Ideas for Anyone Teaching Vocabulary (so every teacher ever!)

My school set reading comprehension as our academic focus areas this year, and I was tasked with introducing some reading comprehension strategies to my colleagues they might use with their students. I immediately thought of Marzano's vocabulary process as a painless introductory strategy. Nothing is more frustrating than a student's lack of comprehension or success because he or she doesn't understand the question or the prompt. As a former French teacher, I had already amassed an arsenal of fun vocabulary activities, so sharing was easy! Here's the introduction I offered my colleagues, with plenty of digital resources for our 1:1 Chromebooks!

Marzano’s Six-Step Vocabulary Process 

(note--it’s important to do ALL SIX steps!)

1. Provide a description, explanation, or example of the new term.

• Looking up words in dictionaries is not the most useful way to learn vocab
• Provide a context for the term
• Introduce direct experiences that provide examples of the term
• Tell a story that integrates the term
• Use video to aid in processing and internalizing meaning
• Describe your own mental picture of the term
• Find or create pictures that explain the term

2. Ask students to restate the description, explanation, or example in their own words.

• Monitor and correct misunderstandings
• Important that STUDENTS create this understanding rather than copying teacher or book models

3. Ask students to construct a picture, symbol, or graphic representing the word.

• Model, model, model--even if you're not the best artist!
• Provide examples of student’s drawings (and your own) that aren't perfect--maybe even attempt to improve upon them!
• Play “Pictionary”
• Make a comic, by hand or online with a tool like Pixton or makebeliefscomix



We like to do steps 2+3 on our dry erase painted desks! We use our Chromebooks to snap quick pictures of them and compile them on Google Slides presentations.

4. Engage students periodically in activities that help them add to their knowledge of the terms.

• Highlight prefixes, suffixes, root words to aid in decoding and memory
• Identify synonyms and antonyms for the term
• List related/unrelated words 
• Translate the term into another language for second language students
• Write incomplete analogies for students to complete
• Allow students to write (or draw) their own analogies (Connect Two Example)
• Sort or classify words

5. Periodically ask students to discuss the terms with one another.Think-Pair-Share

• Yes-No-Why (Example)
• Compare their descriptions of the term
• Describe their pictures to one another
• Students share their own connections or mnemonic devices 
• Explain to each other any new information they have learned (Aha Moments)
• Identify areas of disagreement or confusion and seek clarification
• Allow students to revise their own work

My students love to play Kahoot!

6. Involve students periodically in games to play with, recycle, and review terms.

• That’s Sketchy (Pictionary)
• Puzzles
• Vocabulary Baseball (Teacher predetermines single, double, triple, and home run words, bonus if students actually "run" the bases!)
• Memory (time students, beat themselves or each other)
• Jeopardy (vocab words are on the board, players make up a question to define)
• Charades
• Vocabulary Battleship
• Name the Category ($100,000 Pyramid)
• Password
• Catch Phrase
• Bingo (teacher gives definition, students mark the words)
• Create a skit (assign groups of 3-4 kids 3 vocab words include in a skit)
• Flyswatter Game (show images representing the words or the words themselves all on 1 image, kids on 2 teams compete to find words first when teacher reads the definition and swat with fly-swatter)
• Arcade style games
• Pac Man Game 
• Kahoot
• Socrative Space Race

What would you add to the list? I'd love to hear your fun vocabulary games and activities that have proven successful with students! 

Google Slides Is More than a PowerPoint!

After our in-house Edcamp on presentation tools, things went well for a while. Teachers were trying out the new presentation formats, asking questions, and, even more importantly, asking students to try some new formats. But as time  went on, they all reverted to the tools they find most comfortable--PowerPoint and Google Slides!

Since we're a GAFE and 1:1 Chromebook school, I have been urging teachers to convert their PowerPoints to Google Slides and to create their new presentations using Google Slides. Most of them have been, so I started thinking about all the things you can easily do with Google Slides that you can't (or maybe can't as easily) accomplish with a PowerPoint...and so a Tech Tuesday presentation was born!

I've been offering Tech Tuesday professional development opportunities for around ten weeks now as a Tech Mentor. Basically, I ask/survey teachers about what technology topics they would like help with, and then I develop a one-hour workshop on each topic. Here's our most recent Tech Tuesday--Google Slides is more than a PowerPoint. I pulled much inspiration from this great post by Matt Miller at Ditch That Textbook--10 Google Slides Activities to Add Awesome to Classes



What creative ways have you come up with to take advantage of all Google Slides has to offer? Please share them with a comment!

Presentation Tools, Edcamp Style!

In January, I had the opportunity to plan a half-day technology professional development in-service for my fellow teachers. After using a Google Form to assess what they most wanted to learn, I wasn't surprised when presentation tools prevailed as the requested topic. After all, we share our knowledge with our students through presentations, and we often ask them to prepare presentations to share what they've learned as well!

I decided that the best plan of attack would be an Edcamp style day, with expert teachers sharing, modeling, and guiding groups who wanted to learn a particular presentation tool. With just a half-day, I wanted to have enough options that teachers could learn more than one tool, but not so many that they didn't have time to play with the tools they learned and actually create lessons they planned to use. I recruited 3 teachers to lead sessions with me, so we taught four presentation tools.

Deb presented PowToon: Create animated presentations and explainer videos! It's engaging and as easy to use as PowerPoint. Templates are available, or you can design your own. She even blogged about using PowToon for IDOE's Web 2.0 Challenge! Free, with upgrades available for a fee.

Leslie presented Thing Link: Add links to all sorts of media--videos, music, web pages, notes, presentations, assignments--to an image of your choice to make an interactive presentation! Browse the gallery for publicly shared ThingLinks on a variety of topics. Free, with upgrades available for a fee.

Ashley presented Emaze: Fluid, 3D templates allow the viewer to glide through these presentations with ease! Multiple templates to choose from, and users can customize. Users can also explore the 2 million+ Emazes already created.

I presented Blendspace: Create lessons with digital content in five minutes! Blendspace allows teachers to collect and curate web content, add their own content, and present lessons, complete with assessments if desired, in one spot. With a gallery of teacher-created content to browse, users can build from a publically shared blendspace or start from scratch. Here's my Blendspace presentation:


Most teachers had time to learn about and experiment with two different presentation tools, and I know they started using them based on the number of questions they were asking me about them afterward. Even better, when I asked students if they were seeing or using any of these presentation tools in their classroom, they could respond affirmatively! However, several months later, teachers and students agreed that most of us had reverted to the tools we are most familiar with--PowerPoint and Google Slides. With this in mind, I gave a friendly reminder of our Edcamp tools, and then designed a Google Slides Tech Tuesday to explore some possibilities of this go-to tool that teachers may not have considered. I'll share my Google Slides Is More than a PowerPoint presentation tomorrow!

What are your favorite presentation tools to use for lessons? Which are your favorites for students to use? Please share!

My Top Six, Can't-Live-Without Chrome Extensions

I've already confessed to being a Google Chrome addict, and I keep finding more apps and extensions that make my life easier and more productive. After giving a Tech Tuesday presentation this week to some fellow teachers that left them reeling from all of the exciting possibilities, I was inspired to create this list of my top six, can't-live-without Chrome extensions!

1. Extensity
This extension allows me to turn all of my apps and extensions on and off with two clicks, keeps my toolbar clutter free, and helps my computer run faster! I simply enable/disable extensions as needed. Bonus--I can launch any Chrome app  I have from this extension! THE must-have extension for Chrome addicts like me!


2. Save to Google Drive
With this extension, I can save screenshots or web content (including Office Docs, PowePoints, Spreadsheets and PDFs) to my Google Drive. It allows me to rename files and choose a folder from my Drive to put it in!  This is a great feature when I'm browsing for ideas for a new lesson I'm teaching, or when I find awesome content I'm afraid I'll lose!

3.  Grammarly Spell Checker and Grammar Checker
When we made the switch to Google Apps for Education in my school, one of the biggest complaints I heard from my fellow teachers was the lack of spell check/grammar check in Google Docs. Enter Grammarly to the rescue! Not only does it check your spelling and grammar in Google Docs, sheets, presentations, drawings, etc, but it also checks it virtually anywhere else on the Web! No more (or at least fewer) errors in tweets and Facebook posts! While a paid, premium version exists, I get much help from the free version of this extension!

4.  One Tab
I can be the Queen of Open Tabs if I don't watch out. This used to slow down my browsing experience, but it doesn't happen any more thanks to the One Tab extension. This easily, seamlessly converts my open tabs into one tab with links to all of my pages. I can restore a single tab, or I can choose to restore all of my tabs at once. The description boasts that One Tab can save up to 95% memory!


5.  Adblock Plus
Have you ever tried to show a video from Youtube in class, think you have everything in control, and then suddenly find yourself stuck with one of those ads you can't skip? Worse yet, the ad is invariably inappropriate, right? Well, that will happen no more with the Adblock Plus extension!  I never have to deal with annoying ads popping up any time I browse with Chrome!

6. Goobric
With the addition of Google Classroom to Google Apps for Education this year, Goobric has proven to be an amazing extension that allows me to work towards a paperless classroom by attaching a rubric I have designed to any rubric I have designed to an assignment in Google Classroom. I don't have to click on each assignment individually; Goobric allows me to scroll through and mark assignments quickly and easily! Check out this awesome video from Jennie Magiera on how to use it!

So many more amazing extensions exist, and new ones are being developed each day! I'd love to hear about your favorite Chrome extensions and how you are using them in the classroom! Please add your comments below!