March

Did you know that March is Women's History Month?

Our own Andrew Hyland is ready to support!  👏👏👏

Showcase Student Learning

Believe it or not, we are in the homestretch of the 2021-22 School Year and what a year it has been!  This month, I would love to get students creating and showcasing their work and activities for the year through Google Sites.  

Google Sites is a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) website builder that students and teachers can use for a wide variety of purposes.  It's so much easier than you might think and integrates with everything in Google Drive.  Here is a brief and incomplete list of possibilities.  The options truly are endless.

• Student Portfolio - Showcase learning throughout the year.  Sample Portfolio shared with permission here and here.
• Digital Class Yearbook
• Class Website for parents - Our own Lisa Allan-Holdener has created a fabulous tutorial on how to do this here.
• Create a Class Study Guide with student contributions
• Group Projects

Don't forget we have Formative!

In this district, we are lucky to have a wide variety of online assessment tools, with Google Forms being the most widely used. But if you are looking to create assessments that go beyond the standard multiple-choice, dropdowns, short answers, etc. let me remind you that you have access to the full version of Formative found at formative.com. Simply choose to login with Google and select your district account. Formative allows you to build formative assessments using twenty different assessment tools. You can even create Edpuzzle style questions for video clips within the same assessment alongside more standard questions. As well as add a wide variety of digital content, including audio of your own voice and a digital whiteboard, without having to use additional extensions.

For a fancified video advertisement of formative, check out their own Formative Video. If you are looking to explore student thinking in a more creative and meaningful way, give Formative a shot. And if you would like some help in doing so, just let me know and I will come out to your site and sit down with you and work on Formative assessments with you. Formative is a really great tool that I wish I had when I was still in the classroom.

Cheers, 

Aaron Kelly Stephens

VUSD Digital Education Coordinator

aarons@vacavilleusd.org

Amazing FREE Math Manipulatives - Cheryl Carter

The Math Learning Center has wonderful resources for teaching elementary math. They have digital interactive math manipulatives, which can be shared to students via a link through Google Classroom or Seesaw. Teachers can use the digital apps to provide visual displays for math lessons. These free apps are based on the visual models featured in their math curriculum, Bridges in Mathematics. Apps are available in multiple versions: a web app for all modern browsers, and downloadable versions for specific operating systems and devices (such as Apple iOS for iPad). To find the apps collection click on the link here. And even better, the company has free apps activities, which utilize the apps collections. Click here for the link to the activities. Bookmark this link to keep all the math apps at your fingertips for easy teaching.