Tag: resources

Easy Strategies to build Future Ready Skills

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Easy Strategies to build Future Ready Skills

In his article in Forbes, “The 10 Vital Skills You Will Need for the Future of Work,” Bernard Marr shares that the skills we believe are important in today’s market are quickly changing due to automation and artificial intelligence. What skills will the workers of tomorrow need? His research indicates creativity, emotional intelligence, critical thinking, active learning with a growth mindset, judgment and decision making, interpersonal communication skills, leadership skills, diversity and cultural intelligence, technology skills, and the ability to embrace change. Do these sound familiar? The majority of these skills sound like the future-ready skills we are trying to instill in our students as educators! Creativity, critical thinking, active learning, communication skills – these are the kinds of skills we are being challenged to grow in our students for their future success. Continue reading →

Google Slides Drag to Solve

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Drag to Solve

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about more ways to take full advantage of the touch screen devices we have on our campuses. One way is to have students drag and drop words and objects to show their understanding. I wanted to see if I could do this using Google Slides. Since I planned with my 3rd grade team last week, I created a template with the content they were working on (multiplication) and a silly theme I thought would appeal to their kids (rainbow unicorns, of course!). Continue reading →

Blended Learning Kindness Lesson Checklist

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Blended Kindness (1)

Jumping into a blended learning checklist for the first time can seem super scary! Letting the students complete tasks at their own pace?! How will you keep students accountable? Allowing students to move around the room and chose the right place for themselves? Will they complete their work or just goof off? Allowing them to go in any order they choose? Will the class turn to loud chaos?

These are the most common fears! Continue reading →

#BookSnaps Google Slides Template

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#BookSnaps Google Slides Template.png

Several years ago, while I was an Assistant Principal at Ault Elementary, my awesome partner AP, Julie Clements (@jclements01), and I lead an online book study together. We wanted to have all of our participants create a #BookSnap as evidence of their learning and as a way to process their reading. If you aren’t familiar with #BookSnaps, the original idea was to snap a picture of a page from a book and using the SnapChat app, add annotations, bitmoji’s, and stickers to elaborate, express your feelings, or connect with the quote. Continue reading →

Choice Learning Interactive Hyperslides

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Choice Learning (1)

I was working on preparing for a day-long professional development coming up on my campus. Throughout the year staff members have shared different professional development needs that they would like me to cover when possible. As I began to plan how to cover all of the different topics requested, I realized that not everyone is on the same level or has the same learning needs for each topic. While some teachers need the basics of how to set up a twitter account, others want to know how to effectively use hashtags, and still others are twitter experts. And that’s only the topic of twitter! How could I possibly meet everyone’s needs without having them sit through information they already know or don’t care about? Continue reading →

#KindFabFeb

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#kindfabfeb (1)

Last year, my good friend and fellow principal Jennifer Vest ( @PrincipalVest ) told me about a kindness challenge she created for her staff to encourage them to share kindness with students, family, and each other. As a member of the #momsasprincipals PLN, I often listen and read through the amazing ideas shared by this group of leaders in our Voxer group. This week as I was scrolling through, the topic of conversation was motivating staff through the month of February – which is widely known as a morale slump. One colleague posted a calendar of fun treats and celebrations to help staff have a Fabulous February. Continue reading →

Fun with Feedback

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Fun with Feedback (1)

I just finished reading The New Pillars of Modern Teaching by Gayle Allen as a part of an awesome online book study facilitated by Region 10 in Texas. In the book, Allen compares the amount of feedback teachers typically get in a year to the amount of feedback Uber drivers get with this table: Continue reading →