Month: April 2020

Teaching Grammar Online

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Nothing like being sheltered in place to force one to try new online tools! In my classroom, the technology and online tools I use are Google Classroom, Kahoot, Quizlet, and Padlet. So far in the past two weeks I have used Flipgrid and Quill.org (both new to me). Before moving online, I was very aware of how much time students spent in front of a screen. My middle school students travel to seven different classes a day, and if each of those classes had 20-30 minutes on their Chromebook, that would be 140-210 minutes of screen time just in the school day. That doesn’t factor in their cell phone use or homework later in the evening that might require a computer. Our school’s history, math, and science textbooks have now all gone digital. So I was old-school, having students bring novels and paper to school. (Yes, students could read an ebook or follow along in an audiobook when we had independent reading time, and all essays were typed, but I really thought about how much …

First Week of Distance Learning

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Last week was supposed to be students’ first week with the novel The Pearl, finishing the novella this week. But last week was the first week with distance learning, and there was no way I was going to be able to teach the class novel remotely, even if I did get access to the book. So my teaching partner and I planned to have students create a video of their favorite independent reading book they read this year and upload it to Flipgrid. (You can find the assignment here if you’d like to try it.) Since last week and this week assignments are optional, I had about half of my students make videos and submit. It was so good to see their faces and talk about their favorite books. My teacher heart was happy. (You can see my original plan in pencil and my new plan in pen.) There were a lot of ups and downs last week, and next week we go to “distance learning for all,” which means assignments count, it’s not optional. …