Making Word Walls A Part of Your Classroom

Our students are learning, reading, and interacting with content in so many different ways each day. Yet, how much time do we spend on developing vocabulary? Do we expect our kids to "know" it from either reading the book or listening to us. It may not be happening. There is a major emphasis on the development of vocabulary skills in education today. From professional development to graduate courses to initiatives...all are talking about it. Why? Because our students need to be able to understand vocabulary to understand what they are reading.

This has brought up the importance of developing Word Walls in our classrooms, which is a visual representation of important terms for the unit or chapter . Word Walls not only emphasize "seeing" the word, but also it encourages students to "listen" for and "use" it. Simply put, they offer multiple ways of representing and expressing the meaning of vocabulary terms.

What are the limitations of Word Walls? One of the biggest limitations may be shear space. It's difficult to find the space in our classrooms today.  Another limitation is the fact that students cannot "take the wall with them." Here are some ways to use the concept of a Word Wall, when you space is limited or you just want to try something different:

• EdHelper Word Wall Maker - gives teachers the opportunity to develop a word wall in a Microsoft Word document. It is a great tool for foreign language teachers too! Why? It gives you the opportunity to place two words on the wall (1 in English and the other in ____ with a picture). 

• Free Word Wall Editor - is a great site with pre-generated vocabulary terms, which are ready to print. Foreign language teachers may find this site very useful, because there are several pre-generated lists for students learning a language! 

Sites like Glogster may also be a helpful and creative alternative for sharing vocabulary terms with students, allowing them to actually "take the wall with them." 

QR Codes in Education

The other day I was hungry, so I walked over to the counter and grabbed a banana. To my surprise, I noticed a new sticker next to the Chiquita Banana sticker. It was a funny looking thing called a QR code. You can't go anywhere these days without seeing them on business cards, products, and yet many people are unaware of what these things look like.

QR stands for Quick Response Code, which is essentially a bar code that you can use to access websites, videos, etc. on your SmartPhone. Many of our students have SmartPhones to begin with. Why not provide a QR Code for students to access your class website, extra study materials, etc.?

QR Codes are so easy to create. You can go to websites like Goqr.me or Create QR Code.  Simply generate the code and copy and paste into a worksheet. This may be a great way for students to access extra materials for your class.

One teacher that I know provides students with a homework assignment that contains both a website link and a QR code. She used QR Codes as a way to engage students and motivate them to access materials outside of the classroom. She found that more students were doing homework and learning material outside of the classroom. Why? Simply, because they could access material from the computer in their pocket - a cell phone.

Instead or Re-teaching....Why Not "Re"-Cord?

A few months back, I had met a math teacher who was teaching in a new way. He would record his lesson using screen recording software ahead of time. When students arrived, he would press play and change roles. Instead of the teacher, he would shift into a support role with students. He then places these video clips on a website that he developed, so that students can access it later in the evening. I thought it was a brilliant idea.

Many teachers are already teaching this way, using sites like Khan Academy. Khan Academy is great, but its subject matter is pretty limited to math, history, art, and science.

What if what I teach isn't available? You may want to consider using a screen recording site like Screencast-O-Matic, which allows you to record your voice and computer screen in just a few simple clicks. There is no software to download and it's pretty easy to use.

I teach Accounting and often have a difficult time finding tutorials online.  Many of my students are absent on a daily basis, which makes me have to re-teach material everyday. I have found that this tool helps cut down on the amount of time that I have to spend "re-teaching," so that I have more time teaching that day's subject matter.

Why Even Bother? 

We know that learning is becoming a 24-7-365 business. Students need to have access to information beyond the school day. If our students are anything like me, they may need to see, hear, or read it a few times to understand it. Creating screencasts provides a way of scaffolding information for students to develop fluency and a better understanding of material (Principle 2 of UDL - Multiple Means of Action and Expression).

Directions? You're Posting About Directions? Directions? Really?

I don't know about you, but I have noticed that the "honeymoon" period is over in my classroom. My students have revealed their true selves! Can you believe that they don't pay attention to the directions I have projected on my computer screen or written on the board? Notice that I'm being sarcastic :) ?

Depending on the type of directions that you are writing on the board, you may be able to get away with just using a picture or pictures to describe the task. For example, the other day I didn't want my students to log onto their computers. When I have written the instructions on the board, it is often ignored! The other day I tried something new. I put a "No Computers" sign (see picture) on my board. Can you imagine my excitment when my students actually got it? Usually there are about 3 to 4 students who just don't understand or look at the directions. Imagine my excitement when every single student got it!

I tried taking this a step further when I needed my students to open up their PowerPoint projects up to start peer editing. Once again it worked! As students were walking into my room, they made it a game to see who could recognize the message first. Then they started quizzing their friends if they "got it."


I know you may be thinking, why is this guy writing about this? The reason why I write this is because sometimes you need to switch things up every once and awhile to keep your students engaged and paying attention. This is a very low tech way of having some fun with students who are ready for upcoming holiday breaks! 

Something as simple as using pictures to represent simple directions may work. NOTE: I wouldn't recommend doing this all of the time (because it loses its purpose) or for complex instructions (because students may become confused).

Edmodo's Electronic Backpack

Yesterday I was strolling around my room to check how students were doing on a project and I noticed one of my students doing something rather unique in Edmodo. I had asked my students to find a current event article for an assignment in class. They had to save the link in their favorites folder on their computer or simply copy and paste it into a Word document. This severely limited their ability to access material outside of their computer in the classroom or outside of the school network. UDL is all about providing flexible tools for students to use to benefit their learning experience.

One student was using Edmodo to do this assignment. I was curious, so I asked him about what he was doing. I've been using Edmodo for about 2 years now and I never knew about the Electronic Backpack feature available for students. My student explained to me that he's been using this tool for quite awhile. Boy did I feel dumb!

The Backpack feature is a way for students to save links in Edmodo's Library Tab, giving them the opportunity to organize their links by category, subject area, or interest. There is also a feature for sharing library contents with students. With social bookmarking sites like Delicious struggling to keep inappropriate content out of its site, this may be a great alternative. It also prevents you from needing to use multiple sites to create content, submit assignments, and share links. I even wrote last week about its new Quiz feature!

Creating expert learners requires taking the time to develop a student's ability to plan, develop, and organize information. When our students can access their links from anywhere at anytime, it can provide ways for our students to learn more efficiently and effectively. Why? Because their time isn't being wasted searching for that link from earlier today and they can access it anytime and anywhere.

A Search Engine for your Students!

Imagine that you have a research project for your students. You would love to just use regular books and encyclopedias. However, you realize that in the digital age this is starting to become tougher. So you reluctantly turn to the Internet and have your students perform "Google" searches. When they do this, they will be bombarded with irrelevent material from Wikipedia and other non-productive sites.

With SweetSearch, you may become an alternative to the Googles, Yahoos, and Bings of the world. It only searches a database of over 35,000 sites that have been evaluated and approved by teachers, librarians and administrators, which allows sites from universities and PBS take precedence. The site constantly "fine tunes" results so that they are relevant and accurate.

Why use Sweetsearch? This is a great tool to help students find information faster. Yes, we do need to teach our students how to filter out irrelevant results. But there are times when less time should be wasted on searching and more time should be spent on learning. In the digital age that we live in, our students are bombarded with websites, blogs, etc. Why not help them develop into "expert learners" with this simple tool?

Below are links to SweetSearch's other important features:

• SweetSearch Web Research Tutorial Teaches Web Research Skills to Educators and Students
• SweetSearch4Me is our search engine for emerging learners.
• SweetSearch2Day is where students Learn Something New Every Day.
• SweetSearch Biographies for profiles of 1,000+ significant people.
• SweetSearch Social Studies for our best social studies content.

TRELLO

My Marketing students have been working together over the past couple of weeks to develop a sports drink. There are two objectives: 1) create an actual product and 2) develop a marketing plan for the product. Over the past couple of weeks, there has been an unbelievable amount of paperwork.



Today, I was stumbling across ideas on how I could make this project better. How could I get my students to collaborate and share multiple documents, pictures, etc. I came across a site called Trello - which is an unbelievable tool to promote collaboration and project management.



What is it? 

Trello is a project board website, where you can assign and manage tasks, documents, etc. from a project board. What is a project board? It's just a collection of what Trello calls "lists." Lists are almost like filing cabinets to put stuff in. It's just a simple way to categorize things.

What do you put inside of filing cabinets? Usually files. Trello allows you to create "cards" (aka files), which give you the opportunity to add comments, votes, pictures, documents, etc. You can easily move each "card" by clicking and dragging it to another "list."

I really like that you can easily assign tasks to other people simply by clicking on their name icon and dragging it to the "card" you want them to work on. I think that this could be another excellent tool to give our high school and possibly middle school students to use. Try it out and see if it works.