The Whiteboard

Welcome to the 2023-2024 school year! Below are some important updates, a quick AI overview, and update on programs that we do, or do not, have access to, and some more tidbits of information you might find helpful as we start up the school year. We will link some of our blog articles in the monthly Tech This Out newsletter, but if you want an immediate notification, subscribe to our blog! Tech Coaches Your Instructional Technology Coaches will be working in your buildings more frequently this year so if you see one of us, be sure to grab us and...

Language proficiency lies at the heart of effective communication and academic success, and educators are constantly seeking innovative ways to enhance students’ language skills. Understanding the significance of engaging with new words across all four language domains – reading, writing, speaking, and listening – has been a cornerstone of language instruction, as highlighted in SIOP training. In this article, we explore how Seesaw templates leverage Seesaw’s new frames to empower students to respond using all language domains, fostering comprehensive language development. Additionally, we delve into two exciting techniques to gamify vocabulary acquisition and deepen word understanding through word webs. Join...

We’re big fans of being as productive as possible in our work. If you’re able to work efficiently, you can put more energy into the why of what you’re doing, not the how. In any organization, figuring when and how to meet with other people can often become an overwhelming task, especially if you’re trying to pull a large group together. In this post, we’ll explain why the calendar is the best productivity tool for any team or organization. We’re a Google district, so our examples will be from Google Calendar, but just about every platform has the same tools...

Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools are nearly unavoidable now – and we’ve mentioned them more than once in stuff we’ve published. We want to make sure that we’re talking about what these tools are and not just how you can use them in the classroom. I’m hoping this post can be a resource for you, dear reader, to help you make informed decisions about how – or even if – you want to start using AI in your work. Listen instead Holly and Brian recorded the content of this blog post as a podcast. If you’d prefer to listen to the...

A challenging part of the PLC process is determining student growth in relation to your essential standards. Once your PLC has determined the essential standards for the course and defined the learning targets within each standard, it’s time to talk about assessment. Assessing student skills Instead of looking at a single score – performance on a test, for example – we need to consider which skills students are demonstrating and how well did they perform on each skill. These determinations should be made as a group so that all students taking the course are measured fairly consistently. This shift is...

Our Content Specialists have created blog posts. Below is a short “tasting” of each blog article and you can click to read more! Enjoy the tasting. Elementary K-6 Closing the Gap: Reading Strategies for ALL Students | Anita Pratt The Science of Reading is gaining recognition and support from more and more educators across the country. Research is suggesting that our brains are not wired to learn to read the same way we learn to talk. We learn to talk by listening to others and following their lead, but reading has to be explicitly taught. Phonics has to be systematically...

As a teacher, one of the biggest challenges you may face is finding ways to support English Language Learners in your classroom. While it can be difficult to meet the diverse needs of these students, one powerful resource that you may want to consider is Discovery Education. Discovery Education is an online platform that provides a wealth of resources and tools to support students’ learning. This platform can be particularly helpful for our EL population, as it offers a range of features that can help build background knowledge, support vocabulary development, and strategies to help students meet content objectives. Building...

The iPad has some awesome features you may didn’t know even existed! Annotating within safari reader, powerful accessibility features, Apple Classroom hidden features, the split screen superpower, and upgrading your home screen with widgets.

Podcasting is increasingly becoming popular for all ages due to the ease and free approach of access. It’s not surprising there are podcasts for every topic under the sun. Flip makes it easy to provide opportunities for students to record, edit, share, and listen to their classmates.

Are you looking for new ways to reach students, especially those fast finishers / high-performers? Do you need ways to differentiate tasks without requiring a ton of extra time? Maybe you need something for your students to work on that is meaningful and not just a time-filler? Why not use a choice board!   Choice boards allow students to make choices in their learning, which amps up motivation and engagement.  When students are given a menu of options, they feel more in charge of their learning and often put forth more effort. As a teacher, I also like how I can...

Seesaw is an amazing place to include student writing. When thinking about writing lessons, we need to keep in mind that writing involves not only putting thoughts and ideas into words in written form, but also knowing & using the appropriate vocabulary, spelling, and grammar to convey meaning, knowing and using the appropriate form for the type of writing, and the difference between formal and informal writing. It also includes the skills of revising, editing, and publishing. 

The language domains, listening, speaking, reading, and writing, are the 4 ways that people can interact with language. Two of these skills, speaking and writing, are described as productive skills as we create language with each of these. The other two skills, listening and reading, are receptive skills because we use these skills to receive information from an outside source. In this post, we will focus on ways that you can practice the language domain of reading by using Seesaw.

We talk about accessible learning in our department possibly daily. It comes up in almost every conversation we have. Despite this, the one thing we’ve never said about accessible learning is that it’s easy because frankly, it isn’t. Ensuring that all of your students, regardless of ability and language, have the same level of access to content is a huge challenge for a teacher. One free tool for teachers that can help to bridge that gap is Epic.  Epic is a freemium tool (keep an eye out for the “🔒Unlimited” books that are not available with the free account) that...