Methods and Tools Im Taking Away to Try

Wow! There have been so many wonderful resources shared so far. The trick has been to go through them to find ones that will work for my third grade class. The first thing I found that I wanted to use with my class was Xtranormal. I used it to do my introduction. You can make a cartoon say whatever you type in as well as give it body movements. There is a monthly fee, so I am waiting until the beginning of next month to get the best use out of it. I would like them to use it to give an explanation of a topic we are working on. (I just haven’t decided for sure what that will be.) I did use a Learning Style Inventory that I found online with my class. This has reminded me of the importance of incorporating different learning styles into my teaching. The one I used at http://www.berghuis.co.nz/abiator/lsi/lsitest1.html was useful in that it was one that my elementary students could understand. However, they took it separately and the results were not stored online. I had to record the results once they got them. School Circuit is a free online gradebook that parents and students can access. I have set up a class and am in the process of figuring out how to enter grades, get parents signed up, etc. I have made an account on DropBox and Evernote. I have not, however, gotten as far as figuring out how to use either with my class. Baby steps… Looking back over my blog, I just noticed that earlier I was interested in MasteryConnect. A way to keep track of students’ progress on mastering the Common Core standards. I’ve got to get back on that as it looked very promising and I was interested in it enough to write about it. This blog may serve as a great reminder for myself on the different things that I want to try. I need to start with one thing and see how that goes, decide whether I want to keep using it for my class, and then work on something new. It is too hard to try more than one thing at a time for me. I get distracted by something else I want to try and end up not really trying the one thing out before going onto something new. Note to self for the week: Try one new thing at a time!!! Now, which to try first??