The Classroom Commute

Does using pen and paper still have a place for the classroom? 

The truth is - digital and printable, more traditional instruction can live harmoniously…together in the same classroom, even!

It’s all about striking a healthy balance between the two!

If you’ve been around for a while, you’ve likely picked up on my love for integrating technology into your daily instruction and I do think that using multimedia activities is essential for a 21st century classroom.  However, I also think that balancing multimedia activities with tried-and-true teaching practices is powerful as well.

I want to share what I think a good technology balance looks like in the elementary classroom.  I want you to walk away from this episode feeling empowered to continue using those best practices that do NOT involve technology right alongside 21st century activities that will expose students to new technology.  

It doesn’t need to be an either/or situation.  Technology and non-digital resources can coexist - and they should.  We can use technology to complement other meaningful teaching practices. Providing this balance in your classroom will help students to see the importance of balancing technology use with offline interactions in their daily lives as well.

EPISODE 57: Accountable Talk: A Teacher's Guide to Encouraging Deeper & More Meaningful Talk Among Students 

EPISODE 99: Classroom Technology: A Simple Model for Using it Effectively

Grab by FREE Nonfiction Text Features Linktivity here.

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Digital citizenship has a lot of moving parts.  Teaching our students to be responsible digital citizens is the job of all the important adults in their lives, including their classroom teachers.

Here on the podcast we’ve been breaking down this larger idea of being a good digital citizen into small, more manageable chunks and in this episode we’re talking about a super important aspect of digital citizenship and that is - security and privacy.  

Oooof - that’s a biggie and one that may not always seem like something young students need to worry about, but they do.  In fact, we can start at a very young age helping kids to see how to protect and respect others online, including themselves.

As a 21st century classroom, security and privacy can play a huge role as students are learning to become more independent online and begin exploring online.  We want that to be a good thing — we want them to be able to use the amazing digital tools that are available to them, but above all, we want them to be safe about it and know how to protect themselves.

EPISODE 102: Digital Citizenship: Making Healthy Media Choices and Finding Balance

For complete show notes visit:  classroomnook.com/podcast/106

Ask any elementary student and you’d likely hear responses like:

These answers are all correct, however, we want students to understand that reading is more than just being able to read the words on the page.  What we really want students to be doing while they read is thinking!

That’s where reading comprehension strategies come in.  Reading strategy instruction gives students a guideline for how to think about what they are reading.  Educational experts call this “metacognition,” which can be defined as “thinking about thinking.”  This concept is at the heart of why we teach and encourage students to use reading strategies.  Students need to understand that thinking is essential to reading. 

Today is the first of 8 episodes on the topic of reading comprehension instruction. We will go over a new strategy each month starting next week and ending in May. I can’t wait to share with you some tools and some strategies that you can pass on to your students to help improve their reading comprehension.

Buckle up as I share with you some helpful tips, strategies, and resources for teaching your students reading comprehension.

For complete snow notes visit:  classroomnook.com/podcast/105

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Reading Comprehension Strategies Podcast Episodes: 

• EPISODE 41: Teaching Reading Comprehension Strategies
• EPISODE 42: Reading Comprehension Instruction: How to Teach Making Connections
• EPISODE 47: Reading Comprehension Strategies: How to Teach Visualizing
• EPISODE 51: Reading Comprehension Strategies: How to Teach Making Predictions
• EPISODE 56: Boost Reading Comprehension: A Simple Approach to Teaching Students to Ask Questions While Reading
• EPISODE 59: A Step-By-Step Guide to Teaching Determining Importance in the Upper Elementary Classroom
• EPISODE 64: Helping Your Students Make Inferences When They Read 

Constructing Meaning Through Kid-Friendly Comprehension Strategy Instruction by Nancy Boyles (affiliate link)

Grab my FREE Reading Comprehension Strategy cards

YouTube can be an amazing learning tool for students.  Need a video on teaching nonfiction text features?  There’s a video for that.

How about a fun science video on phases of the moon?  Yep - there’s one (or a hundred!) of those, too!

With all the free content that is available on YouTube, there is NO shortage of topics to find.

However, with a free platform like YouTube comes annoying ads that show up before your video, distracting sidebars with video suggestions that can easily derail your students’ attention, and a comment section that sometimes can get hostile or inappropriate.  

Well - there is a way to bypass ALL of that and get straight to the video, in full-screen mode!

In this episode I’ll show you a simple YouTube Hack that every teacher needs for sharing YouTube videos with their students.

For Complete Show Notes:  classroomnook.com/podcast/104

VIDEO TUTORIAL: How to Share a YouTube Video WITHOUT the Suggested Videos Bar

Video Tutorial Library 

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We all have our favorite apps and digital tools that we can’t live without.  Tools to keep us organized.  Tools to remind us of tasks.  The list goes one.  

I love sharing my favorite digital tools and apps for teachers AND students, so I’m starting a new series on the podcast called H(APPY) Hour!

And since it’s January and we often focus on organization and productivity this time of year, I thought a great place to start this new series would be with my favorite app that helps me stay organized, and that app is:  Trello!

In this week’s episode, I’m going to share with you what Trello is and how it has helped me stay organized in the projects that I work on and in the resources that I create.  

I’m also going to share how it can be a powerful organizational and productivity tool for classroom teachers, as well!  So, if you’re feeling like you’re all over the place when it comes to organizing your teacher brain, then this episode is perfect for you

You’re gonna walk away with lots of ideas of how you can put Trello to work for you in your classroom including how you can use it in planning your curriculum and even in collaborating with other teachers!

Click here to sign up for Trello. 

Join the LINKtivity® Learning Membership and get access to my entire vault of LINKtivity Interactive Learning Guides - CLICK HERE to join.

For complete show notes visit:  classroomnook.com/podcast/103

We’ve talked so much lately about cultivating a 21st century classroom and the components that make up a modern classroom.  

And although it’s fun to talk about all the bells and whistles and shiny objects that can come with a 21st century classroom - powerful and engaging components like technology and multimedia -  it’s also important that we explore the other side of what it means to use technology and raise students in our digital world - and that is digital citizenship.

With all the amazing things that come with implementing classroom technology, also comes responsibility.  Just as we want to prepare our students to navigate new technology, we also want to teach them the responsibility that comes with it.

There’s a lot to unpack when it comes to digital citizenship, and if we’re going to truly teach our students what it means to be a positive digital citizen and take ownership of their digital lives, we need to approach it from a variety of angles.  

In today’s episode we’re going to start at the foundation, which is helping our students make healthy media choices and finding balance.  

Just as we want students to make healthy choices when it comes to food and moving our bodies, we want students to learn how to make healthy choices in their digital lives.  Teachers can be a part of this by modeling a healthy balance in how digital resources are used in the classroom and through the conversations we have with students as it relates to media.

For complete show notes: classroomnook.com/podcast/102

Join the LINKtivity® Learning Membership and get access to my entire vault of LINKtivity Interactive Learning Guides - CLICK HERE to join.

It only takes turning on the news for a few minutes to have a negative outlook on life.

Young students don’t always know how to process negative situations and experiences.  Just like students need to be taught math skills, science concepts, or reading strategies, they need to also be taught the skill of positive thinking.

The ability to think positively allows students to feel more in control of their own mindset, even when the situations around them feel out of their control.  

Students hold the power to positivity, and in this episode, Victoria from The Mindful Apple joins us to share how teachers can help students develop the skill of positive thinking.

Victoria brings with her years of experience in working with students to help develop social emotional learning skills, like positive thinking, and gives students these life skills to build stronger mental health.

EPISODE 86: Making Social Emotional Learning MORE Than a Buzzword

EPISODE 93: Exploring Growth Mindset with Victoria from The Mindful Apple

FREE RESOURCE: FREE Positivity Classroom Posters (And when you grab the free posters, you’ll be entered in to win the ENTIRE Positivity Social Emotional Learning Unit)

Victoria’s Social Emotional Learning Curriculum

Connect with Victoria:

• Join The Mindful Apple community for your weekly brain food : tips, strategies, and resources for your social emotional tool kit! 
• Shop social emotional resources for the elementary classroom
• Learn with Victoria at TheMindfulApple.com

It’s no secret that both teachers and students LOVE using LINKtivity® Interactive Learning Guides with their students.

I hear from upper elementary classroom teachers daily just how engaged and motivated students are when they use a LINKtivity® to learn a new skill or strategy.

And, when you start using LINKtivities with your students, it’s kinda like a train you can’t stop coming (nor do you want to!).  So- when you start using them on the regular in your classroom, it’s fun to switch it up.

With LINKtivities available in every content area (even seasons and holidays!) - and growing every month - changing up the ways you use LINKtivities with your students keeps it fresh and exciting!

In this episode, I’m sharing 10 different ways that teachers are using LINKtivities with their students.

Enter here to win a FREE YEAR of the LINKtivity® Learning Membership. 

VIDEO: 10 Ways to Use LINKtivities in Your Classroom 

Join the LINKtivity® Learning Membership and get access to my entire vault of LINKtivity Interactive Learning Guides - CLICK HERE to join.

It’s not.   

I love using tech in the classroom as a way to engage and motivate student learning.  Tech provides opportunities to support our students in ways that other learning methods can not.  These opportunities include things like adding audio support to read text to our students, or allowing students to record their responses rather than writing something.  Technology often helps us to eliminate barriers to learning success.

But - just using classroom technology for the sake of using classroom technology is not an effective model for making decisions around technology with your students.

I think learning with multimedia and technology is an essential component of a 21st century classroom, but technology comes in all shapes and sizes, and in this episode, I want to introduce a simple model that we can follow when making decisions about technology in our classroom so that we can use it in the most effective way!

EPISODE 95: What is a 21st Century Classroom??

EPISODE 97: Creating a Multimedia Classroom (Part 1: What the Research Says)

EPISODE 98: Creating a Multimedia Classroom (Part 2: Applications for the Classroom)

SAMR Model

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A better questions to ask would be:  HOW do we create a multimedia classroom?

Over the past couple of weeks we have been exploring what it means to be a 21st century classroom. 

We talked about how a 21 century classroom… 

• includes creating a collaborative and creative environment and encourages students to reflect on their learning
• takes the focus away from a teacher-directed learning approach, and puts students in the center of discovering and exploring their own knowledge.
• puts technology and multimedia in a larger role to create a bigger impact

We’ve also  unpacked what the research says about multimedia instruction and laid the groundwork for what effective multimedia instruction looks like, as well as how the brain processes multimedia and the positive impact it has on long-term learning.

But - not all multimedia is created equal and if done incorrectly - it could lead to brain processing overload. It’s that whole - too much of a good thing...is no longer good idea.

So, let’s explore how we can implement effective multimedia into daily classroom instruction.

EPISODE 95: What is a 21st Century Classroom??

EPISODE 97: Creating a Multimedia Classroom (Part 1: What the Research Says)

RESOURCE: Discovery Learning Folders

Join the LINKtivity Learning Membership and get access to my entire vault of LINKtivity Interactive Learning Guides - CLICK HERE to join.