Back to School 2014!

Wow! Summer has gone by so quickly! It was crazy busy for me, and I am ready to get back to a routine. Although my classroom is no where near ready! I am moving from the 7th to 8th grade this year, so will have  a lot of my previous students! I am so excited to start off with a new year! We have had several days of PD and kids will officially start next Wednesday. Ready or not, here they come!

I presented at our districts first district wide Technology Conference. I was SOOOO nervous!! It's a totally different feeling "presenting" in front of my kids verses teachers, majority of which have been teaching a lot longer than me! I did a presentation on QR codes and implementing them in the classroom. Looking back on the presentation, I wish I had done it in the computer lab so I could have them practice doing it. The prezi link is below if you would like to check it out!

QR Codes: Easier than you think

We had a math department PD by two professors at University of Louisville. One of them had co-authored a book with John van de Walle titled "Teaching Student Centered Mathematics". We focused on the middle school volume. John has written several other math education pre-professional books, most notably Elementary and Middle School Mathematics. We discussed purposefully planning and implementation of the Standards of Mathematical Practices by the Common Core. It was a very informative professional development and will let us begin the new school year with lots of new ideas. Our district focuses on Thinking Strategies so we were trying to align them to those as well. I came home and designed these! I'm going to create a bulletin board for them to refer to during lessons. She suggested to add like a bright star or something to put over the one that you should be focusing on today. This will also serve as a reminder to me!

You can get them in my TPT store HERE!

I hope everyone has a great Back to School and School Year!

Simple "Snippets"

There is a helpful tool on your PC computer that not many people know about! It has helped me so much since I discovered it!

I present to you "The Snipping Tool"

Everyone has probably taken a screenshot before, opened/painted/cropped into paint, and saved so you could have a portion of the screen. The Snipping Tool allows you to select a portion of your computer screen and takes a screenshot. You can then copy or save it as a .png or .jpeg file.

This tool can be so useful! 

• When I am making QR code activities, instead of downloading each code and having hundreds of codes on my computer (all that look similar and you can't tell one from the other) I take a "snippet" of it and can paste it right into the file I am working on. 
• I have a student that uses an iPad to take notes, complete worksheets, essentially everything. I can screenshot individual ppt slides for warm ups, worksheets that aren't compatible with iPad, etc. I can then easily save them to her Dropbox which sends them to her iPad. She can open into Notability and edit, type, etc. on. 
• Ever found an activity that you like bits and pieces of? "Snip" the parts you like and paste them into word or another program and you have a customized activity. 

Do you have any other tricks or tips up your sleeve?