If you are unsure of what the 2020 school year might bring, or perhaps you have been hoping to flip your classroom, Go Formative is a great tech tool for you to consider. Let’s talk about Go Formative, and see how our teacher friend and blog follower Lauren used it in the classroom and for distance learning. TECH SPOTLIGHT: GO FORMATIVE What is Formative? With Formative (sometimes Go ...
Distance Learning with Maneuvering the Middle
In March, when the United States shut down due to COVID-19, the team members at Maneuvering the Middle had an emergency Friday afternoon meeting to discuss how we were going to pivot to support teachers during this unprecedented time. Since then, we were able to support distance learning by providing 16 free instructional videos, provide Google Forms exit tickets on various topics, and ...
The Middle School Syllabus
Class syllabus. Did your eyes just glaze over? That’s what happened when I went over my class syllabus with my students the first year I taught. I’m pretty sure it was 3 pages in size 12 Times New Roman font. I also remember a disproportionate amount of my first day of class discussing it. Not my finest teaching moment! Your class syllabus does not have to be boring! Here are some ...
6 Ideas for Bell Ringers
Bell ringers, warm ups, or do firsts -- whatever you or your school might call them, they all serve the same purpose: to get students working at the start of class. This helps communicate to students that every single minute of class time is valuable. I have found that when the first five minutes of class run smoothly, the rest of class time will run smoothly (and I can actually take ...
WAYS TO END THE SCHOOL YEAR REMOTELY
This school year has been unlike any other school year ever. I think we can all say that while we don’t know what next year will hold, we can do our best to finish this year strong. I was thinking about how I normally would end the school year. Our grade level participated in an end of year field trip after STAAR, my students would pie my face based on a test prep incentive they were ...
Desmos Activities for Middle School
Desmos is a free and highly engaging site for students and teachers to use. Our roundup of our favorite Desmos activities for Algebra 1 was so popular, we thought it would be nice to create another roundup specific to middle school standards. And since some teachers have a few more weeks left of remote learning, I figured now would be the best time. Note: I organized these by grade ...
5 Tips for Remote Teaching
Many teachers are a few weeks into this remote learning and remote teaching experience. I asked my reading teacher friend, Julia, how she would describe her experience so far and she responded with a link to this video. @makeshift.macaroni##ukulele ##uke ##originalsong ##teachersoftiktok ##tiktokteacher ##smallgestures ♬ original sound - makeshift.macaroni If you don’t ...
Tech Spotlight: Edpuzzle
I wish I would have known about Edpuzzle sooner! Since remote learning is the new normal, we are all learning about awesome, new-to-us tools. Teaching will never be the same, but I think that is a good thing. Let’s talk about Edpuzzle. Technology Spotlight: Edpuzzle Edpuzzle Features Edpuzzle is an easy-to-use platform where you can: Make any video your lesson (from YouTube, ...
Google Drive & Google Classroom Tips
If you were not a consistent Google Drive or Google Classroom user before, you may feel like you’ve been thrown into the deep end with the recent school closures and new technology expectations. While it is heartbreaking that many students won’t be returning to their classrooms this school year, I am grateful technology will allow students to continue learning. This begs the question - ...
Cultivating a Growth Mindset in Algebra 1
Growth mindset in Algebra is key. As I have written about before, I spent 1.5 years teaching remediation Algebra. Many of these students had failed Algebra the prior year and were not happy to be there. A few thought they knew everything about Algebra (they didn’t) but most had succumbed to the belief they would never be good at math. When I was hired (in the middle of the school year, ...