Twitter Chat

I've recently jumped feet first into the magical world of Twitter Chats! They are completely fascinating to me and a great way to keep learning and growing during the summer time especially!

Before the end of May, I had participated in two or three Twitter Chats, through my district and through randomly stumbling on ones already in progress. After school let out, I wasn't quite ready to be on a break from teaching and learning, so I reached out to Twitter. I googled "education chats" and came across this lovely link that led me to a huge calendar of many, many Education-related Twitter Chats. The chat calendar tells you what day and time the chat occurs on, and gives you the hashtag to follow to get involved. After that, it's up to you.

Joining a Twitter chat is very easy. You can simply search the chat's hashtag in your Twitter search bar, and you can look at top tweets from the chat, involved accounts/users, or even a live stream of the chat while it's happening. It can be a bit difficult to follow the chat that way, however, and I highly recommend using another program to more easily follow the chat you want. I use tweetdeck, which is a Twitter app. You can watch a constantly updating feed of your home page, notifications, hashtag searches, messages, and a few other windows. I usually have mine set to just show my home page, notifications, and whatever chat hashtag I am currently following. It's great for when two chats are happening at once, because you can follow them both side to side. (Note: if one is very big and fast moving, it will be hard to follow more than one at a time unless you have super powers, and I do not!)

Here are a few of the Twitter Chats I have followed and learned a lot from:

#titletalk -- happens on Sundays from 7-8pm, CST. A previous topic included audiobooks- using them for our own reading and in the classroom or with families.

#1to1techat -- 1:1 Teacher Chat. Happens on Wednesdays from 8-9pm, CST. During one chat, we talked about different ways to use Social Media in the classroom, especially with 1:1 technology.

#moedchat -- Missouri Ed Chat. Happens on Thursdays from 9-10pm, CST. Previously, we talked about our summers and what we planned to do to relax and rejuvenate. This one is specifically Missouri Educators. There are similar chats for many other states!

Note: some chats go on hiatus for the summer, and some don't. If you search the hashtag, look for top tweets- those usually will let you know if they're still going strong!

I've tried quite a few other ones, and learned a lot from all of them. It's a great way to expand your Professional Learning Network (PLN) and simply talk to other teachers around the world! I've learned new strategies and tricks in class, and made many new teacher Twitter friends! (or followers/followees)

Do you know any great Twitter Chats??

#bookaday

So I've read about this trend on Twitter the last couple of summers called #bookaday. Basically, it is what it says- you read a book a day in the summer. The goal is to read at least one book everyday. Some days this is really hard, and your book is a picture book, and some days you have time to read an entire 400 page book!

I finally decided to take on this challenge this year. I have a little more free time this summer because I'm not doing summer school this year. I'm coaching swimming instead, so I get home a little earlier in the day and have plenty of time to read!

I started #bookaday on the day after we got out of school, and I'm hoping to continue it right up until the day before our first day of school. In total, that is 75 books! I saw that number and freaked out a bit at first (and re-counted twice to make sure I was right!). Then I realized that with the many, many stacks of books by my bed on my to-read pile, that this was actually doable. I might actually get to read all of the award nominees this summer and series that I've been dying to start or finish since forever! My books range from 50 pages to over 500, and I'm hoping to hit my goal early!

So far (I'm on day 14), I've read 14 books. My books have ranged from 48 pages to 615 pages, averaging out at about 220 pages! I've read three of the books from our award nominees list, and read two biography books- on One Direction and Stan Lee. Most of my books have been YA fiction, but I did read a Doctor Who book and an X-Men comic book in there too! I'm enjoying escaping into all of these different worlds and just sitting down and reading.

I'm hoping that I can keep up with my summer goal of a #bookaday !

Summer Time!

I'm not even two full weeks into summer yet, and I'm already having a blast. I have been coaching swimming, reading a ton, and even got new glasses! Fancy things, they are, with their amazing clearness of vision! :)

People always talk about how teachers have it so good because we get three whole months off during the summer. Well, sorry to let you know, but it's not three months. In fact, it will be roughly two, since we're officially due back at school for meetings in the first week of August. That is, if you aren't doing the extra summer conferences my district offers. Or helping to train new teachers... which I am.

So I'll be back in the third full week of July for one conference and the last week for training purposes! Oh, and I'm taking a grad class right now (that ends in two weeks) and starting two more in mid-July. I'll also be attending the ILA conference in St. Louis in July. Did I mention I'm also coaching swimming from 7-10 every morning?

So, yes, I am "off" from school, but I'm not really "off" completely. It's not all a vacation, but I think I'd be really bored if it were! It is good to be away from the stress and hectic-ness of every day school. Summer is definitely slower paced, which is great because it gives me time to relax and recharge, and plenty of time to plan for next year's kiddos! I can't wait to meet them, but I can wait until August! :)

End of the year Unit

This year, we finished our last unit with just seconds to spare, or so it seemed. We read a book in 8 days!! (which is incredible!) The kids read almost 5 chapters a day, although that equaled only about 25 pages. Still, for struggling readers, that's a lot! Thank goodness for audio books!! They did really well, and most of them actually loved the book.

We read The Skin I'm In by Sharon Flake. I've taught this book for four years now and I absolutely love it! It's about a seventh grade girl named Maleeka who is bullied because of her dark skin tone. It's perfect because it deals with middle school, bullying, self-confidence, and skin tone bias. These are all things my kids have to deal with, and it's very relatable. It's great for the beginning of the year, and I taught it that way for two years. Then they changed the order of our curriculum and it was moved to the end of the year. That worked because it is a quick read and very engaging, so it's great to keep kids hooked in May.

Next year, this book is "too low" in Lexile points, so it won't even be in our curriculum! :( I think I'm going to use it anyway as a read aloud because I know they'll love it!

Do you have favorite books to teach?

Five Lists

5 School Supplies I CAN'T Live Without:
1. Post-it Notes in all shapes and sizes
2. Sharpies in a million colors
3. Black clicky pens
4. Hand Sanitizer!
5. Bean Bags - great for stress relief and antsy kiddos!

5 Middle School Books I've Read This Year:
1. Wonder by R.J. Palacio
2. Pivot Point by Kasie West
3. Ordinary Magic by Caitlen Rubino-Bradway
4. Marie Antoinette, Serial Killer by Katie Alender
5. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

5  Twitter Hashtags I Use:
1. #thingsmystudentssay
2. #greatbooks
3. #middleschoolROCKS
4. #booksarebetter
5. #techtime

5 Apps On My School iPad:
1. Remind101 (Haven't used it much this year, but I love it!)
2. ClassDojo (Behavior tracker)
3. Timer+ (We time everything!)
4. Booksource: Classroom Organizer (great to organize your library)
5. Chain of Thought (two player word association game)

5 Websites We Use in Class:
1. Edmodo.com - this is our virtual classroom, and the feature of a future post!
2. Lexile.com - to know the Lexile scores of all of our books.
3. Prezi.com - Jazz up our presentations and research projects!
4. Newsela.com - same article on different lexiles. Great for differentiation!
5. Flocabulary.com - we can rap AND learn! Perfect combo! Definitely worth the subscription price!!

Classroom Library

There was a post on Facebook the other day (by the awesome Debbie Diller) that asked how big our classroom libraries are and what grade we teach. It was really interesting to read about how many books all kinds of teachers have. Several had hundreds, and several more (like me!) have thousands of books in their libraries. It inspired me to share my classroom library with the great big world.

I don’t technically have an exact count, but according to my Booksource app, I have 2,156 books. This isn’t exact because I still have half of my non-fiction books to scan and all of my picture books, plus all of the class sets of novels that are hidden away until we need them! (Whew, that’s a lot of scanning!) I’m estimating that I have close to 3,000 books. I’m hoping to get them all scanned before summer- wish me luck.

Since we have around 3,000 books, we have them everywhere! We have huge bookcases that were built into the wall last summer, and tons of littler bookcases surrounding the room. Our books are sorted into fiction and nonfiction, and further sorted after that. Most of the fiction is sorted into genres, with authors and series pulled out for easy access. The nonfiction is sorted into categories, but not as much as the Dewey Decimal system. It seems to work well for us.

Pictures:

 The beginning of our fiction section. Graphic Novels are in the blue bookcase. Series & Authors on top!

 The rest of our fiction section, followed by the start of our nonfiction section. I LOVE the built-in bookcases... and my district built them FOR FREE!!!!!

 The rest of non-fiction, with some past award winners/nominees on top.

The rest of our series and authors, as well as our blue turn-in bin and the Truman nominees for the current school year.

Next year, we are going to try a checkout system with our class iPads. All of the books will be listed in an online system (Booksource) and student will check out the titles they want, just like at the regular library. I’m REALLY hoping it will work! Anyone have experience with keeping it going all year? I usually start out really well, and by October, I’ve given up! 

Mystery Skype: Part Two

Part Two: Our Mystery Skype Experience

On the day of the Mystery Skype, I set up the classroom on my plan time. I laid out everything my kids would need (maps, markers, paper) and I gave them all assigned seats with instructions. They each had a different job, and we had discussed those jobs during our practice. I have a small class (only 9 kids!), so they all sat around our big table.

We waited "patiently" for our new friends to get to class and call us, since their schedule is different with shorter class times. This was great, because it gave us time to get settled and practice a bit with Skype and being loud enough to be heard.

When the other class called, we did introductions and jumped right into the questions. My student Alice* (*names have been changed!) was our Questioner and she did an excellent job at picking questions and recording the answers, which she passed to the Mappers. My mappers used Google Maps and various printed maps in protection sheets to eliminate states and cities for our final guess.

After about 10-12 questions on each side, we were down to three states. One of my boys (Frank*, who almost blurted out our state in the middle of everything!) guessed Ohio and we were right! They then guessed our state and we tried for cities. That was the tricky part because they were from a small town, and we're technically in a suburb of our city. (That threw them off a bit!)

Overall, it was a great experience! My kids had to use their inference skills, as well as context clues and questioning skills. I gave them a list of suggested questions, but they also developed their own as we went, and got closer to the answer. We also practiced map reading and identifying states and directions, which are Social Studies skills, so we were cross-content learning! AND it was so much fun! It was different than anything we'd ever done, and we became global learners by virtually entering another classroom.

After we were done, we did a little research on the Amish, since one of their fun facts was that they live near a large population of Amish people. My kids had never heard of the Amish, so we researched their town and I shared my knowledge from books I've read.

I then asked the kids for their feedback. 7 of them thought it was really fun getting to talk to another class and wanted to do it again. The other 2 liked it, but weren't sure they wanted to do it again. They all thought it was a good break from our usual schedule. We all agreed that it was hard for the groups to hear each other, so we think that we'll have to move the computer closer to the table next time or just talk much louder. (I have a USB webcam, but the sound runs through the computer... I think!)

I loved it! I thought my kids got a lot out of the experience, they were super engaged, and they learned a lot. We laughed a lot through it, especially when Frank* almost yelled out our state! I showed them the pictures and videos I took while we were Skyping, and they loved that. We even tweeted about our experience. One of my kiddos keeps asking to "do that Mystery Skype thing again," which makes me smile every time she asks. We'd love to set up another one or two before the year ends!

I love finding new ideas that hook my kids and help them practice all the skills we've been learning all year long!

Anyone else have experience with Mystery Skype?







Thanks for reading!
-Melissa

(*names have been changed!)

Mystery Skype Part One

Part One: What is it and How did I introduce it to my kiddos!

About a month and a half ago, I saw a post on Edmodo. It was a teacher from Ohio asking if anyone wanted to do a Mystery Skype the following week. Without even blinking, I replied back. I had learned about Mystery Skype at the tech conference (MoreNet) that I went to in October, and had been dying to do it ever since.

The other teacher and I quickly connected, and started emailing about it. I told my second hour about it (since that's the time frame she was available for) and they were intrigued, but not nearly excited as me. Then I explained what it is and we watched a video or two on YouTube.

So, you're probably wondering, just what is Mystery Skype? This is the definition I found that I liked the most:

"Mystery Skype is a 45-60 minute critical thinking challenge that your class takes part in while Skyping with another class somewhere else in the world. Your students' goal is to guess the other school's location (country, state, city, school name) before they guess yours. We do this by asking yes and no questions."

(Thanks, Mr. Solarz for the awesome definition!! He has a great How To blog post about Mystery Skype!)(Skype has a fantastic explanation as well.)





So, once I explained the definition, we watched a few videos on YouTube (sorry, I didn't save the links!). Then we practiced!


To practice, I divided my class in half and gave them each a city. We talked about what kinds of questions to ask, and I also gave them paper maps to use. We went back and forth, each group asking one Yes or No question to try to rule out different states. We were able to be more specific with questions, like asking "Is your state East of the Mississippi River?" rather than "Is your state East?" and broadening our questions from "Is your state Florida?" to "Is your state bordering an ocean?"

We learned a lot about question types and patience during our practice, and I definitely recommend practicing before the real thing. One of my kiddos answered the third question with "No, we're in Tulsa!" and we had to start over with new cities!


Part Two will tell you all about the day of our Mystery Skype!

Thanks for reading!
-Melissa