Non-Tech Ways to Go Paperless

As we all know, I hate paper and avoid it like the plague. Many people just assume that this means I do EVERYTHING on computers. It's true, I use technology quite a bit. But as an educator, I do recognize that somethings need to be done by hand. Some students need to be able to touch things and move them around. Some things need to be handwritten either to practice handwriting or to help our brains take in what we are writing. If you have tablets in your classroom, you probably have found ways to incorporate drawing and handwriting using styluses. Not to mention, our kids really shouldn't be looking at a screen ALL DAY, even for educational purposes.

There are a lot of tech ways to make things paperless, which I love. But let's look at some NON-tech ways to go paperless (yes, there are many!).

DRY/WET ERASE and MAGNETS

As a paperless teacher, I wanted everything to be dry erase and magnetic. I found dry erase tape at the office supply store and went crazy with it.

Center Work

If you haven't already, you might invest in some dry erase pockets for your classroom. I had some full size and some half size to use for center practice. I like these because sometimes you need to make an activity last minute. I find a printable, print a couple out and put them in the pockets. The students love using dry erase. 

If you are better about planning ahead and like to have things to reuse throughout the year (and future years), create a folder that has laminated cardstock copies of games and activities that you can pull out and use over and over again!

Accountability Sheets

For daily 5, we always had the students fill out little sheets to help them keep track of their Daily 5 activities. It was mostly to make sure that they had something to show for their time, such as writing the title of the book that they read and saying something about what they read that day. Since this was something that was a quick check in and done EVERY week (or day, depending on how you structure it), making it laminated and having the students use wet erase markers helps keep the copying and wasting of paper to a minimum. At the end of the week, you use a wet wipe or wet washcloth and wipe them all clean, ready for the next week.

Dismissal Tracker

Again, anything that you are having to make a new copy every day/week, should be converted to a dry erase surface. Every day at our school, we are supposed to put our dismissal tracker for the week in our mailbox. This way, if there is confusion about a students' dismissal method, the secretary can pull out our sheet and see what the teacher had marked the student as. Inevitably, I would forget to print out a new sheet or would run out of the copies I had made. Finally, I realized I could laminate it, use a wet erase marker and not have to print anymore!

Homework Tracking

Honestly, I track homework on an excel spreadsheet, but I know many teachers who really like to be able to have their clipboard with all their trackers and things on them. They have a checklist that they mark on paper then of course go and put it in their grade books. If you are transferring the information to a digital format anyway, then you probably don't need the paper trackers too. Make it reusable! Check off assignments with a wet erase then wipe it clean after putting the information on the computer.

Library Labels

Organizing and reorganizing my library was always difficult for me. Some teachers probably are able to print and laminate their labels for their bins and never have to do it again. My library seemed to change so much. I constantly change the way they are organized. I finally used dry erase tape on my bins so I didn't need to keep printing and laminating new labels each time I needed to reorganize.

Hall Passes

Print out a template that has a place for date, time, location, and student. Laminate a few copies and have at your desk for when you need to send a student out of the room.

Name Plates

I didn't even actually make name plates for this. My kids' desks were PERFECT dry/wet erase surfaces. I took a wet erase marker and wrote the students names directly on their desks. When a student moves, get a wet wipe and wipe it clean for the next student. When I needed to make students switch desks for whatever reason, I wiped them clean and rewrote their names. For desks that aren't great for writing on with dry erase markers, the good old laminating and wet erase trick is great.

Scratch Paper

My students had lap boards inside their desk and dry erase markers that they used as scratch paper for math tests that were on the computer or other times they needed scratch paper. After I started doing this, my room stayed so much cleaner! After I moved rooms and had the great desks I wrote about above, I actually just had students use their desks as scratch paper! Of course, they absolutely loved that, and my students who normally wouldn't even use scratch paper started writing their work out on their desks.

Line order

Every time I changed my line order, I would print out a little copy and put it up on my door jamb using a magnet. I then thought about just making little magnets of each students names (I used dry erase magnets) then was able to rearrange them easily. This made it much simpler, especially for those times that you just moved one or two students to fix an issue with behavior. I hated having to print a whole new list for that. You could also use a small dry erase board and rewrite the list. The reason I liked the rearrangeable magnets better because if I only changed one student I could just move their magnet.

Any other great ways to go paperless and make your job easier? Leave them in the comments!

Google Assistant in the Classroom

What is Google Assistant?

You probably have used the Google search bar on your smartphone at some point. You may even have learned that you can use the microphone button on the search bar to say what you are searching instead of typing. Some of you might even have learned that you can simply say, "OK, Google" and your phone will start listening for you to say that search. This is your Google Assistant, and it can do a lot more than just do Google searches! (I know, my love affair with Google is not letting up...)

I love using my Google Assistant to help me do everything. In fact, I even recently got one of those fancy Google Homes for my house! While I'm working I like to be able to just say "OK, Google, text my hubby I'll be home in 30 minutes." And she says "OK! Sending text!" Over time I have learned even more things that the assistant can help me do. She adds items to my grocery list, reminds me to do things, sets alarms, starts timers, plays music, turns on my lights, makes calls, 

Recently I started thinking about how I could use this more than just for my work productivity but actually in the classroom... And now I'm extremely excited. What makes these great is that you are not searching for a ton of different apps or having to gather material. It also is great to know about for those awkward little in-between moments (like a guest speaker running late) that you need something to do with the kids but don't want to start an actual activity. If you're like me, you always have your phone on you.

Most of these activities are "Talk to [name of activity]."

Practicing Mindfulness and Yoga Master

Practice Mindfulness-This is the command that started this whole post. My teacher friends that have been doing all of the mindfulness training will love this. If you say, "OK Google, practice mindfulness," a two-minute mindfulness clip plays. As a support teacher, this is PERFECT for starting the classes. They come in all wild and rambunctious so a little quiet breathing and mindfulness time is great to get us ready for the class. 

Another great thing is that it is exactly two minutes. Since playing with it I found that if I send a student away to get it together for a minute, I can start this and set it next to them. It helps the students consciously get their bodies and brains back in control and it also gives them a guide to when to come back. When the clip is done and says "Enjoy the rest of your day," the student returns to their computer and gets to work. Classroom teachers that use a safe seat or "calming corner" could really find this useful. 

I like that I can get it going with a simple command (no set up) and it is quiet enough that the student can sit in the corner and go through it. 

Yoga Master-If you say "Ok Google. Talk to Yoga Master" it starts your yoga session. You can choose to "Start Lesson" or "start meditation". The meditation option just plays nature sounds for you. The lesson goes through some yoga poses with you. It describes the poses and shows a picture.

Vent it out- Another option for students who are needing to separate themselves to get calm. For students who need to vent, but don't want to talk to a teacher about it, they can vent to Google. Help them feel like they have a place to vent even when they don't want to talk to you.

Brain Breaks and Ice Breakers

Google Assistant has a lot of interactive games that are meant to use with your kids with the Google Home. I found that a lot of these are great for in the classroom-especially if you have younger grades. 

Freeze Dance-Ask the assistant to play Freeze Dance and it plays fun music and pauses at different times. It even has a winter edition right now! Since Google Assistant is in control, the teacher gets to play with the students! It also calls out ways to dance like "wave your arms like ribbons while you dance"

Musical Chairs-Similar to freeze dance, the assistant is in charge of starting and stopping the music. At the beginning of the game, she asks how many are playing.

Sound Pet-You and your class can have a virtual class pet! Once you find your pet with the first game, you name it. You can visit the sound pet with the command "Play sound pet" to take it on a walk, feed it, and check in on it.

Susie Says-"Talk to Susie Says" starts a Google version of Simon says.

Never Have I Ever-Great for older kids, this is the classic icebreaker game that helps people get to know each other a bit!

You can also find trivia games, jokes, and other fun things!

Math

Multiplication Tables-Exactly what it sounds like. This game asks different multiplication facts. The command is "Talk to Multiplication tables"

1-2-3 Math- "Talk to 1-2-3 Math" has 3 difficulty levels of word problems. 

Language Arts

Vocab Geek-Practice new vocabulary words. This game has 3 difficulty levels and gives the player 3 hints and two choices. Great for a Word Work option.

This is just one of MANY vocabulary options for Google Assistant. 

Mad Libs-Mad libs have always been a great way to practice parts of speech. "Play Mad Libs" starts the game. She asks for different types of words and the student can answer. After she gathers all of the words, she reads the silly story to them. I like this, for students that you want to practice parts of speech, but write slowly or get caught up on spelling. This allows them to practice the actual objective of parts of speech.

Read a Story-Great for Listening to Reading for Daily 5. The Google Assistant can access MULTIPLE storytelling apps to read a story to you. If you simply say "Read me a story," to your phone's Google Assistant she sort of gives a joke story.  You have to specify where to get the story. Google Home has more option but there are some for your phone. 

Story Tree ("Ask Story Tree for a Story"-interactive stories (like choose your own adventure). The con of this one is that it is robotic sounding, but the pro is that the students are interacting with the story.

Study.com-Covers multiple subjects and ask questions for the player to answer. An easy English question that I had was "What does a sentence need to have to be complete?"

Have any other great ideas for how Google Assistant could be used in your classroom? Leave them in the comments!

Don't forget to visit my store on Teachers Pay Teachers for paperless resources!

Google Forms

build a story/Math Path Stories
Self Evaluating and Peer Evaluating

The Many Uses of Google Forms

The moment I discovered Google Forms a few years back, my whole life was changed. I immediately saw that this had potential to make my teaching life so much easier. Many teachers don't even realize all that this nifty tool can do for you. Many understand that it can be a good way to do online assessments but this is just the tip of the iceberg.

What makes forms so great? They are super simple to set up, they have a quiz feature that makes grading a breeze, it sorts data in multiple ways, it is easy to convert all of your results into a spreadsheet... Honestly, I use forms for just about everything... Here is a list of some great ways that Google forms can help you ranging from the obvious to the creative and from the more administrative side to actual activities for the students. Just go to www.google.com/forms to start creating your own!

Quizzes 

Of course, making quizzes is at the top of my list. There is even a "Blank Quiz" option when starting to create your form. It is so nice because any multiple choice questions get graded automatically. Short, one-word questions can also be graded. 

Some teachers have said to me, "Well, I mostly do open-ended questions, so that wouldn't work for me." IT IS STILL AWESOME WITH OPEN-ENDED QUESTIONS! First off, it is an awesome way for students to submit and it is easier to keep everything organized on the teacher's end. Second, if you make it a quiz as said before, grading is STILL much easier.

Generic Answer Sheets

Another wonderful thing about forms is that they can be REUSED. I make generic forms to use over and over for different things. After collecting responses for a specific assignment, I create a spreadsheet, then unlink the spreadsheet for the next time. Then I have all the responses in a spreadsheet and I can delete them on my form.

In fourth grade, my team and I used forms for our guided reading responses. It was so nice because we made a document that the kids saved that had all the questions, then just had a generic answer sheet that the students could use over and over again (they bookmarked the link in their devices). It had a drop down list that told us which book they were reading and another drop down list that had the chapter numbers. Every time they were ready to answer the questions they opened the form, selected the chapter and book and started filling in the answers. This is also a great idea for EXIT TICKETS and REFLECTIONS (2 other great uses for forms).

Order Forms

Another pretty obvious use (there is even a template for it!) is to use forms for different types of order forms. As a classroom teacher there are many instances that students have opportunities to buy things for fundraisers or books or other reasons. I have used forms for T-shirt orders, Scholastic Book orders, candy orders, yearbook orders, and probably others that I can't even remember! 

Restroom Passes

I know, it sounds weird, but as a teacher having everything documented is really great. I actually started doing this as a way to increase accountability with my students and to be able to notice patterns. I found that when the students had to log their restroom breaks they were a little more conscious of how often they asked to leave class. Sometimes you have that kid that always seems to need to go to the restroom when it's time to do independent work. 

Google forms automatically puts a time stamp on submissions so the form can be as simple as selecting their name from a drop down list and clicking submit. My students have laptops, so it was a bookmark in their browser, but I have seen teachers use QR code on the wall with their class Ipad in a designated spot. The student that needs to go uses the ipad and scans the code that brings up the form.

Parents Signing In

Every conference, we are asked to have a sheet to collect information when the parents come in. It has a place for their name, student's name, and updated contact information. Do you know who always loses the sheet at the end of the day and frantically has to figure out whether a parent accidentally took it home with their child's work (yes this happened) or if it got thrown away? Yup... Every. Time. Let's imagine a scenario where the sign in cannot get lost, because it is a form on your IPad or laptop that the parents fill out right before their conference... At the end of the day, the teacher pulls up the results, exports it to a spreadsheet that automatically has the exact time the parent signed in and organizes all of the information in nice neat rows and columns. The teacher then does not print the spreadsheet to allow it to get lost before ending up in an admin's hands, but emails it directly to the admin so they have it forever. 

Wow. So much better, huh? I know. I'm working on getting everyone else on board.

Scheduling Meetings

Have a committee? Do you go through a huge email thread to try to figure out times that work for everyone? Use a Google form that members can fill out that shows the results in an easy to analyze way. Google has a template that is a great starting point if you don't want to start from scratch. Great for grade levels, committees, PDs...Anything that would require multiple people trying to coordinate a good meeting time.

I use it to schedule times that I can meet with teachers to help them set up tech equipment, learn about different tech tools, etc.

Job Assignments for Group Work

In my sixth grade computer class, I have the students doing group projects. They all have different jobs that they had to assign at the very beginning. They also had to pick a topic. Their first group assignment was to fill out a form to give me their information. They had to put everyone's names in the group, pick a topic, then read each job description and assign who would be doing that job. After they were submitted I had a spreadsheet that I could open that had everyone's job assignment and topic so checking in with teams was easy and making sure each person was doing their job correctly. 

See below:

Click the image to read my post that goes into more detail with tips!

Pick-a-Path 

This one I am actually really excited about, but I haven't done a lot. I hope to start making some games and activities for my store. Do you remember those "Choose Your own Adventure" books? It's kind of like that. One of my favorite TpT sellers, Erintegration has one for sale that looks really cool. (Check out her Youtube video explaining it HERE!) 

Click here to buy my Pick a Path for Digital Citizenship!

Using Google forms you can create conditions to make different paths based on options that the person filling out the form chooses. Using this feature you can create activities that allow the students to "choose their adventure." I could see this working with Math like Erin from Erintegration does, or even ELA. You could have the students piece together a story with different components. If you are creative with that kind of thing, I suggest playing around with it! (Note: You can also use google slides to do this!) I played around and made one for Digital Citizenship for my computer class. I am hoping to make some more that are more fitting for the general education classroom.

Want more stuff like this product? Don't forget to follow me on my Teachers Pay Teachers Store for more like this! 

Paperless Solutions, Animated GIFs, Data Spreadsheets, and more!

Using Google Forms and Google Classroom to Organize Group Work

This year, I started teaching computers. We also JUST got Google Classroom so I am having to navigate a totally new type of teaching and curriculum, and I am actually having so much fun exploring the different possibilities. One of the things I have been playing with is using Google Classroom to do group projects (with different jobs!)

Our sixth-grade curriculum has a group project for Public Service Announcements as multimedia assignments. The assignment is designed for a group of four, with each student having their job with different components that they are responsible for keeping track of and turning in. 

Overall, it's not a bad project. The biggest problem I found was that the way it was written and planned, was like 90% an on paper project... IN COMPUTER CLASS! This would not do for me. Am I not a computer teacher? Shouldn't I be finding ways to teach my students how to use technology to plan, collaborate, and publish? I immediately started to adapt the project to work for me.

Assigning Jobs

The first paper form that I was supposed to give the groups was where they assigned jobs for each member of the group. I immediately thought a google form would be the best way to accomplish this (For other great uses for forms read my post about the many uses of Google Forms).

It honestly took about 5 minutes for me to turn this page into a google form. I had a place for them to enter their names, select their teacher from a drop down, and select their topic. I then had job descriptions for each job with a place to assign a member to each job.

Here is the form I used for my sixth graders. As you can see, extremely simple and did not take very long for the students to complete (NOTE: Only one form should be filled out per group!)

I sent the link to them via Google classroom in an announcement.

What Now?

Now that you have jobs for everyone, it's time to start assigning work!

After I received the forms for one class, I went to the response section of my form editor and used the spreadsheet button to view them all in a Google Sheet.

I then had each group and their job assignments in a nice sheet. 

NOTE TO TEACHERS WITH MULTIPLE CLASSES: If you would like a separate sheet for each class, all you have to do is use the "Unlink Form" option in the response menu (the three dots). Then delete all responses so you are ready to collect data for the next class. When the next class fills out the form, it will not put the data on your previous sheet. You can click the spreadsheet button and it will make a whole new sheet with all the responses that you have (which is why I delete each class's responses after I have moved them to a spreadsheet).

Assigning Jobs

We used Google classroom earlier to send the form. Now I have to send the appropriate materials based on the different jobs. With this project I knew I wanted each student to be responsible for something that needed to be turned in. I sent these as assignments so they had a place to submit it. To make it very clear what each student was responsible for, I only sent the different assignments/materials to the person with that responsibility.

This is very easy to do! When you create an assignment, you can decide if more than one class will receive it or if only specific students in a given class will receive it (also great for differentiated assignments!). I used my spreadsheet and was able to know who all of the directors, script supervisors, etc. were.

Sharing files

As an added way to teach students about collaboration, I had each of the students SHARE (Google is great for this!) their documents to their group mates. This way every one has access even if their is only one person turning it in at the end of the project. The kids really liked being able to all add to their research page at the same time using their different resources. This is also really nice when a student is absent, it doesn't mean that the students don't have access to something.

There you go!

I realize that this is a pretty "quick and dirty" how to, but I hope it gives you an idea of how forms and Google classroom can be used together to get students engaged and using 21st century skills for group projects.

Paperless Vocabulary Practice

Let's talk about Vocabulary practice. When I first started teaching my team had some wonderful vocabulary foldables that they found on Teachers Pay Teachers. It is a great foldable and if you're interested you can still download it for free from Teaching with Motherbird.
Alright, Paper-Haters,

Product by Teaching with Motherbird

These foldables caused so much stress for me, not because they are bad because they aren't! They are actually great. They just ended up all over my room. Students did not keep track of them; it took them forever to finish.  BUUUTTTT... I really liked the concept of the students writing the word, writing the definition, using it in a sentence, and creating a visual reminder

After a couple of years, when I started to find myself as a teacher and started to be more confident to do things differently than my colleagues, I started to realize that digital was the way to go for me.

There are two ways that I love to do vocabulary. One of them is free if your school has Google Classroom (GOOGLE!) or Edmodo (or a similar platform). The other does cost money but was so worth it to me, which was Pixton! Today we'll talk about Google Slides (or Powerpoint).

Google Slides

"Slides" is one of the apps of the G Suite that, if you are not familiar with, closely resembles our beloved Powerpoint. The reason I like using Slides or Powerpoint for these kinds of assignments is it is easy for the students to click where they are supposed to type and just start typing. They do not have to do any formatting and they are less likely to mess up the layout that you have for them. I will be talking about Google Slides, but understand that you can do this similarly with Powerpoint.

Pre-creating the Assignment

In most of my teaching career, I have had students that need a LOT of scaffolding with assignments. I cannot just give instructions that they should have each vocabulary word, with a definition, sentence, and picture. It ends up just a mess. It is important to have the assignment sort of "pre-made" so the students just have to fill in the pieces. If your objective is vocabulary practice, then that is where the focus should be. If the students have too much tech figuring out to do, then it is no longer a vocabulary assignment; now it's a computer assignment.

I found that having blank text boxes for each field that the student needs to complete helps the students because they can just click and start typing. (TIP: If you are labeling what should go into each box, make these a separate text box so that the boxes that will be used by the students still just click and go.) See a super simple, no-frills example of what one of my slides might look like:

Like this and don't want to start from scratch?

Get your FREE copy here with the template already made into a master slide so that you can add as many as you need!

This link will prompt you to make a copy in your Google drive.

When creating your template:

1. Be sure to have labels separate from the boxes they will type in (as said above).
2. SPECIFY that students should not just do a google search using the vocabulary word to find a picture... They need to be CREATING A PICTURE. This is the one part that you will probably need to have your students know the tools a bit. I have seen kids create AMAZING visual representations just using the shapes and lines tools.
3. Before sending the template out to the students, make sure you have the number of slides ready that they will need (if it's five words a week, there should be five slides that have the template ready to go).
4. If you know how, I would make the template a Master Slide so that if ever the students have to add a new slide, they can click the + (add slide) button and have the same template ready to go (not having to mess with copying and pasting slides...) 

Want more stuff like this freebie? Don't forget to follow me on my Teachers Pay Teachers Store for more like this! 

Paperless Solutions, Animated GIFs, Data Spreadsheets, and more!

How to Use Animated Banners for Google Classroom

I have been debating what I wanted my first post to be about and finally landed on Google Classroom Themes/Banners. Thank you if you are reading this, as this blog is definitely a work in progress, but I want to help other teachers learn some of the things that made technology work for me as a teacher.

Google Customization

When I first started using Google Classroom, I wasn't really focused on customization yet and making it pretty. I was more focused on learning how to make it work for my classroom.

The truth is, making your Classroom look special does not take much effort! You have probably figured out how to change the "theme" of your classroom by clicking the "select theme" button on the picture:

THIS BUTTON HERE!

Google has some very nice looking images, but for some, they are too generic and you want something that is more "you." For those people, there is a great "upload image" option. The problem I always had was finding the right size image, which needs to be 800 pixels by 200 pixels. I started creating images to fit my needs.

Animated Themes

As I was searching for premade themes I saw that some people were using GIFs as their image for their classroom theme to have animated themes! Of course, I jumped on it...

Using a GIF is JUST AS EASY as using a regular image. You simply upload the file the way you would any other image. See?

You can create your own GIFs to use, or find them online. If you like the banner I used in the demo, you can get it here in my store for free! Don't forget to look at some of the other themes/banners I have created too!