I teach 5th and 6th grade STEM in the lovely Pacific Northwest in a small, rural town called Chimacum. My goal is to help students discover that all learning is life-long and that 21st century tools can be used for work as well as fun.
Oct 20
Sometimes I feel like hypocrite when I denounce extrinsic rewards. I’ve been vocal at my school about my discomfort rewarding students for things they should be doing. Things that many of them do anyways. We even abolished our monthly awards ceremonies and student of the month award ceremonies last year. But now we have become …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2014/10/20/am-i-a-hypocrite/
Oct 01
After having students make three promises to help us have a safe, happy and fun classroom I made a google form so they could assess how well they’ve kept their promises on a weekly basis. So far many students have taken the assessment two or three times since we drafted the promises. I compared their …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2014/10/01/behavior-self-assessment/
Sep 30
Here’s a presentation I put together for students for our Mt Saint Helens study after our fantastic trip last week to Camp Cispus (we are very fortunate to get to take our entire 6th grade class to a camp for four days every year)! I added some brief notes explaining what each slide is showing:
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2014/09/30/mt-saint-helens-2/
Sep 30
I came across this post by George Couros, 4 Reasons People Don’t Blog and Ideas to Help Change Their Mind. He gives some great ideas to the reasons people give. I have to admit that I’ve heard those reasons when I tell people how wonderful blogging is to me. In his post George shares this …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2014/09/30/sharing-is-a-good-thing/
Sep 29
Here’s the presentation that started the Voyages of the Starship Equinox. The Equinox is a Starfleet Science vessel that will propel me and my students on a voyage of the imagination as we learn Science this year. And here’s the latest installment: Star Trek Choose Your Own Adventure Class Story The Story Continues… Next Episode …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2014/09/29/the-story-continues/
Sep 26
Readers, I need your help, advice or let me know if this happens elsewhere. I recently wrote about my dilemma with either talking too much or letting students work independently to the point where they struggle. I have this preliminary assignment to get my students blogging. Students can access the assignment with written directions using …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2014/09/26/help-following-directions/
Sep 23
We kicked off the new school year with a tech training for the whole district. Here’s the Prezi we used for our kick-off tech training: As we train our district staff this year to implement our new Tech Plan, we are making use of the SAMR model (resources included in the above Prezi) to help …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2014/09/23/tech-via-samr/
Sep 21
This year I’m adding a new element to my gamified courses. I’m developing a fully gamified course based on the Science I’ve been teaching for years. The goal is to add a level of fun and engagement to Science both for those who love gaming, gamers, and for those maybe aren’t intrinsically motivated to learn …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2014/09/21/live-action-role-play/
Sep 20
I started this year off pretty well. I had some activities for students to work on such as the Marshmallow Challenge on the first week of school so I wouldn’t be talking too much or going over our rules and procedures right from the start. For the last few years I’ve tried to talk less …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2014/09/20/more-direct-instruction/
Sep 11
or So far I’ve only been using ClassDojo and Classcraft for a few days but I’m liking them both. I’ve been wanting to try ClassDojo for a while now and this year I finally took the plunge (I also have to admit that this is the first year I’m using Remind as well …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2014/09/11/classdojo-or-classcraft/
I'm a Curipod Ambassador! :)
I've presented at NCCE
2016, 2017, 2019, 2022,
2023 and 2024!
I presented at WSTA 2015!
