Week of April 14, 2008

Yay! Testing is over and we can get back to our normal schedules.

This week was spent in our 7th Grade Social Studies classroom. The students have been learning about U.S. immigration. They studied about places where different people had immigrated from and where and how they entered the country.

As a culminating activity to the lessons. the teacher usually has the students create immigrant scrapbooks. The students are assigned a country to immigrate from and write letters, find pictures, and write about contributions to the United States from those countries. They write and cut and then paste it all onto to construction paper. This year we did it all digitally!!

I created a wiki using Wikispaces for Papago Social Studies. The home page contained the information the students needed to completed their project - instructions, a checksheet and some pre-selected websites. I also created a sample page so that they could visualize what their wiki page would look like when completed.

The students researched their immigrant group, created their own page, wrote their letters, and added graphics with annotations. You can view their wiki pages at PapagoSocialStudies.

This was their first experience at using this type of Web 2.0 tool. Hopefully we can add to their wiki experience soon!

I also did a PowerPoint training with the reading coaches on Friday. We covered a variety of things such as giving effective presentations, adding video and audio, adding backgrounds, using notes, and printing handouts. Several of them are anxious to get creative!

Week of April 7, 2008

The mornings this week were filled with AIMS testing and a closed down campus. In the afternoon Ms. Le, a second grade teacher, and I co-taught the butterfly lesson and activities that I had down previously in another classroom. There was also helping teachers with their projector training, setting up projectors for lessons, and writing their SES lessons to integrate technology.

Week of March 31, 2008

AIMS testing is next week and the teachers and students are still working hard on reviewing content in preparation for testing. My week was filled with training on creating PPT presentations and using document cameras for Career Ladder lessons. I worked on planning a social studies lesson for 7th grade and adapting the butterfly lessons for 2nd grade with the teachers. There was lots of time for observations and reflecting with the language coach on the observations. I also sat in on the grade level PLC's this week which helps me get to know the teachers a little better and find ways we can better utilize technology in their classrooms.

Week of March 24, 2008

Well, we have returned from a 2 week break and it is always a little slow getting back into the swing of things. The teachers and students are all busily reviewing for the AIMS test in two weeks. I spent time this week helping teachers plan and create instructional posters for bulletin boards, taking pictures of their classrooms for displays, and helping the computer teacher plan some lessons for using blogs in Gaggle.net.

On Friday I went over to Larry C. Kennedy school to observe their math lab. They have some really great ideas. I am planning on meeting with Rachelle to brainstorm some ways we could reconfigure our middle school lab to make it work more effectively for te students next year.