AutoDraw
A great big shoutout to Sarah Verstuyft at BHS for sharing Autodraw with me last week. What an incredibly easy tool to use for Sketchnoting, creating images for presentations, and enabling artists with limited artistic ability (like me!) to create something identifiable!
Images are downloadable as .png files, which means they can be imported into other programs as images.
So, how can you use AutoDraw in your teaching?
- Create a custom icon for a grading rubric
- Create custom icons as reminders of test strategies, writing tricks, or math/science processes.
- Allow students to create custom images for their literature circles, field trip groups, or teams.
- Encourage students to create an image that represents a character, a time period, steps in a process, or a vocabulary word.
Teachingbooks.net
Teachingbooks.net is one of those awesome resources that sometimes gets overlooked in the craziness of lesson plan prep, but putting it on your radar can save you time in the long run.
If you are teaching a class novel, Teachingbooks has tons of resources including lesson plans, author interviews, reviews, and book guides. If you are promoting books in your classroom, Teachingbooks features "Today on Teachingbooks" to highlight books. Show one of the linked author interviews, and you've got an easy-peasy way to do a booktalk!
If you teach social studies, Teachingbooks' advanced search allows for searching by cultural area, which makes recommending books for independent reading super easy. Additional advanced search features allow for searching books by grade level, curriculum area, lexile, subject, and more.
You can share resources by auto-populated bookmarks (like the one to the left) and QR codes and also by sharing directly to Google Classroom.
All four campuses (teachers and students) have access to Teachingbooks.net through our TexQuest subscription. See your campus librarian for login credentials.
Desmos
A great big shout out to Kierstyn Dumont at BHS for sharing TeacherDesmos with me last week. I knew Desmos had an online graphing calculator, but I had no idea the great resources for math on the site. I think I loved the way Coach Dumont described the site to me almost as much as I like the tools! She explained that the site starts the students on low stakes tasks that quickly build their confidence and move the students to more complex concepts through questions that lead them to seek patterns and rules on their own. Letting the students work through the activity on their own before teaching a lesson allows them to bring some knowledge about the concept to the table.
When teachers preview the student activity, teaching suggestions are offered at the bottom of the preview. Teacher accounts are free.
Teachers share lessons though a class code. Teachers can control pacing and view student responses through the teacher dashboard. Check out this Integer Operations activity to get a feel for the site.
When teachers preview the student activity, teaching suggestions are offered at the bottom of the preview. Teacher accounts are free.
Teachers share lessons though a class code. Teachers can control pacing and view student responses through the teacher dashboard. Check out this Integer Operations activity to get a feel for the site.
