Technology in the classroom constantly changes and so are the classroom tech tools that we use every day with our students.

Take your lessons to the next level.

From creating content for students to analyze to sharing strategies for assessment and classroom collaboration, ChatGPT has the potential to save you hours of time and make your life infinitely easier. Here are 50 prompts that will help with that.

Come learn about my FAVORITE technology tools for digital communication and collaboration with elementary students. Use these tools with Chromebooks, laptops, computers and some can even be used with iPads. Global learning is making its way into the classroom and we need to make sure our students are prepared so they can make the most of these authentic learning experiences!

A Question Matrix is a tool to assist students in developing the skill of asking rich, higher-order questions about objects, events, ideas, and places in their environment.

What vocational targets for students with Autism do you need to hit in your class to make them job ready? Read on… and FREE Materials to help!| NoodleNook

If you think I have the answers here, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed. I'm far from having any answers.

I'm glad you asked! Talkify is an interactive resource from ABCYa.com that is my new favorite tool for my non-readers.

10 inexpensive rewards to use in your middle school class.

The Unfair Game is a totally unfair twist on Jeopardy that your students will LOVE to hate! Learn how to play and find sample game boards in this post.

You are probably familiar with Kahoot as a review game, but my favorite way to use this website is a BLIND Kahoot. The game structure is the same only instead of reviewing a concept, you use it to introduce it! Check this out as a way to mix up your lesson plans, introduce content, and engage your students!

Seesaw is a fantastic online tool for teachers, parents, and students! This post walks you through how to get started and to use it in your classroom!

I know I am not alone when I say that I struggle to sit through staff meetings without doodling on my paper, shifting in my seat, getting up to use the bathroom and occasionally whispering with my teacher friend next to me. Now, these are every other week, and only for an hour. Every time I leave, I […]

(PDF) What is a Break Card / "I Need a Break" Card Visuals / How to use break cards (Autism / Special Education / Mainstream Classroom / Home)

Nearpod is a phenomenal student engagement platform that adds endless engagement and digital learning into your classroom!

We all know and love Kahoot, right? If you do not know about Kahoot then we have a few blog posts with tips and ideas to get you up to sp...

Strategies for defiant behavior that support positive behavior, develop teacher-student relationships, and minimize escalating situations.

Keep your students engaged and get them up and moving with these 5 fantastic movement ideas you can use right away and over and over again!

I’m not going to get into the nitty gritty of what ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) is. If you are reading this post there is an excellent chance you already know what it is because you are dealing with it in your classroom. I’m also going to go out on a limb and assume that […]

80 sponge activities you can do in your elementary classroom to make every minute count.

Many upper elementary science teachers start the year teaching their students about science process skills and scientific practices like: working safely in the lab using science tools asking questions planning and carrying out investigations analyzing and interpreting data constructing explanations with claims, evidence, and reasoning Here are some resources and ideas that can help make ... Read more

Come learn about some creative ways educators are using Wakelet in the classroom!

I have several students on my caseload who struggle with anger management and emotional regulation. I loved this idea for Cool Down Cubes from Entirely Elementary and decided to make a set of my own. Supplies: Plastic ice cubes - I purchased a bag of 30 from Bed Bath & Beyond for less than $4 Container - The one pictured came from the Dollar Store Permanent maker Using a permanent marker write a safe "cool down" strategy on each ice cube. For example: count to ten, walk away, talk to a friend, take three deep breaths, etc. I also left a few of the cubes blank so that the students could come up with their own strategies. The original post suggested placing the ice cubes in the freezer for an additional "cool" effect. That's it! Easy right? I have used the Cool Down Cubes in both individual and group settings to discuss ways to "cool-off" when angry and have gotten a great response from students. 

We use tools in our classroom that help encourage our students' thinking -- but are you making their thinking visible? We use anchor charts and other strategies, but are you doing all of these? There's one way to find out!

I am always looking for ways to streamline data collection. In the past, I was only tracking the behavior of students if it was related to an IEP goal, or if we were beginning to notice a spike in behavior. And while this worked, it isn't always enough. This year I found a way to track all of my students' behavior in less than one minute a day... AND I don't even need to pick up a pen! To make this happen, I use two things: Google Forms (check below for the FREEBIE!) and an Amazon Fire tablet. While you don't need the tablet to use Google Forms, it does make it more convenient for staff to document behavior without having to access the computer. Google Forms is free and easy to use. It is basically a survey that gathers and analyzes any type of information. I will be honest, I have always been a bit resistant to using a tablet for data collection for a couple of reasons. 1. I give all of my tech to my students. 2. TECH IS EXPENSIVE! (or so I thought...) The Amazon Fire tablet is actually pretty inexpensive. You can typically find them for less than $50, which is a killer deal. Now that I have the tablet I find that I use it for far more than just data collection, but that's a topic for another post! Now that you know what I use, here is how you can make it for yourself! First, download a copy of the Google Forms Digital Classroom Behavior Log. Open the file and click on the link. You will be prompted to save a copy of the Google Forms template. Next, type all of your students' names in the left column. You can also change titles for each behavior rating to meet the needs of your classroom. And... that's it! Your form is all set up! Pretty easy, right!?! Now it is time to give it a test run and view your responses. Don't worry, you can delete your responses later. Click on the preview icon in the upper right corner. This will bring you to the actual form that you will fill out to track behavior. Select one of the behavior options for each student and add a note at the bottom to detail any incidents that happened during the day. Then hit the submit button to record your information. Click "submit another response" to head back to the form. Are you ready to take a look at your responses? Click on the orange pencil in the upper right corner to get into editing mode. Next, click on the responses tab. This will give you a your data in a bar graph. Hover over each bar to get more detailed information. You can also download the responses in a Google Sheets file. This is a great option if you need to find information from a specific date or time period. Now that you have had a chance to play around with the form, you may want to delete the information that you submitted so that you can start fresh with your students. Just click on the 3 dots in the upper right corner and select "delete all responses." This Google Form is easy to access from anywhere with an internet connection. All you need to do is access the URL. This can be done by creating a bookmark, or saving the link to your desktop. Would you like to see a video of these steps in action? Click on the video below and I will walk you through of the entire process. Are you ready to give it a try? I would love to hear how it goes for you! (This post contains Amazon affiliate links. I only link to products that I personally use and find beneficial. Please click HERE for more information.)

Do you have a mountain of student writing to grade? Do you wish you had more time to give students better feedback? This little trick will help.

Classroomscreen.com: A Web Tool Teachers and Students will LOVE. Easy way to turn your browser into an interactive board. Digital stoplight, timer, calendar, random name picker, drawing tools, work symbols, text area, QR generator and more are all tools included in this free web tool.

Quick, casual ways to make sure everybody's on board.

These differentiation strategies in the classroom are perfect for middle school and high school students. I use these ideas in secondary math, but they would even work in elementary.

Your students probably already use these tools to write papers or create presentations, but they could be doing other projects you may not have thought of.

Learn how to make video tutorials for students using Screencastify to build autonomy, differentiate instruction, and increase effectiveness of lessons.

Over the past few weeks, I've been working on a new Project-Based Learning initiative with my students. Working in groups, the students have developed business models, created budgets, filled out loan applications, met with loan officers, developed advertising campaigns, and placed purchase orders for materials. They've corresponded by email with their loan officers and tracked their work in business portfolios. They've presented their business plans to leaders in our school community, and are preparing to start production when we get back from spring break. My students are seven and eight years old. They don't even have all of their teeth yet. It sounds unbelievable, but I promise--it's true. If you haven't experienced Project-Based Learning in your classroom, I can't WAIT to share all about it with you, and how I make it come to life for my second graders. I won't lie--it's a lot of work. However, teaching in and of itself is a lot of work, and I've actually found that committing to one large project is a far better use of my time, effort, energy, and resources than planning 25 separate, smaller, unrelated activities. Over the next couple of weeks, I'll share how to practically apply Project-Based Learning in a primary setting, and give you the tools and resources you need to make it happen in your own classroom. Before I dive into the specifics of the project we're currently working on, though, I want to outline some of the core principles of Project-Based Learning and some of the practical first steps you need to consider before you write even a single lesson plan. Project-Based Learning is an instructional strategy defined by several key components. First, students need to have a real-life problem that they are trying to solve. This is written in the form of an essential question. All lessons and learning activities are tied to this essential question, and the question helps to focus the unit of study. This leads to the next component of Project-Based Learning, inquiry. Project-Based Learning allows for open-ended exploration of the essential question. This means that students working in groups might all come up with slightly different answers to the essential question, and that's okay. This also means that students might fail at first, and that's okay, too. A final characteristic of Project-Based Learning is that the project is integrated into all content areas over a long period of time, and eventually the project is shared with others. Project-Based Learning is NOT a single day of lessons, and it isn't something you do from 9:30 to 10:30 each morning. Instead, your reading, writing, grammar, science, social studies, and math lessons ALL point back to the essential question, and help students move forward in their project in some way. Where is the teacher in all of this? The teacher is a guide and facilitator, but not the source of all knowledge. Of course, direct instruction is involved, but there's a huge, collaborative problem-solving component woven into the instruction, as well. I'll be completely honest: when I first heard about Project-Based Learning, just thinking about it made me feel exhausted. This was a major shift from how I had previously taught my primary students! I used to approach planning on a week-to-week basis, and would look up activities and crafts on Pinterest for each separate content area. I'm certainly not knocking Pinterest (in fact, you can see my own overflowing Pinterest boards here!); I always found great activities that really engaged my students. The difference with shifting to Project-Based Learning, though, is that I'm no longer searching for and prepping 25 separate activities each week. Instead, each subject area is seen as an opportunity to make progress towards one big goal of completing a final project. Instead of planning on a week-to-week basis, I plan on a unit-to-unit basis. Before you get totally overwhelmed, let me encourage you: Project-Based Learning takes no more effort than you are already putting into your teaching. If you are a week-to-week planner like I was, you'll find that planning a whole unit at a time is actually easier! I'll be sharing an overview of our current Economics unit in a future post so that you can have a practical example of what this looks like, but first I want to share the initial steps for putting together a Project-Based Learning unit. 1. Create a Curriculum Map Gather all of your standards for each of your content areas in one place. Are you working on narrative writing? Jot down that standard. What ELA standards are you focusing on? What math standards will you be working on? Most importantly, what science or social studies standards will you be covering? (These last ones will be key in designing your Project-Based Learning unit.) Put all of these standards into one document, and now you have your Curriculum Map! 2. Identify a Central Theme Now that you have all of your standards together in one place, what kind of themes do you see? Can you tie together social studies and science standards? Do any specific math concepts correlate with your topic? Consider what books or articles you could study that are related to your topic. By starting a unit with a particular theme in mind, you'll be better equipped to make smart decisions about the resources you choose to plan your lessons around. You might also spot some ways you could group your standards and identify concepts that would lend themselves to being taught in tandem. 3. Write Your Essential Question After you've identified a central theme, craft an essential question that encompasses a real-world problem related to that theme. Essential questions are broad, but they help define the purpose behind a project. For example, the essential question for our Economics unit is, "How can we use economics to bring justice to the world?" This encompassed our topics of economics and countries working together, and defined a purpose for why we would care about buying a cow for a family in the developing world. 4. Outline Your Project Once you have your unit theme and essential question, you can start to think about a project that would give your students a real-world problem to solve. In our Economics unit, I focused on the problem of economic injustice in the world. Not all problems that are presented to students need to be on a global scale, though. We happened to be studying about how countries work together for our social studies standards, so choosing a global problem was appropriate. In other units, though, we've identified problems on a school level. When choosing a project, just remember that it should be spread out over weeks, not hours. It's completely reasonable to break up a project into a lot of tiny steps, especially with primary kiddos. Sketch out what you want your final project to be and list off the small steps your students will need to take over the course of the unit. 5. Create a Weekly Pacing Guide Whew, last step! Now it's time to make your Weekly Pacing Guide. I promise that this upfront work will make your weekly planning a breeze. Pull out your Curriculum Map, Project Outline, and calendar. In a new document, map out how many weeks your unit will take. Divvy up your standards by week, deciding how long you want to spend on each content area standard. For each week, make a note about your project goals for that week. What portion of the project will your students be working on, and how will that tie to the standards? Now when you go to do your detailed weekly planning, you won't be doing a search on Pinterest for each individual content area. You'll still be searching for resources (Pinterest is great!), but you'll be carefully and intentionally choosing activities that all relate to each other and to your essential question. If this still feels like a mystery, don't panic. I'll be sharing with you all of the start-to-finish details of my class' most recent Project-Based Learning experience in Part 2! If you're ready to get started and want to integrate Project-Based Learning into your classroom right away, I've put together a resource to make your first experience a breeze. I've included ALL of the printable materials you'll need for a project, along with a detailed daily pacing guide, in my Marketplace Economics packet. If you're interested, you can find the printable materials here. For those of you who have already implemented Project-Based Learning in your classrooms, what has your experience been like? I'd love to hear all about it!

Gallery walks are a great way for students to observe each other's work. Padlet makes this possible to do virtually while distance learning!

What Can You Create With A Cardboard Box? In this project, which serves as a fantastic introduction to project-based learning, students will use 21st century skills to create innovative uses for a cardboard box. They will use creativity and collaboration to brainstorm, plan, and build a box creation with a partner or group. Students will learn to use the critique process to give and receive feedback in order to revise their end product. Finally, pairs will exhibit their creations to an audience of their choosing. Throughout the project students will use the common core speaking, listening and writing standards to clearly communicate their ideas to their group and a real world audience. There are handouts, examples, a reflection, and a rubric included in this lesson. This project is designed to have a structure compatible with implementing PBL in the classroom. NextLesson projects include certain key components that facilitate an authentic PBL experience.

Gallery walks are a great way for students to observe each other's work. Padlet makes this possible to do virtually while distance learning!

Engage your teletherapy students with these interactive activities. From Boom Cards to PDF annotation, keep your virtual speech therapy sessions focused and fun!

In this blog post and episode, Kasey will share 25+ awesome ways to use Google Keep, which she refers to as the "Instantpot of G Suite!" Find out how to use this tool for notes, labeling, annotation, speech to text, feedback, and more! And get the FREE Bonus: The Google Keep Cheat Sheet!

If your non-English speaking students aren't ready to do the regular class work, what should you have them do instead? This handy tool can help.