Screencastify Madness

It was a mad, mad, mad, mad, mad, mad world of screencasts last night! That many mads is how many screencasts I made last night :-) If you don't know what a screencast is, it is a narrated video of what is happening on your computer screen. Why did I make six screencasts last night, you ask? Well, this morning I had a substitute teacher for my 7th-grade class while I was in a curriculum meeting, and my students were starting a new project that had many steps to it. The project packet had the directions on it, but some things may have needed extra explanation that the substitute may have been unable to supply. So, I did the next best thing and recorded myself giving the explanations on a digital copy of the document. But why six screencasts? The project was divided up into six sections, and making one long video would probably leave the students saying, "That's too long so I won't bother!" By making six videos, the students are able to just watch the ones they need. I think I might be getting the hang of this!
The 8th graders are wrapping up our unit on space by creating some orbit models. Rather than simply asking them to create a model of the solar system, I decided to let them choose different types of orbits in the solar system, such as moons around a planet. This helped to provide a little variety, and it still allows the students to meet the goal of describing how gravity plays a role in the motions within the solar system. They needed to pick a central object (what is being orbited) and at least 2 orbiting objects (this would allow students to use the Earth, moon, and International Space Station). From there they needed to do a little research on their objects and then begin to build their models. I think the most challenging aspect of the project for the students is that they needed to make their models to scale. Those of you who really know me are aware of the fact that I'm a math geek at heart, so I just couldn't resist having the students do a little math along with their projects. They are presenting on Monday, and we have a good variety of objects so it will be nice to not listen to all the same information on repeat (obviously there will be some overlap, but not as much as if everyone all had to just do the solar system)!

Mindfulness thought for the week: It's okay to look back on the past; just don't stare.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Getting back into the swing of things...

Well, I've been able to spend a little time in my classroom the last few days...but not as much as I would like--we have some construction going on around school, so there is limited access. I usually take this time before I actually HAVE to be back at school (because those inservice days prior to school starting are never enough time). to work on my to-do list and ease back into things. I'm not sure if the general community actually realizes how much time teachers spend at school the few weeks leading up to our contractual time, but I would be willing to bet that at least 75% of elementary teachers are back in their classrooms before inservice starts (I can't speculate on middle and high school). I think I will do a twitter poll to find out...I haven't done one yet, so this seems like a good first attempt. Please visit my twitter poll: https://twitter.com/tomoetjen/status/898270659049959424 Getting the classroom ready for the beginning of the year is a big undertaki...
Read more

Just five more minutes...

I think one of the hardest things about winter break is readjusting to the regular sleep schedule once school starts up again. To be honest, yesterday morning (the first day back) wasn't an issue probably because of adrenaline, but this morning was rough. It was one of those mornings that I wanted to just keep hitting the snooze. It was one of those mornings where I would have rather cuddled up in bed next to my daughter rather than trying to wake her up. But, alas, we had to get over our sleepiness and get on with the day. Today was a day that I have been looking forward to because it was the first day for presentations on semester-long projects for the students. The seventh-grade students were working on Science in the News projects. At the beginning of the year, the students were introduced to Newsela, a website that has a huge library of articles on a variety of topics, including a section on science-related articles. So the students got to peruse the articles that interested ...
Read more

What Day is It?

 Did you ever have one of those weeks where every day kind of bleeds into the next, and by the end of the week you have a hard time remembering what you did on certain days prior? That's how I'm feeling right now. I would say that the main reason for this is that I'm sitting in an empty classroom every day. Even though the students are at home, teachers are allowed to work in their classrooms (assuming that they don't have any illnesses or have been contact-traced). We do have the option to work from home, but I felt that I would get more accomplished at school (fewer distractions :-) Now that the assignments are starting to roll in, it has definitely been helpful to have the quiet time at school to manage grading and identifying what is missing. However, I would much rather have a classroom bustling with activity (as most teachers would). So, even though I couldn't fully remember what happened on what day, looking back at my lesson notes has helped, and it was a pr...
Read more