I am currently working as a middle school coach.
For newer content - please use the link above. Thanks for visiting!
For newer content - please use the link above. Thanks for visiting!
I am currently working as a middle school coach.
For newer content - please use the link above. Thanks for visiting! To earn a February reward, use the PALS reading strategy with a text students are reading in your classroom. Email me a picture or a short video (if you can) of your students in action! PowerPoint outlining the PALS strategy can be found on the Just In Time PD area OR I have linked it below. Prizes for all who participate.
basic_pals_format.pptx Challenge Week of Jan. 3
Try out one of these technology tools. There are only 179 to choose from:) http://s3.amazonaws.com/convertkit/landing_pages/incentives/000/067/385/original/179-Fantastic-Tools-forSchools-Handout.pdf?1470063190 For reward, email me which one you chose and what you did with it by Jan 9th.
For Christmas, my crazy coach gave to me... a whole blizzard of winter lessons for FREE!
lhttp://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/A-Blizzard-of-Winter-Lessons.shtml free career planning lessons for K-12 and a chance to win some money for technology (new contest to open soon)! www.lenovodreamtodo.com/teachersmaterial Ok, it really can't be December yet because I'm not ready! Anybody else feel like me?? Well, since it is the most wonderful time of year again already, then it's time for me to get myself in gear and get in the spirit of giving! On this 1st day of Christmas, my crazy coach gave to me... A link describing over 35 teaching strategies! http://goo.gl/k7E5DF (You will need your Discovery Education login to see this - It's free! but you will need to email me for the school's passcode. I can't post it on the web!) Check back each day in December for more fun & freebies!
Ok, so I don't know about you all, but I have had a rough few weeks. It's been very busy both at work and at home. My boys have started middle school basketball season, my daughter had a birthday and I have had to be out of town at 3 conferences in 4 weeks and all during benchmark testing time. I feel like I have literally been running in circles. I know that you all have had just as much craziness going on in your lives also. It seems like the stars just don't want to align for us to have as much face to face time these days. So, a session at GaETC really grabbed my attention & I really got excited about what I learned - Gamifying your PD. Are you excited? No? Well, let me explain...
Gamifying has been done with ALL sorts of things these days! You can earn rewards and badges in all sorts of areas these days. Of course, we think of kid games where they kids "level up" when the accomplish certain tasks. I mean, Pokemon Go is full of badges and level ups that kids learn. But these types of badges and rewards aren't only in kid games. How many of you own a fitbit or other fitness wearable? You can earn a badge for being at the top of your friends list in the "Work Week Hustle" or when you meet your goal 3 days in a row. Anybody a Starbucks Gold Card Member? Doesn't it feel good earning those stars? Or how about those Ingles gas perks? Getting that 10 or 20 cents off eases the pain of the grocery bill a little, right? But you get those rewards, perks, badges, because you did something to earn them. Gamifying our PD works in a similar way. When you attend a PL opportunity, or complete a task related to a "Just in Time" PD activity, you will earn a badge for your showcase! Earning badges is a way to keep up with your PL hours and achievements. For now, most badges will be online badges, but as I can afford, I want to give you actual sticker badges to match your online badges. We will need to think of a fun way to display your stickers! Your online badges will be kept in an online showcase. If you are able to come to the PL session this Thursday, I will help you put your 1st badge in your showcase display! I'm pretty excited about the changes in PL coming this month. With a school of our size, it seems to be getting increasingly difficult to have the time for productive PL opportunities. I know you all are exhausted at the end of each day. I'm hoping this will give you a way to have the PL you need, just at the time you need it, but also have the options for attending further topics of interest after school as well. So, I hope to see you all this Thursday & at the end of our time together, I'll show you how to set up your badge in your showcase! This past week was the GaETC (Ga Educational Technology Conference) and it was amazing. I learned so much that my brain is in overdrive! I have so many ideas and things I'd like to do and try at Coker! I filled half of a brand new notebook taking notes on all the new ideas I heard about and tech tools I learned. It truly was a bit overwhelming.
But the final keynote speaker, Vicki Davis (Cool Cat Teacher), had some words of wisdom that really spoke to me & I want to share with each of you. She said that we can't do every new thing we learned, but that we should try first to "innovate like a turtle." We all know the story of the turtle. Slow and steady wins the race. This is how we have to begin when our brains are filled with all the things we want to do but have no idea how we will get it all done. The answer is simple: we won't. Instead, she says we need to pick 3 new things and commit to giving them our attention at least 3 times per week. It sounds simple, but narrowing down 3 things will be the hardest! But I am working on it. I have 2 things I've decided on, but that 3rd one is the hardest! #1 - JUST IN TIME PD - I want to turn professional development into something that gives more teacher control and is more individualized. Getting time in the day to meet together as teams with 7 grade levels, over 30 teachers, and only 3 specials is becoming increasingly impossible. But another quote I wrote down from GaETC essentially says this: We are no longer teaching content for a "just in case" society. Instead we are to prepare learning situations for our "just in time" society. What does that mean? Before, we went to school to learn content and prepare for situations in life just in case we ever needed the information. This is how education and society operated for years. But now, we have Google in our pockets and YouTube tutorials! How many of us have turned to Google for information or watched a YouTube video to show us how to make something? My daughter recently received a kit for making bracelets. We read the instructions, but the bracelet wasn't going very well. So, we got out the iPad, found a YouTube video tutorial, and with a few pauses and rewinds, we had an awesome bracelet, We didn't watch a video 2 months before she got the craft set as a "just in case" measure. NO! We watched the video and learned how to do it the moment we needed the knowledge - "just in time!" This just in time society is the world our students live in and the world we live in! Why shouldn't professional development be the same way? It is my goal over the next few weeks to create more tutorial videos and online professional development opportunities that teachers can CHOOSE from and use when they need them (and review as needed). You will notice a new header at the top of my site-JUST IN TIME PD- this is where the PD options will be housed for us. 2 - AWARDS / Gamifying PD Along with this new "just in time" PD, I want to implement a badge system for our professional development. You will choose your PD based on your own needs, and when you complete a tutorial or PD opportunity, you will earn a badge! These badges will be displayed for you online and I HOPE to get some actual stickers that I can give you as you earn the badges. The badges you earn will be up to you! I am super excited about this and have already started creating our badges! #3 - ???? Well, my quest is to innovate like a turtle, but I can't decide on the final step to get started. There are just too many good ideas in my notebook and in my head!! I am 99% sure on my #3, but I'm not quite ready to share yet. I will leave you with only one hint in the form of a picture below. (Check under blog post.) I want to leave you all with one more quote that I am going to keep in mind daily as things get overwhelming and I get discouraged (as we all do at times) THE ONLY FAILURE THAT IS PERMANENT IS WHEN YOU QUIT. Have courage, keep heart, & don't give up. YOU MATTER. Every day. Every smile. Every child. Who doesn't need more money to fund their classroom wish list? Well, I want to share some info with you I learned about at the GaSTEM conference from a 1st grade teacher in Rome City Schools at their STEM certified Elm Street Elementary School. Mrs. Greenway is a 1st grade teacher and her students are entrepeneurs who run their own business from her classroom (along with the other 1st grade classes). You can check them out on the web! Sugar Kids Beauty sells sugar scrubs and bath salts online, at various events, & at local businesses in Rome. To fund many of the start up costs (and tons of other projects that Mrs. Greenway has going on in her classroom), she has found lots of information on grants that she shared. Listed below are some of her favorite ways to get funding for her class.
$200 Right now - before Christmas Break even!! DEADLINE 11/11 www.rootsandshoots.org/minigrant There is only one prerequisite for this grant and that is to use the link provided to create a map of our community with your students. Fill out the application with a focus on that community map relating to the project you'd like to fund & Mrs. Greenway says they fund all who apply. Easy $200 for your class and have it before Christmas break! You can apply for this grant once each year! Dollar General Literacy Grant http://www2.dollargeneral.com/dgliteracy/Pages/grant_programs.aspx Awards grants up to $4000 for literacy projects. Lots of winners! Grant application begins January 2017! Kids In Need http://www.kinf.org/programs/grants/ Similar mini-grant to what is listed above! Fall dedaline has passed but keep this in mind! GetEdFunding www.getedfunding.com Find info on TONS of grants & save your application so that you can copy and paste for other grants. Think outside the box and how to tie in what you want for your classroom to different subjects and standards. DonorsChoose www.donorschoose.org GREAT resource for getting projects under $400 funded. The website boasts that 90% of all projects under $400 are fully funded. Will require an account & when funded, may involve sending student thank you notes (w prepaid postage from the website). Often have donors that will match donations received to help fund your projects faster. STEMGeorgia www.stemgeorgia.org Shows a running list of contests and grants that are available. Is it really the end of 1st quarter?? Where did the time go? You guys are so amazing! I don't even know how to describe the whirlwind with which we started school and each of you hit the ground running! Our Coker Cubs know they are loved and believed in when they are in our building because of the work each of you do every day! I have some notes to share with you all & will hit the highlights here. Just want to thank each of you for what you do every day for our Coker Cubs.
AMAZING!!! That is how I would describe the things I have witnessed going on at Coker today! Kids have been working hard designing and redesigning and participating in the engineering design process. I have said it before, and I will continue to say it - we have the BEST teachers around! And our kids are pretty GRRREAT, too! I have loved hearing the kids' discussions today as I visited. One precious 1st grader told me she was having so much fun, and she was really having to think, too! Both of our faces beamed! She was proud of what she had done, and I was super proud that she realized that the fun project she was working on was hard work AND she was enjoying every minute of it! Isn't that the way kids are wired? They are curious about things. They are creative! They learn best by inquiry and doing! I've heard discussions about bases and support. I heard conversations about listening and valuing everyone's ideas. Many times I saw students test a design and then make adjustments to their design or even start all over. Man, isn't that a lesson for us all? Your students will go home talking about today as one of those "fun" days at school. And you can go home tonight smiling because your students learned a lot today and had fun doing it because of you! Thanks to each and every one of you who helped make our first time participating in #GASTEMDay such an awesome success! And Hey! We are Twitter famous y'all!
(see below!) |
AuthorAdrian Stone Archives
January 2019
Categories |