Edmodo: The Teacher's Facebook (Part 2 )

Yesterday I posted about how great Edmodo is. Today I'm going to tell you how I use it in my classroom.

Last year I taught fifth grade for the first time. We began using Edmodo at our site at the end of the school year. I immediately took to it. It looks so much like Facebook, that it wasn't hard to use. I could also use the app on my phone! I had the students using it to communicate for projects they were working on as well as taking quizzes. I would also give them a questionnaire to answer about how they felt the project went.

Since I'm back in first grade this year, I don't plan on using it with my students. However, the parents can log in under their own username and sign up for my classroom group. At my previous school, many of the parents did not have internet access, so using it was mainly in the classroom with the students.

So this year, I am using it for better parent communication.

In my welcome newsletter, I included a short summary of what Edmodo is and why I wanted the parents to sign up for it. I also included my group access code. Then, I made sure to post the newsletter on my website (a link to that was also in my newsletter. I had also posted the QR Code on the wall in my classroom that led parents to my website). The night the newsletter went home, I had two people sign up. I then posted information about Back To School Night on Edmodo. At Back To School Night, I made a plug for it in front of 20+ parents.

Two days later, a parent approached me apologizing for missing Back To School Night. He said his son had kept the flyer for it in the bottom of his backpack. I then used that opportunity to tell him about Edmodo and how I keep parents informed of events on it. It is SO much easier than an e-mail. I can let all the parents know at the same time!

Did I mention that there is an app for that?

Re-Use Crafternoon

My new school is a magnet school for art, technology, and science. And I LOVE that! All three of those things interest me. No wait, they ARE me...well maybe. I like science, I'm just not confident in teaching it. I feel like I'm herding cats when I'm teaching science to my first graders. But I'm learning to let some things go and not be so uptight about it.

Since my last school didn't have any money in the budget for fun, we rarely were able (or even encouraged) to do anything arts based. In fact, I can recall a teacher friend of mine having to sneak it in when a past principal wasn't on campus for fear of being reprimanded...even though it had to do with science curriculum!

So my first adventure in an art project was using some cardboard my mom gave me. She had purchased about 100 new plates for a function last month and the cardboard was between the plates. When I saw them, I thought, "I don't know exactly what I'm going to use that for, but I want them!"

Turns out, my new school has an art room. Did you hear me?! A room dedicated to art! I can take my kids there and be messy! It's fully stocked with every artistic medium you can imagine! I felt very out of place when I was given the key and opened the door. I thought I had to quickly be in and out and would get "caught" taking art supplies for my cardboard project.

I scored big time! I found drawers and drawers FULL of all different colors of tissue paper. Immediately, I knew what we were going to do. Back to school night is next week and my walls are looking bare (waiting for curriculum and a Promethean Board to arrive...STILL). I grabbed green, blue, and two different shades of purple tissue paper. And just for good measure, I snagged some orange just in case. I cut the paper into small squares. I had the kids glue the tissue paper around the edges of the cardboard, making sure not to get the middle (they have a natural line where the bottom of the plate left an indentation).

I then took each kid's picture with the iPad the school allows me to use and printed out the pictures on photo paper. I glued their pictures in the center, used a hole punch at the top, tied some ribbon through the hole, and then hung them from my new Pinhooks. They look amazing!

*I don't post my students' pictures, but please enjoy these cute smiley faces!

Here is my project before I added the blue ribbon:

*I hung this up next to my desk. 

Pretty simple, pretty cheap, and I feel good that my wall is filled! I also feel good that all that cardboard has been saved from the recycling center and may even be saved for years to come (you know how parents are.)!