My #OneWord this year is Gratitude, and as we approach Thanksgiving, I am especially grateful for the hardworking, amazing teachers in Bandera ISD who are so tenacious about learning together and growing their practice. I am inspired by the ways that you are integrating technology in your classrooms to increase communication, collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking, the ways that you are leveraging social media, Remind, Class Dojo, and your websites to build community, and the ways that you are teaching and learning from each other. You teach me every day! There are far more examples of awesome things that are happening in BISD than are possible to highlight in this space, but I hope that what you see below inspires you and affirms that we are making big strides in building our own capacities and in providing our students opportunities to gain 21st century skills. I hope that your Thanksgiving is blessed with things that restore and refresh you. I am thankful to be a part of the BISD family.
S
Using Technology for Professional Development
Ya'll, our curriculum leads are doing a phenomenal job of sharing resources in Google Classroom. I'm blessed to belong to the curriculum classrooms on all four campuses, and every time I get a resource from one campus, I think, "Man, this would be awesome for all the campuses." So, with the permission of the curriculum leads, I'm posting classroom codes for all four campuses below. You are invited to join any/all of the classrooms. If you find a helpful resource, please share it in one of the classrooms for the rest of us!
AES Teach with Tech: k9uuvio
BHS Curriculum: #iteachbluegrit: 4doi05b
HCE Curriculum & Digital Learning : hj00nh
BMS Curriculum & Digital Learning: 2gr9hv1
Using Technology for Blending and Assessing Learning
If you haven't tried a Digital Escape Room activity yet, talk to Erin Chambers or Kathleen Allison at BMS. Mrs. Chamber's math students completed an escape room this week. In her words, "Love it!! ...my students were engaged and it was so quiet!" Ms. Allison uses Escape Rooms in her STEM classes to offer opportunities for students to collaborate to solve problems.
Cassie Simon's BMS students studied tides this week with a Hyperdoc and completed a formative assessment on Flipgrid where they used paper manipulatives to explain the relationship between moon phases and tides. I loved that one part of the process required that the students check in with Mrs. Simon to show what they learned before they received supplies for the next step. What an effective way to assess learning in the moment!
Angelle Enriquez's AES students recently used BrushNinja to create animated .gifs to show their understanding of math concepts--a fast, easy, fun way tool for formative assessment.
Lisa Gherman's fourth graders at AES recently used the voice typing feature in Google Docs to write their Turkey Gobble drafts. Then they used the Read Write extension to have their papers read back to them for editing purposes. The digital tools aided them in transforming their ideas into written narratives and increased their productivity in the editing process.
Using Technology to Support Learning and Build Community
When I reflect on where our teacher websites were five years ago and where they are today, I want to do cartwheels across the courtyard at the middle school. (Ok. I know you're laughing if you got a visual on that!) BISD teachers are offering students access to resources to extend their learning and are providing information to families that help foster community.
- HCE first grade posts sight words weekly so students can practice their learning with their parents
- HCE's kindergarten offers their students videos to reinforce learning
- HCE's third grade provides students and their families calendars and resources to support learning.
Teachers across the district are using Class Dojo, Remind, and Twitter to celebrate learning. And Erin Moore's Broadcasting Club at HCE is using YouTube to promote innovations at HCE.
The BHS English department is promoting #BulldogReaders through a Google Classroom and a collaborative Google Doc where students and staff can make book recommendations.
Thank you for all you do to take learning to the next level for our students.
