my students, I can have a virtual writing conference. For others, They will sit beside me and we go over their writing together. They are looking at their work on their iPad and I am looking at it on my laptop/iPad. I can highlight places that I want them to focus on and they can make the necessary changes to their work while I am there.

Not wanting to waste any instructional time, I sent out messages to the students via Edmodo and gave them a writing assignment. I also posted a video from Learn Zillion about using "show don't tell" for them to watch. I usually use the math videos from Learnzillion but they have awesome Language videos as well.  Just to make sure everyone was on board, I sent out a message to the parents on Remind101 telling them to have their child check Edmodo for their writing assignment. Once they completed their assignment I asked them to send me a direct message on Edmodo and I would review their work.

So far, so good. I have already held 5 virtual conferences. Yes, there are some students that may not check their messages. I just might have to make a phone call to those students! Did I mention we only have 3 weeks and I'm feeling the pressure?

The neatest thing just happened.  I clicked to view a student's essay while she just happened to be working on it so were were able to use the chat feature to talk back and forth as she was writing.  Ba Da Ba Ba Ba, I'm Lovin' it!

The Videos Are Coming!

Have I mentioned before that Edmodo is a wonderful social platform for flipping your class?  And I don't mean just for communicating with students and parents, for posting assignments, grades, quizzes, videos and what have you.  NO, I am constantly finding it to be a powerful site for professional development!  Just yesterday I read a post from Mrs. Kennedy.  She posted a link to Learn Zillion, a site that has videos based on the common core standards for grades 3-5.  Just about every standard has videos that can be easily used if you are flipping your classroom.  Did I say it has videos?  I mean really good videos! 

Even though Learn Zillion has wonderful videos (and I do mean wonderful) I still want to make my own.  But do I even need to make my own videos? In Why It Has to Be Me Katie Gimbar gives the following reasons teachers should invest the time and energy to create videos for their students: there is a level of trust between the students and teacher, there is accountability that is not there when you outsource your videos, videos can be personalized for your students, and creating your own videos empowers you, the teacher, to effectively make a shift in the way you teach.  So . . . I will continue to work on my videos but while I am perfecting my technological skills, I can still use videos like the ones on Learn Zillion. . . can't I?

By the way, I realized that my video in the previous post will play - it just takes forever to load. I also had better luck posting a video I made for Sneak-A-Peek to School Tube.  One that I had been trying to embed on my class website since school started. I almost gave up since it has been about 4 weeks but I have had 2 new students join our class and the video was a good way to introduce their family to our class.  I don't know why it finally decided to work but I'm glad it did.

"Who dares to teach must never cease to learn"  ~John Cotton Dana