Seesaw

Scan this to get a month of Seesaw Premium for FREE!!!!

As always, Seesaw Basic is FREE 

How do I love Seesaw?  Let me count the ways!

• It is a digital portfolio for students that can be DOWNLOADED by stakeholders with accompanying QR codes.  
• It allows for communication and collaboration between all members of our classroom family.  Students are able to see and comment on each other's work (if allowed by teacher).
• Parents can see what students are uploading to their portfolio and can comment accordingly.
• There are so many apps that work in tandem with Seesaw.
• Students can demonstrate learning via recordings, pictures, drawings, and videos.
• Teachers can create folders for differentiation.
• Honestly, the list is always evolving because Seesaw is such an amazing tool.

Scared to take the leap?  Just set up a folder to house the links, videos, and anchor charts that you share with your students.  This gives students a "go to" location for finding this information at a later date.

Already a pro?  Try out Seesaw Activities in the "Beyond the Basics" section.

UPDATE: 11/15/2018
I didn't really know if I would continue using Seesaw at the middle school level, but it is just as wonderful as ever.  I LOVE the activities feature.  Check out the photo below.  I can create an activity and quickly see who has not turned it in.  This is helping me move closer to a virtually paperless classroom.  Also, the fact that parents can see what their child is doing makes this an amazing collaborative tool.

Why I Love Kidblog

We all know that teachers are rich, right?  Wrong.  So, usually I steer clear of resources that cost money.  However, when it comes to having my sweet students create their own learning portfolios on a blog the $36 annual fee for Kidblog is well worth the money.

The Top 5 Reasons I Love Kidblog
1.  Ease of use- Even for my students who struggle with using technology, one 30 minute lesson was all it took to have them blogging on their own.  It was very quick for me to register my students, and each student got their own page.  Kidblog uses a very simple design and it almost guides the blogger through the posting process.

2.  Management- I can control who can post, what posts, and who can view it.

3.  Safety- Unless I (the teacher) have added you to the blog, you will not be able to see any posts.

4. Collaboration- In reference to #3, if I want to collaborate with another classroom we can link our classes so that they can view and comment.  This is great for global awareness and 21st Century collaboration skills.

5.  Parent Access- A student can send their parent an invitation to "join", but that parent can only see his/her own child's blog posts.

Mentor Texts

I don't know about you, but sometimes I struggle with matching the perfect text to the objective that I am teaching.  So after doing some extensive research  Googling, I came across this blog that I absolutely love.  It is called, Teach Mentor Texts and you can find tons of books with excerpts, suggested paired reads, and writing prompts.  Simply click on the label that matches the objective you are teaching and a list of books with teaching ideas will pop up on your screen!