Five on Friday

1.  Educators hate reinventing the wheel , that's why this tip that I have come across will be worth a million.  You have put a great deal of thought into how you want to organize and set up your Google Classroom; and, it 's a pain to have to created and organize several classes.  Wouldn't it be amazing if we could have a template for our Google Classrooms?  Well guess what?  We can!  All you need to do is navigate to your Classroom dashboard, choose the class you want to copy.  Click on the three dots you see in the right hand corner of the classroom icon and then choose copy.  Before you do this you may be asking exactly what will copy and what will not.  I found that  items that will copy are the title of the class (you can change this afterwards), the section if you have noted one, the description of the classroom, the topics, and the course subject.  Also, any assignments, questions, and quizzes will also be copied as drafts with no due date.  You will have to go back in and edit these as you wish and schedule them to be posted.  Things that do not copy over are students, co-teachers, teacher announcements,  and any student posts on assignments and questions.  Please feel free to reach out to your ITRT if you need help in setting up your perfect classroom and copying it.

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2.  Years ago Amherst had access to a tool called Inspiration.  With budget cuts and upgrades of computer systems we lost that tool.  When we moved to using Thinking Maps as a division, I often grieved the loss of Inspiration.  I can stop grieving now as I have stumbled across a great tool that would make it easier for students to digitally create Thinking Maps using technology that Amherst Veteran Teachers will recognize closely resembles our old Inspiration software.    The best part is that this FREE tool can store the maps of the students in their Google Drives!  

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3.  As I was thinking about a Google doc idea that I wanted to share with you this week I was browsing through my resources and came across an online site that I had bookmarked.  I pulled up this AMAZING site that has tons of hyperdocs.  I am linking the page with the literature hyperdocs.  Please browse this site and let your ITRT know if you would like to download  one of these and tweak it to fit the needs of your classroom.  

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4.  STEAM is not merely about engineering or making.  STEAM is all about problem solving in creative means by combining the disciplines of science, technology, engineering, art, or math.  One idea is to bring literature into your math class.  At this time of year we are focusing on place value.  Here are some books you can begin with.   All of these books can be found on Amazon.  When you are finished reading, have your students show what they know by  using life size base 10 blocks.  Here is a site that shows you how to make them.  So cool!  BTW,  the site that shows you how to make these blocks is geared for kindergarten.  Please do not let that throw you.  The hands on strategy can be used in any elementary grade.  

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5.  Friday at the Movies -  I really enjoyed Dr. Hodge's message at Convocation.  I enjoyed it so much that I went to YouTube to see if he had uploaded it at some point in time.  I found others that he had uploaded.  This is one that I truly enjoyed.