Roxi Thompson

There are many things that are unknown about the upcoming school year. However, one thing we know for sure in my district is that ALL teachers will be teaching their students online until at least Labor Day. We also know that it is going to be super important for teachers to spend some time developing relationships and building a classroom community with our students. This will be challenging, especially for teachers who are not feeling very comfortable using technology. However, with the right support, I think all teachers can find ways to do this in an online setting. One tool that can be used to build community is Google Classroom. This is a great place to start because most of our teachers went through training with Google Classroom when schools were closed in the spring, so they have a basic understanding of how it works.  Stream The stream is the first page you see when you enter a Google Classroom. One thing that I always recommend is that teachers change the settings on the...

We just wrapped up our first week of school! I really enjoyed meeting and getting to know our new 5th grade students! Here are some of the activities we did to start building our classroom culture and learn more about each other: "All About Me" Google Drawing Students learned how to use some of the basic features of Google Drawings by creating a Drawing about themselves. The basic requirements were that they include their name, a picture of themselves, and text/images that describe their personalities or interests. I created an example to give them an idea of what it could look like.  I used this activity last year, and I really enjoyed what my students created. However, I decided this year to give them more time to just play with and explore the tools in Google Drawing. I feel like this really paid off because students were able to discover how to use some of the tools and share with each other instead of just relying on me to show them how to use it.  ...

Last night was "Back to School Night" at my school, and we had a really great turnout!  Our 5th grade team decided last year to set up stations so that our students and parents had things to do instead of just standing in a long line waiting to shake hands with the teacher. We wanted to encourage them to interact with the other students and parents, and we also wanted to be able to circulate and have time to meet them and make some personal connections instead of repeating the same information 90 times.  We created a checklist to help guide parents through the stations. ( Click here if you would like to see it. ) Here is the basic set up in each classroom: Google Doc Station: We created a Google Form for parents to fill out information about their student, including allergies, volunteer availability, and anything they would like us to know about their student.  Notecard Station: Parents can write a note to their student that they will receive on the ...