Newsletter

 Tech Note

       Elaine Schneider @ Johnson brought my attention last year to the comment button found in Microsoft Word.  Sometimes you want to make a note to the reader but you don't want that note to  be a part of the document.  In the hard copy world we usually slap on a sticky note.  In MS Word, park your cursor where you want the note to appear, choose insert, comment.  Then proceed to type your comment and then choose close.  You'll see a tiny yellow square appear on the screen which won't show when you print the document.  See if you can find the sticky note on this class list document.

Integration

• Why use an Interactive White Board?  aka, Smartboard.  From teacher.net

Sites Recommended by Others (Thank-You!)

•  Maggie Wilson- "Kids Hub is a noncommercial educational portal for elementary and middle school students. It features free online interactive learning games, puzzles, and quizzes."

• James Poff- 4th grade @ Mary Todd has found some sites that might be useful for assessment.  

  • Teach-nology: Rubrics Creator , 

  • MidLink: Rubrics and Evaluation Resources,

  •  Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators: Assessment Rubrics, Adopting, Adapting, or Developing an Aligned Assessment for Your Lesson, 

  • Helping Families, Schools and Communities Understand
    and Improve Student Achievement

• Earlier this year Barbara Barr passed on the Starfall site.  Then LeAnna Prater said she "ordered a set of ten [books] to see what they looked like before I suggested anything to the teachers. They were delivered today (UPS) and are great!! For each child they sent a pencil, a take-home book that matches the stories on line, a writers journal that also go along with the stories on line and three certificates with stickers to be given as the child completes the stories. The URL to order is given at the bottom of the website. It is free to order (they even pay shipping!)."
  

Personal Use

• Check out some of these ideas for your home PC and printer..  There just might be some ideas you can use for the holidays.  Then, who knows, you just might think of an idea for your classroom?

  • The Crafty PC - "If you thought that computers and crafting didn't go together, then Crafty has a surprise for you!"

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Copyright Information

• From Barby Hardy 

  http://www.ala.org/washoff/teach.html

  The TEACH Act (signed into law Nov 2002) lets schools transmit distance education content to students in any location; expands the range of copyright-protected works that may be used for distance learning; and in some cases allows educators to digitize and materials not already available in digital form.

Literacy

         Homophones 

         Use paper dolls to reenact/retell a story.  Career dolls are also found on this site http://www.makingfriends.com/f_Friends.htm 

New Additions to

"The Joy of Teaching"

Website

• Home page - Daily News Quiz from NY Times 

• Dissecting Owl Pellets?  Check out this site for follow up or use this site for bird research.

• Artist's Tool Kit provides experiences for students to interact with the elements of art. 

• Songs for Teaching Site will help integrate Music across the curriculum.  Also you'll find songs to use that will help students remember facts.

Test Prep

• KDE  Suggestions for open response and on-demand writing

• Massachusetts Released items.

• While doing a search I retrieved a page that told about the Jefferson County Open Response Bank.  The page gave me the pass word to use to get into the bank.  The open response questions document the core content AND provide a rubric!  Should FCPS start their own bank?

• Rubrics 

Writing 

Use the Visual Thesaurus to develop richer language. For more details go to the bottom of the Write Ideas page.  Thanks to Melba Leach for this site.

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