Monday, February 15, 2016

Just did my first Periscope.......AHHHHHH!

For those of you that have no idea what Periscope is, it is a social media site that provides live broadcasts.  If you can't join in on the live broadcast, the site will save it up to 24 hours.  People can join in on the broadcast and ask questions, make comments, and so on.  You can follow certain people and get notifications about their broadcasts.  I didn't hear of this site until I started selling Rodan and Fields.  My team started to use this app/ site as an online networking tool.  It wasn't until I started to dig further that other Teacher Pay Teacher authors were getting in on the hype too.

So today, I made my very first Periscope.  You can go back and view it and follow me on Periscope and just type in Katie@Motivational Ms Mac and then my mug will show up....LOL!  Much like my blog, I don't want it to just be about teaching.  I would also like for it to be scopes on some of my interests outside of teaching, such as working out, recipes, skincare, health, family, etc....  My first scope was stating just that; my ultimate goal for using the site.  I was a tad nervous, so please don't judge.  (I did say I was an overachiever and someone commented that I obviously wasn't "modest huh?!")  If you know anything about me, you know that I often take on too much, but I truly feel that is when I work best.  C'mon, what teachers do you know that aren't overachievers and total Type A personalities?!  It can be looked at as either a positive or negative....sometimes I look at it as both.  It was more of a dig at myself, not trying to boast!  I guess that is a caveat of live broadcasts......"haters gonna hate."  I'm ready., I got this...BRING IT!  HAHAHAHA!

Although, this was my first scope and was semi-nervous; I am seriously looking forwards to sharing quite a bit.  Watching your own video is a little funny too...I asked myself, "Do I ready sound like that?" or "Huhhhhhh, did I just make that face?!"  Time to reflect......

Anyways..... would love for you to check it out and join me on yet another adventure.
Periscope..... Katie @Motivational Ms Mac

If you are scoping too; leave a comment!  I would love to follow you!


Sunday, February 14, 2016

What Is Scoot?!

As a teacher author on Teachers Pay Teachers, I often see my fellow Teacherpreneurs sell things that they call scoot! I felt a little silly asking my TpT seller friends so that I didn't sound crazy; so I asked my third grade unit at work. All they did was rave about it!

So I decided to give it a try! My students were struggling with rounding to the nearest 10 and 100.

This was a great activity to get the students up and moving. Our curriculum is so fast paced... Yet I decided to slow it down a bit as this is a skill they will be using in math in future grades and even in life! 
The students loved it!  This is how I played.... Students were to get up out of their seats.  When I yelled to begin, they are to flip over the task card at their desk and write down their answer on the provided answer sheet.  After they have written their answer, they are to flip cards back over.  Once I yell "SCOOT" ( about every 30 seconds), they are move onto the next desk, flip over that card and solve.  I tried to make this as uniform as possible in my classroom, by having students go to all of the student desks' at their group and then as a group move onto the next set of desks.  But that is totally up to you.  I have even spread out the cards around the classroom for the students to find.  I love that the students have to think quickly, but I would adapt the time depending on the skill they are working on.  Since this skill was rounding, I only gave about 30 seconds for the students to complete each card; making it roughly about a 10 minute game for my students.   The pictured cards are ones I found on Super Teacher Worksheets; but I have since created my own scoot cards.....VALENTINE'S STYLE!  
You can find my version here: 




Tuesday, February 9, 2016

FREEBIE ALERT: Printing on Sticky Notes


After seeing posts about printing on sticky notes over the years, I finally decided to try it out for myself. I was planning for an observation and was trying to think of ways for students to review the plot of a story they were familiar with. As I knew I was being observed, I wanted to spruce it up a little. So I thought.... This was just the thing I needed to do! For me it was super easy, all I did was set up a template in Power Point. With the template, I typed up information about a story to complete a story map I made with my class.  The students loved reading the sticky notes and allowing them to get them out of their seats and placing the notes on the story map.  It was actually great because the students had discussion about the story and even gave valid points when they disagreed on sections of the plot.
I printed out all of the templates first.  As it was my first time doing this, I wanted to make sure that everything lined up correctly.  From the printed page, I placed sticky notes over each box, and printed again.  That is it! Voila!  A total time saver!
For independent work, I had students continue to work on reading passages and highlighting the literary elements in different colors.  I was able to print these out on color and send with the students to their seats, so I could easily move onto working with my other guided reading group here!  
Find my FREE template here!  



Please let me know how you have used this in your own classroom!