I decided I wanted to do something fun and new with my 6th graders this year when teaching about President Nixon. I found myself wondering what life would have been like for historical figures if they were to have cell phones and smart devices during his or her life time. Would their impact have been greater. Would they have been able to accomplish more. I searched the internet for a cell phone template that I wanted to use but could not find one that included everything I wanted to do. I decided to make the template for my students to use next week. This week, I am beginning my unit on Nixon's foreign policy and geopolitics. I know, this doesn't sound interesting but trust me, it will be. Life is too short to not enjoy what I teach so it will be fun for the students and informative. Students already have some background knowledge of Nixon due to learning about the Vietnam War. However, this week, we will dig deeper into his foreign policy and his unfortunate scandal. The plan is to teach the background knowledge and when students are finished learning about Nixon, they will design Nixon's smart phone. I plan to use the smart device template as a form of assessment in order to see what the students learned about Nixon. The template I created includes space for 9 apps, contacts, text messages, and a call log featuring missed, received, and sent phone calls. I am hoping this goes over well and can be used for other historical figures. The other template assignment I created last year, worked very well and the students thoroughly enjoyed it. If you'd like to check out the I have not yet taught this but I think it is going to go well and I am excited. I will report back after next week to see how it goes. If you haven't checked out my. I am having a 10% off sale between now and Friday. This is available on my Teachers Pay Teachees website It has been a while since I wrote and for that, I apologize. It has been a crazy school year considering school started on August 1st. Yes, you read that correct, August 1st. As Thanksgiving break is nearing, I cannot imagine how ready the students are as I feel I need a little break as well. So how did I spend my day off today. Writing lesson plans and making items for my classroom of course. I enjoy it when I don't feel like I am on a time crunch. When I can just sit back, listen to music, and work, I truly enjoy it. However, that'll be a post for another day. Today, I am going to share with you the Who Dun It. After talking to a colleague, she sparked my interest by explaining that she set up Archduke Ferdinand's murder as a mystery for students to solve. I continued to brainstorm ideas of how to make this work in my classroom and when I pulled it off, the kids loved it. The set-up: The first thing I did, was scour the internet for primary sources to use as clues. I did not want students to just see a crime scene. I wanted them to investigate using the skills I have been teaching them this year. I wanted students to be able to analyze and make observations and inferences as to what happened and to whom it happened. Once I found a variety of clues including newspaper clippings, eye witness accounts, photos, and even a mugshot. I cut them out and glued them onto construction paper. I laminated them but quickly realized a laminator and construction paper do not mix very well. Johnson, this is falling apart. Next year, I am gluing them on cardstock and laminating. Oh well, you live and you learn. Of course no clue is legit without a classified envelope or folder. Then, I begged and borrowed enough clipboards so each group could have an official clipboard when they began their activity. Johnson, you spelled 'done' wrong. Kids can be so literal sometimes ; Within their groups, students went from station to stay and opened the envelopes. I had 6 groups so I had 6 stations set up with clues inside the envelopes. It was so great to hear the conversations students were having and I knew they were truly engaged and having a blast. To this day, 3 months later, life is too short to be generating qr codes can still tell you everything about the murder of Archduke Francis Ferdinand. Isn't having fun and learning what it really is about, in the end. My amazing partner, the language arts teacher, paired up with me to make a culminating activity in which students had to write a news report about the murder based on the clues they had pieced together in my class. This was probably one of the most fun days I have ever had teaching. While yes, it did take a few hours for me to get everything together, I had so much fun doing it. Now, other than having to relaminate, I have a great activity I can continue to use and tweak each year. The clues and worksheet will be available on my Teachers Pay Teachers website at a later date. Learning Targets is a great strategy to utilize in the classroom. You may not be familiar with learning targets so I'll spend a little time on this blog post explaining them. A learning target is the key information you want your students to learn. I like to write mine this way. Learning targets should be displayed and reviewed in the classroom. I have my white board divided into sections with one area designated to my learning targets. After the bell ringer welcome workwe will tackle the learning target together. I like to double underline the verbs and underline the concepts using two different colored markers. I wish I had started using them earlier. The learning targets made a complete difference. Students were more engaged when they discovered why we were learning something and what exact skills I wanted them to walk away with. Unpacking the learning target is when myself, or a student, guides the class and walks through the learning target by asking for the verbs and the key concepts students found in the target. This is a great springing board for further discussion. I have used learning targets for the past 3 years and I feel that they truly make a difference. This year, I wanted to spruce up my white board for my learning targets. I decided to do a play on words kind of. I blew up an image of Rosie the Riveter which I got from loc. I printed both of them out and laminated them. With only 9 school days left, I am beginning to spazz about getting all my material covered. It is all very fascinating to me and the kids love it because of the espionage aspect. Gotta love a good spy story. We have made our way through Vietnam and have made it into the Nixon, Ford, and Carter years. The goal is to keep my students engaged because at times, history can become a bit monotonous. To actively engage my students, I have created a. I created a website for the students to navigate. I have done WebQuests in the past where I have just given the students various links to sort through. If you have never used a WebQuest in the classroom, I strongly urge you to do so. It is a great way to teach students to use resources to look for an answer. A WebQuest is similar to a scavenger hunt. Students have certain pieces of information they are looking for and you give them specific sites in which they can find the information. When I created my WebQuest, I incorporated primary sources: maps, photos, interviews, and video footage. Students are expected to analyze and study the documents to answer text dependent questions. My students are currently working on this activity and they seem to enjoy it. I decided to write a blog post. While this may seem familiar to my previous blog postI added a step by step tutorial of how I constructed my words for my word wall. I prefer to do mine by unit but it is your preference. Step Three: I open a Word document and type up my words. The reason I do this is to stay organized. I copy and paste each image and type the word beside it. I struggled with whether or not to keep my final project, the choice board but I decided to go out on a limb and keep it. I must admit, I was almost guilty of doing quantity instead of quality. I was so worried about whether or not I was going to be able to fit in all my curriculum this year, that I was almost ready to cut corners. I am so grateful that I stuck with my gut and decided to allow the students an opportunity to really shine with life is too short to be generating qr codes final assessment. My students did not disappoint. I wanted to give students enough wiggle room but structure at the same time. This was the first time I had introduced a choice board of this size. My students really loved this project. I was amazed at how different each project looked. If you are like me, sometimes you may struggle with making the word wall relevant or a tool that students use frequently. At the beginning of the year, I felt like my word wall was just there, taking up space. I wanted to spruce it up and I wanted my students to actually pay attention to it. After all, I was spending a lot of time painstakingly writing the words on sentence strips, laminating, and cutting. You use a barcode scanner on your smart device and it will take you to a website or informational text. Students have technology at their finger tips but rarely know how to use it to discover information. I love it when I hear a student ask if they can look something up on their phone. I decided to take my word wall to the next level and guess what. Students love it and use it on a daily basis. Of course, just like anything new you introduce to your life is too short to be generating qr codes, you must teach procedures for how to interact with the word wall. I will post about this endeavor at a later time.
