Successful in Sixth Grade

  The amount of games that are available to students now to help them learn are endless. I don't think I could've even imagined how many more opportunities students have then when we were in school in the 90s. One of my favorite ways in involve games is to use them for reviews. Many of the students already have accounts on Gimkit and Blooket. They are constantly asking to play these games because this helps them to earn points so that they can get more "skins" for their characters. It's become a big deal to have better characters and the most points, so this makes them more motivated to play the games. I've created reviews for all vocabulary units as well as my Social Studies units. We also have used Kahoot and Quizizz in the past to help them review.  In exploring the benefits of gaming, I came across an article that described some of the games I use perfectly. "First, games can increase student engagement. When students are having fun, they are more lik...

  The idea of using social media, let alone cell phones, in my middle school classroom, is a very scary idea. It's just so hard anymore to monitor what they are doing at all times. 6th graders are so easily distracted by technology that if I allowed them to be on their phones for a lesson, using an app etc; I can almost guarantee that half of them would be switching back and forth to other personal things on their phone. This year we have a new monitoring system called Netref. We have used Lightspeed in the past. This allows me to watch my students' screens at any point. If I have students on a program, or doing an assignment, I can watch and make sure they are not switching tabs. I almost always catch students with a game tab open in the background, switching back and forth when they think I'm not looking. If they are tempted to do this with their computer from school, I can almost guarantee they would be doing this with their phones. If they use their computers, at least ...

Screencasting brings back some terrible memories of the Covid years. I did use screencasting to record a grammar lesson for example, and then posted it for my students. I took a sabbatical during the Hybrid year to stay home with my kids and help them through Hybrid schooling. I didn't need to use this super often, however I did use it one other time when I came back to school. We held a virtual back to school night and I needed to do a screencast. Instead of videoing just myself and reinvent the wheel, I was able to take my normal presentation and just present it as if parents were in front of me. The added benefit was that I could also navigate away from my presentation and show them apps and log ins. This helped me for last year when we were back in person because I remembered everything I had shown them on the screencast and added it in to my presentation. I'm just now thinking about some benefits that screencasting could have for ELLs but also all students really. Let'...

When I hear "podcasting," I think about people casually listening to something in their cars. I think about audio books, or how my favorite radio station talks about their 3 minute podcast. Some of my favorite TV shows also have characters that have created their own podcast. It seems very casual, and really just a way for people to express their opinions, communicate with each other, and simply shoot the breeze. Yes, I know, there are many educational podcasts out there, but these are the first things that come to my mind. I hadn't thought about using podcasting in my classroom. However, when reading over articles and researching how podcasting could be used for ELLs, I can definitely see a very different use for them.  I hadn't thought about the fact that "listening" might be something that is often overlooked when it comes to teaching ELLs. Listening to academic language is a very important part to their development, but sometimes we are focusing so much ...