This Sunday spotlight is a great activity you can use in your classroom in the lead up to Christmas time! I created this activity last year for Christmas, with students completing a different Christmas activity each day! There are lots of different types like literacy, maths and art. Each activity is attached in the pdf, being crowdsourced from Teachers Pay Teachers. Links to the individual activities are provided in the pdf too. 

There are two ways you can get this for your classroom! Click on the link here to be taken to the version saved in Google Drive. You can download it from there. Or download the pdf that is uploaded to this post below. 

This sunday spotlight shares the link to these great QR stories with audio links for the ready to read books in New Zealand. A great resource to use in 'listen to reading' time if you are do daily 5 in the classroom. Or just a great independent activity to have going for students to listen to stories. Even better if they can read along with the text version handy. 

This sunday spotlight is sharing this quick, easy template I made to help my students when they come back to class. Quite often I have students out of class doing lessons with learning assistants and they always come back into class AFTER you have talked through the class activity or guidelines. So instead of having them sit there and wait for me, we talked through a class set of expectations along with this 'check in with me' card.

Alongside the above brainstorm, I created this cards which are on the wall with velcro dots. Students come back to class, choose a strategy to help them and if they still can't understand what we are doing - or are just looking for affirmation that they have done the right thing; they write their name on this card and leave it on my table near me. 
When they give me this card, they don't need to talk to me but just see that I have seen it. I then know I need to make a chance to check in with them so they know what to do and are on task. 

Are you finding it hard to use technology in your classroom with a purpose? Lots to choose from and not sure where to start? 

8 Engaging ways to use technology in the classroom is split into 8 sections with each section focusing on a theme for technology use in the classroom. The pdf ebook is full of links, pictures and ideas on how you can use it for yourself in your classroom. These sections include:

• Share the learning
• Gathering feedback or student voice
• Gamify Learning
• Get Creative
• Interact with Learning
• Collaboration
• Project Based learning
• Be Our Guest

This weeks Sunday Spotlight is sharing this great word of the week template that allows students to show their learning in different ways. This could be used for whole class activities, small groups or as individual work. It has spaces for the word in the yellow bubble; write it in a sentence, how many letters, what rhymes with it, write it as a rainbow word, vowels and consonants, and as a silly sentence. 

This weeks Sunday spotlight is sharing a new freebie I created for my classroom - post it note goals! Perfect for any year level with students using post it notes to document their goals. There are three boxes for goals which could be anything students are wanting to work on (curriculum level, behaviour, outside the class). Students write their goal on a post it note and stick it on their goal card. Once they have completed their goal students can take off the post it note and add a new one. Great for reusing the template also as the goal card can stay on the wall all term/year. 

So as I mentioned this week, there have been changes to the New Zealand curriculum to help create students that are future focused, critical thinkers, ready for future jobs and creating/solving problems that are relevant to them. These changes are evident in the 'technology' curriculum area; but are best met when integrated into all curriculum areas. For more information check out the website post here. 

This particular long term plan has been over 20 hours of thinking, typing and planning to bring together key ideas and links that I believe make the terms of these changes (and progress outcomes) more clear and easy to implement/introduce in the classroom. A lot of these ideas have been things I have tried, seen in class or heard of and I have tried to supply links to the information the best I can. There are some links and freebie resources of my own which are linked in that I am giving away for free with the plan. 
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I most certainly am not an expert in this area; but hope that this can help unpack these changes for teachers and students. 

This week I am sharing my teacher tech videos page - the new addition to my website. This is a place where educators, teachers, individuals and even students can go to for quick help tips around digital devices. 

The videos are sectioned into three sections currently: google related videos, seesaw related videos and then anything else technology based. The videos are filmed using screencastify or quicktime player screen recorder and are short videos talking through simple steps or ideas. The youtube links are also there if you would rather view them on Youtube. 

Click on the link here to check it out!

This includes a template with days of the week, month, date, weather and space for important updates. Perfect as a beginning of the day activity or calendar maths warm up in maths time. 

Make a copy of the template for yourself here.