National Library of Virtual Manipulatives

February 2, 2009 @ 3:34 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

National Library of Virtual Manipulatives

This is an EXCELLENT site to use with your students during math instruction. It covers our math strands, which include Number & Operations, Algebra, Geometry, Measurement, and Data, Analysis & Probability. What’s even better is that each of these categories is broken down by grade level chunks (PreK-2, 3-5, 6-8, 9-12) so the manipulatives you are using are suitable for your students. Some of the ways that I have used the site with my students is to teach factor trees, equivalent fractions, and transformations.

So my question to you is this: After viewing the site, what are some of the tools that you can use with your students? If you have used this site with previous classes, which tools did you use with your students? Was the tool effective in helping your students understand the concept better?

Comments

Teacher’s Blogging? Yes, YOU can do it!

February 2, 2009 @ 3:30 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

Before you can expect your students to blog, it might be helpful (although not mandatory!) to have a blog of your own. This will allow you to get a feel for how a blog works so that you can better prepare your students to use them in the classroom. Now that you’ve decided to create a blog, what will its purpose be?

Communicate with parents: Knowing that we’re all busy teachers, this might be an easy way for you to share with parents what students are doing in your class each day or each week if you do not want to commit to posting on a daily basis. Perhaps you want to highlight something special that is happening in your class, such as a unit-of-study, a guest speaker’s visit, or upcoming events. Your posts do not have to be extremely long, so don’t feel as though you have to write a book each time you post. :-) A bonus to having this type of blog is the fact that parents can comment directly to your post and you can start building those valuable relationships with your parents.

Communicate with peers: Much like this blog, it has been designed to provide teachers with tips on the different ways technology can be used within their classroom and allows for a discussion to ensue through the comment feature. I chose to create this blog because educational technology is a topic that I strongly believe in and want to see more teachers using in their classrooms. Choosing a topic you are passionate is vital to creating this type of blog. You can also create blogs for grade level discussions on a variety of topics, such as field trips, tutoring, weekly homework assignments, lesson plans and much more. School level committees can use blogs to discuss action plans, meeting dates, and to post related Internet links.

Showcase student work: Rather than just having little Billy run home to tell their mom or dad about something great they did in school day, why not use a blog to tell the whole world about the awesome things that Billy is doing, along with the rest of your students? Post work samples, videos, or pictures that exemplify the learning that is taking place in your room. This would be a wonderful way to broaden the audience of your students and to allow them to receive a wide range of feedback from their peers, as well as from people all over the world.
A couple things to take note of when it comes to using blogs:

  1. Update: If you want your blog to become a tool that parents, peers or students visit, it is important that it’s updated on a regular basis. How often you do this is up to you, but keep in mind that people will stop visiting it if it is never updated.
  2. Student Confidentiality: When posting student work samples, remove any identifying information. Their first name is okay, but do not post their first and last name. If you post pictures of activities from your classroom, do not identify students by name, either.

If you would like to create your own blog, you may want to try:

Once you’ve created your blog, I’d love to see it! If you have questions, I’d love to answer them! If you have any comments, I’d love to hear them! Please comment below. :-)

Comments

Blogging in the Classroom

February 2, 2009 @ 3:19 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

Has anyone ever read “Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms” by Will Richardson? I’ve currently only read the section on blogging in the classroom and I’ve come to the realization that even though I have used blogs with my students over the past several years, I haven’t been using them effectively. I required my students to post a response to their blog every two weeks. Sometimes I would post a question for them to respond too and other times they would choose a topic of their choice. I did realize that when they were given the freedom of what to write about, they were more apt to complete their post by the due date. However, that was it. Nothing ever happened from that point on. I tried to build relationships by having my students respond to one anothers posts, but they did little more than the dreaded “I agree” or “That’s cool!” comment.

Now that I have a better focus on how blogging can be done at Grapplings‘ transforming level, I’m eager to implement them with my students this upcoming year. I hope to use them as any or all of the following things:

  • e-portfolios to display student work with reflections
  • to publish writing samples, across the curriculum, to gather feedback (what worked well, what needs improvement) on their use of the 6-Traits
  • literature circles to collaborate and discuss a book the group is reading

So, my question to you is this: How do you use blogs with your students? I would also love to see your class blog so please post the link, too! :-)

Comments