Mrs. Slaviero's Blog

  My reflections this week are all about leveraging technology to positively impact students and their learning. My Language Support Historians built community by creating and viewing persuasive newscasts about the geographical regions that make up the United States. Students had the choice of using either the TouchCast app or the new (to me) green screen technology in Apple iMovie.  Writing, speaking, and critical thinking skills were practiced and community building occurred when viewing. Each student wrote two compliments for each video (including their own video) and shared out.  My US History 8 Historians are in the midst of researching their National History Day projects. Classes are combined every hour at this point in the project so I get to interact with close to 300 students! It's so exciting to hear how they are interpreting this year's theme (Breaking Barriers in History) and the subjects they're researching. Last year I kept noticing that I...

This week in NHD featured presearching and researching topics in order to finalize choices next week. Student Historians continued to wonder and find questions about the topics they learned about last week in the Media Center. The Speed Topic-ing lesson was a hit and left many students wanting to know more about at least some of the topics they examined that day. This week started with a mini-lesson from Mrs. Chatel as she asked this group if their topic questions could simply be answered with a "yes" or "no" or if their questions were "Big Mac" questions--ones that would take many weeks to complete. A Big Mac question is the perfect National History Day project endeavor. Presearching and researching went well. These students are going to decide their project topics, partners they will work with, and what type of project they will create this week. Language Arts teachers will support this work with helping students begin to formulate a thes...

Student Historians are working diligently on their National History Day projects. I have been meeting with student groups according to categories to remind them of the benefits of the  Symbaloo Webmix  created for them #rightsideofthewebmix and to give them individualized help.  We have a few groups creating a dramatic performance and I received some help from our Forensics teacher and compiled her tips as students were writing their scripts, along with a plot diagram for them to use. (I have always utilized graphic organizers with my students, they are incredibly helpful with project development by helping students work effectively and with a focus.) Each group needs to write a Process Paper--a graphic organizer from me should make that process run smoothly, as well. (I will post this document on my Twitter page,  the Webmix is only for web links.) Our school-wide presentations are January 23rd (my History classes) and January 24th (our other Histo...

Link to my NHD Symbaloo Webmix  Symbaloo is one of the best technology resources I've found to assist my Student Historians and me on our National History Day journey this year.  I learned about Symbaloo at the MACUL (Michigan Association for Computer Users in Learning) Conference this past March. I was intrigued by its ease of use and by the company's commitment to education. My first thought was to utilize this resource for National History Day. Over the summer I created a Symbaloo Webmix to simplify the NHD process. Developing the Webmix was a matter of breaking down the project components (thinking about possible topics of interest, understanding the theme, pre-searching, researching, writing the thesis question, learning about project types, seeing project examples, creating digital note cards, housing resources, developing an Annotated Bibliography, and learning about the contest) and creating tiles for each these web links.  The left side of th...

This week in NHD featured "The Shift". The Shift is moving from my planning what we are doing the entire class period to the students taking responsibility for their own planning. Our agenda: *Noodle Tools--write to-do list (we will do this one together to model it--you will create individualized to-do lists from now on) *take survey (if you haven't already) *see Symbaloo updates (links to previous category descriptions, etc.) *search MS Media Databases (they're on Symbaloo ) *write research question in Noodle Tools *write 1-2 checklist items of your own This project, as previously stated, is multi-faceted. Students need to have some general guidelines so they aren't overwhelmed. What they equally need, though, is the parameters to take on planning themselves . To-do lists are an excellent way for students to clarify what needs to be done and note when these tasks are completed. (Many students know how to do this, but just as many do not.) I in...

I've been trying to come up with a way to update our National History Day journey when the name jumped out at me--I suddenly remembered "This Week in Baseball", a sports show I used to watch with my Grandpa when I was a kid. (Google it for some great baseball memories!) "This Week in NHD" it is! I met with all 8th Grade US History students again yesterday and we completed a few business tasks--we logged onto NoodleTools, the website that will help us organize our sources and ideas this year, joined the Schoology 8th Grade NHD Group I made for all 8th Graders so that I can easily send every student, not just my students, information and resources, gave a brief overview of the project this year, and shared the Symbaloo Webmix I created for them.  This Webmix is going to become an essential resource. The necessary resources are all in a user-friendly format, color-coded and organized for ease of use. I will add tiles to the mix as the need arises and I look...