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1. Assign worksheet for homework. 2. The next day, collect worksheets & redistribute randomly to other classmates. 3. Give students 5 minutes to silently study the student's paper they were given. 4. Each student will be given 60-90 seconds to stand up and introduce the person they were randomly assigned. They are to tell everything they can about that person based on their paper. Challenge the students to practice higher level thinking + observations/inferences. For example, if the paper a student received is very neat & organized, they can infer that the student took his/her time and has good work ethic. If the paper is sloppy & only half complete, the student can infer that he/she rushed through the work or didn't try very hard.

This online communication tool requires no log-in or password for students, but you may choose to set up a class account to collect student projects. With Voki, students create a person, animal, fantasy character or any number of selections from the gallery, add audio via mic, text or call-in, a background from Voki's selections or one uploaded by the student (say, one that corresponds to a story being read in class), and whatever bling makes this Voki unique to the student. Once the Voki avatar is completed, it can be added to blogs, wikis, websites via a static image or an embed to keep it's interactive characteristics. The website also offers lesson plans to spark your imagination. Here are some I've used: have a Voki be a character in a book to discuss the story. Each student can create a Voki until all characters are covered. Then, add them to an online class page on that book. have a Voki introduce the student's web page or blog. have the Voki reinforce a unit on online privacy

Waterlife is an interactive story about the water cycle in the Great Lakes. Waterlife is a twenty part story through which students can learn about the role of water in our lives. Through the story students learn about things like fishing, pollution, invasive species, wetlands, and the politics of water conservation. When students select a part of the Waterlife story they will be able to hear narration, see visuals, and read the text of the story. Some parts of the story also contain links to external resources that student can explore.

This site has checklists for each gradecurriculum corner level that breaks down every strand of the standards. These checklists will help you keep track of what you covered. There are also student checklists under the Classroom Management tab to document student progress. Although this site refers to them as "checklists," as teachers, we're not only concerned with adequate coverage of content, but also with the progress that students are making toward attaining the learning goals within the Standards. A simple rubric or notes as an addendum to the checklists could help to improve the data you gather as you assess the learning. In addition to the skill checklists, there are downloadable activities to help you reach your instructional goals. For example, a booklet to help students organize information while reading non-fiction texts. So, check the Common Core off your to-do-list today!

ClassBadges is a new service that aims to help teachers and students track their achievements big and small. Using ClassBadges teachers create goals for their students. When students reach their goals teachers assign a badge to them to keep in their student profiles. Teachers can create goals for things like completing a large research project, for perfect attendance, or for completing an informal learning activity with their parents while visiting a local museum.

"Quickly and easily digitize student work and build the resource for authentic assessment in your classroom. Unleash the power and the flexibility of digital tools, without sacrificing the important work your students do in non-digital formats. Rescue student work from the bottom of backpacks, trashcans, and filing cabinets and have it at your fingertips. Easy, flexible, authentic--a simply wonderful tool for teaching and learning. And best of all? It's free for teachers"

I am a big fan of StudyLadder. Many of our teachers in elementary and the middle school are utilizing this excellent resource. It is a multi-subject interactive site that allows you to differentiate for all levels of students through grade six. With the ability to import entire class lists, you can set up individualized, interactive work for your students. What I especially appreciate about this site is the color coded leveling. While teachers are shown which color represents which grade level, the students are not. In addition, StudyLadder is Common Core aligned.

"Remind 101 has released a free iPhone app. Remind 101 is a service for sending text messages to groups of students and their parents. The service is an opt-in service which means that students and parents have to enter a confirmation code to state that they do want to be contacted by you through the service. Remind 101 keeps phone numbers hidden so that the parties cannot see each other's numbers."

MentorMob is a site for creating learning playlists. Within a maximum of 10 "steps" you can lead your students through the learning process focused on any topic. Since playlists can include links to websites, to files you've created or to pop quizzes you'll have a variety of media at your disposal to support student learning. At the MentorMob site, create an account then browse the learning playlists already created by other educators. You'll find that some authors have shared their work publicly so that others can save their playlists and be able to edit them. While you're exploring the MentorMob website, be sure to also check the MentorMob blog where one of our recently created playlists is currently being featured. Creating your own learning playlist couldn't be simpler. Begin with some basic information: a title, description, category and tags. Next, you'll decide who will be able to view and edit your playlist - these can be changed later if you'd like to start by keeping your work private while it's in development. The plus sign that you find next will help you create the first step which can be a web link, a file or a pop quiz. Keep in mind that the links could lead your students to anything on the web such as videos, online polling tools, Google forms, interactive sites, or articles. Enter a title and description for each step you create as well as a representative image. Save your work and you're ready to create a new step.

Five minutes. That's all it takes to improve your relationship with your students. And why is that important? Because having rapport with students translates to powerful and behavior-influencing leverage-the kind of leverage that compels them to want to behave, to want to do well, and to want to please you. And those few minutes before the morning bell are perfect for improving relationships, perfect for building a natural, trusting bond between you. But you have to get up from your desk to do it.

google drive folders for students and teachers

How to start with student blogging.

Quizdini is a free tool for creating online quizzes. The best feature of Quizdini is that you can create explanations of the correct answer for your students to view immediately after trying each question in your quiz. Your explanation can include text and or links to online resources like videos and images. Quizdini quizzes can be created in a traditional linear format or in a matching format that asks students to pair answers to terms.

Co-creating Flipboard magazines could be a great activity for students studying current events. Your students could share the articles that they're reading and put them into one magazine for the whole class to read.

As a professional development activity co-creating Flipboard magazines could be a great way for teachers to share articles with each other.

Designed to help students learn a bit about jobs in careers they have an interest in. The videos introduce students to the essential functions of each job and education needed for it. The videos feature real people talking about their jobs and what they like about them. Career Sighted is only a couple of months old so at this point it only has a few dozen videos, but hopefully they'll be adding more over the next few months.

TED has a brand new education site that I am excited about.  TED-ed is a collection of educational video lessons that have been animated.  These lessons can be used as a supplement in any classroom.  Each video on the TED-ed site has an associated lesson, a Quick Quiz with multiple choice comprehension questions, Think which asks questions to help students think more critically about what they have watched, and Dig Deeper which helps students to explore the topic further.  In addition to the videos, TED-ed gives educators the ability to "flip" videos.  You can use, tweak, or completely re-do any lesson that is featured on TED-Ed, or even create lessons from scratch based on any video from YouTube. 

"exactly what to say to difficult students-and when."

"What To Do When A Student Refuses To Go To Time-Out"

Sometimes a yes or no answer is not enough. You need a way to sit with that student and observe the ways they attack a problem. Place a tablet with Educreations between yourself and the student and hit record. Everything they write, everything they say, and their step-by-step process will be recorded on the screen for you to review later, share with colleagues or parents.

"end of the year gifts for class: make word clouds with positive traits for each of my students. use a "Describe Me" sheet, have students write positive character traits of each of their classmates."