Share my Padlet!

One tool I was curious about using was Padlet.  Padlet is a collaborative bulletin board that can display images, videos, links, and text.  I used Padlet to create second grade map skills lessons that I can use in the classroom and share with other teachers.  Take a look and move around the Padlet lessons on the bulletin board below.  This padlet can be used as a lesson planner.  New padlets can be created for student to collaborate on together or to do individually.

Created with Padlet

Five Tech Tools for Formative Assessments

Formative assessments are important to drive instruction, but why not try paperless methods? Here are five tech tools that will do the job and more!

Only one device in the classroom?

Plickers is excellent for low-tech classrooms.  Students respond by holding up a downloadable QR code on white paper, which the teacher captures with a device.  It provides instant results that tell you who gets it and who doesn't.

 Wish you could link questions to CCSS?

 Socrative allows you to give quizzes to the whole class or to individual students.  Some features include taking the quiz in a Space Race game, real-time results, and linking questions to common core standards.

Want to give various types of questions?

Formative lets teachers create multiple choice, true/false, short answer, or show your work/drawing type questions, the last two being my favorites.  You get live views of student responses, results, and you can give feedback and grades.

Looking to give students an audience?

Recap allows students to create a video response to a teacher prompt using an iPad or computer.  Teachers can review them in the handy Recap dashboard and even shared.

  Hoping to increase student collaboration?

One way to use Padlet is to have students post their responses to a question on the Padlet board, like virtual sticky notes on a  bulletin board.  Then, students can collaborate and create their own boards as a summative assessment.

Hour of Code demo

Interested in how code works? Watch my three-minute demo using Code Studio.

Comic Creator

Here's a fun way to engage students in using technology to read, write, and illustrate, then communicate about it. In this lesson, students create a comic strip and provide constructive feedback for each other.

Use ReadWriteThink: Comic Creator. This online interactive site allows students to create a comic strip.  Students first input a title, subtitle, and author’s name. Second, they select the number of panels (one, two, three, or six). Next, they can choose from eight different backgrounds, such as a city, lake, and a room, 17 different characters, such as a cat, dog, goldfish, dinosaur, or baby, nine different word balloons or various onomatopoeic words, such as “Zzzzz,” “Shhhh,” and “Yeow,” and 20 props, including a book, laptop computer, boulder, castle, flying saucer, and a sun. Finally, they can type text into the word balloons. This can be done on a variety of topics and for numerous purposes. For example, they can make a comic strip playing out how they can reduce, reuse, and recycle to help the environment.

2. Students share their comic strip creations with others to give feedback. To help students develop a sense of how to provide constructive criticism. The way it works is that students first offer a piece of warm positive feedback, phrased such as “I liked…” or “I thought it was great when…” Then students offer a piece of cool constructive feedback; something they would change to improve the piece. The constructive comments “build up” the person and the work by thinking of how it could be even better. Sandwich feedback is when warm feedback is given, followed by cool feedback, then more warm feedback gain. Practicing constructive feedback helps students because they can apply it to other aspects of life. It teaches them to respectfully comment on each others’ work, which is part of their academic work as a listening and speaking standard. Communicating respectfully with other people in real life can help students develop empathy, which can be applied to digital citizenship, as well.



Warm feedback: “I like that the man shows that he’s frustrated with his hands in the air.”

Cool feedback: “I think it could be better if we could see what the man’s face looks like.”