Tips

I’m a huge fan of cutting down on clicks in my work. If I can keep my hands on the keyboard, I can work more quickly and efficiently. Granted, this may all be just in my head, but here are some quick tips on using Chrome to boost your efficiency in day to day tasks. Set your startup pages In Chrome, you can specify what you want to happen when you open it for the first time. For example, I always want my calendar and Canvas to open up. They’re the first places I go and having them open by...

Canvas has regular updates and from time to time, we’ll write about those here on the blog so you’re aware of some of the more important changes. This month, there are three small, but helpful, updates we wanted to make you aware of. Gradebook labels As you know, Canvas adds labels to the gradebook automatically. Starting this month, the “Missing” label will automatically be removed when you add a score. This is nice because before, you had to manually change the label. Saved mouse clicks for the win! Splitting First and Last Names There is a new setting available in...

Canvas is full of tools you can use to provide rich, timely feedback to students. In this post, we want to break down the three most impactful methods of giving feedback to students through their work. Goal After reading, your goal is to provide feedback that is actionable, specific, and accessible using tools in Canvas. Rubrics Yes, the “R” word again. Rubrics are flexible and powerful in giving students feedback on their work. They break down individual elements of the assignment and give you a chance to score and give feedback on each element individually. Instead of a single score...

Why Should I add Audio? We need to continue to make material that is easily accessible to all of our students. Whether you are presenting a lesson, engaging students in a self paced activity, or sharing an agenda it is easy to add audio to google slides. Right now there are three different ways you can add audio to your google slides.  Using the Pear Deck Add on Since we have the paid version of pear deck we can add audio to a slide. This audio only works when you are sharing the pear deck with your students. Follow the...

I was able to work with some awesome 7th and 8th graders from North Side to build this Jammin’ SEL resource that is easy to edit and simple to use. This isn’t limited to just middle schoolers though! Anyone can use Jamboards to connect to SEL! Why SEL We are learning the importance of social and emotional learning and the impact it has on students’ learning. Creating opportunities where students can thoughtfully reflect on their own emotions can help them process through some of the more difficult ones. A student was helping me build this jamboard and she said, “doing...

Looking for ways to change up how you use content and language objectives in your classroom? Below find 5 ideas on how to up your game with content and language objectives. Up Your Game Idea #1: Make it Routine Include a consistent presentation of your content and language objectives at the beginning of your class period. Consider including it with your bell work, including vocabulary that students will need to understand to be successful for the class period, or even reminding students of what they learned in the previous lesson. Want to use these templates as-is? Find them here on...

We need to ensure that everything provided to our students are accessible. It wasn’t until I started using the accessibility checker that I noticed easy adjustments to ensure equal access to all. The accessibility checker is a quick tool on Canvas to make sure you are providing material that is accessible to all your students. Most of the accessibility issues I have come across has been the following Images don’t have text which makes it difficult for students who are visually impaired. Certain text doesn’t meet contrast ratio of 4.5:1 based on color Header and paragraph sizes are not correct ...

October 16 Update: Canvas has now made immersive reader available in more areas, not just pages. Read more below. Our students enter our classrooms with different life experiences. This is especially true with our English Language learners. Students come from different experiences and the strategy of Building Background that we all learned or are learning from SIOP helps students connect with the material in more meaningful ways. Building background simply means we prepare our students for what they are about to learn. There are three main considerations for when you are actively working on building background with students:  A student’s own...

After completing Module 18 in SIOP, I’ve been thinking a lot about student engagement. Obviously, we all do our very best to engage students, but sometimes it is very difficult to do. A lot of times we think that how students engage in our classes is common sense, but common sense isn’t always so common! To help my students see exactly what I expect, I made a slide that is always on my board during classwork. A simple slide like this helps direct student energy toward productive classroom habits. I realized that if a student was struggling and needed an...

No two students enter our classroom with the same life experiences. This is especially true when you have English language learners as members of your classroom community. To help counter the differences in our students’ diverse backgrounds, we work on the SIOP strategy of Building Background. Building background simply means we prepare our students for what they are about to learn. There are three main considerations for when you are actively working on building background with students:  A student’s own background is important. As teachers, it is important that we recognize that students from culturally diverse backgrounds may struggle with...

Gmail template is a great tool to send emails you continually type up faster and more efficient. Below is a quick video on how to set up templates and utilize this function in gmail. How to Save a New Template How to Use a Template How to Fix a Template or Re-Write an Already Made Template I made a few gmail header designs. If you want to use them just click here and download them to your desktop! Canva I use canva to make my own gmail headers. All you do is sign into canva with your Elkhart gmail and...

Apple Classroom is a tool that every teacher can find useful. Need to quickly navigate all students to one location on Safari or navigate to an app? Want to project a students iPad on through your projector? Want to airdrop your students a document at the same time? Apple Classroom can help solve all of those needs, plus much more! Take a look at our resource below to see all that Apple Classroom can do for you. The resource above was adapted from a resource created by April Requard out of Austin, Texas. April is an Instructional Technology Specialist. A...

Use labels to organize your emails so your inbox is fully clean! This is a useful tool in gmail that allows you to keep the important emails hidden instead of having 14,523 emails in your inbox. I may or may not have had that many emails, give or take. Step 1 What labels would help you organize all of your emails? I have the following labels right now but will add more when the time comes.  To do Need to reply Questions Tech Information Conferences Go through your email and begin to ponder what labels you need so everything has...