Rick Morris, a former teacher and now a gifted presenter, continues to spark teachers’ interests in classroom management and instruction.  I have attended three of his workshops and have gained so much from each one.  He is truly gifted and inspiring to all new or veteran teachers.  One idea Morris discusses is the power of using music for classroom/student management.   Using music is a great way to communicate to students and is simple to implement in the classroom, especially with the use of an iPod.  For many students, their teacher’s voice tends to become undetectable at certain periods of each day.  By using music, teachers can communicate with students without using their voice.  Morris assigns a certain classroom procedure to a specific theme song.  For example, a teacher can play the Jeopardy theme song to allot students some time to clean up and stand behind their seat.  If the procedure was integrated correctly, all students should be standing behind their picked up desks by the time the song ends without the teacher saying a word.  Short simple songs are recommended for quick classroom procedures.  Visit http://newmanagement.com/tips/tv_theme_songs.html to get some ideas for using music in the classroom.

In the 4th grade, students are responsible for understanding food chains and how energy is passed on through each living thing.  This video podcast includes a short review of the content and introduces students to an exciting food chain game from the website, www.sheppardsoftware.com.   Students will still be able to upload this game from any computer and finish putting together the other food chains while reinforcing the standards based content.  

California State Standards  (http://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/documents/histsocscistnd.pdf)

Life Sciences – 4^th Grade 

2.   All organisms need energy and matter to live and grow. As a basis for understanding this concepts.

a.  Students know plants are the primary source of matter and energy entering most food chains.

b.  Students know producers and consumers (herbivores, carnivores, omnivores, and decomposers) are related in food chains and food webs and may compete with each other for resources in an ecosystem. 

Images from Flickr – Creative Commons

Today I was fortunate enough to attend a Discovery Education conference.  One of the workshops surrounded the topic of Glogs.  I had never heard of them so I was curious to see what it was about.  Thankfully, I came away with so much information that I have to share.  

I created my first glog (see above) and it took me around an 1 hour to complete, since I am new to the program.  The presenter, Katie Warren, was extremely knowledgeable in using glogs for education purposes.  You can go to www.edu.glogster.com and create your own glog site for students to use.  They can collaborate and create glogs surrounding key concepts covered in class.  On my glog, I provided a link to a teacher's website that uses glogs with her 1st grade class (click on eye at the bottom of the glog).  She has successfully integrated this program into her classroom instruction and students create glogs with audio of their own voices.  Truly inspiring!  I can't wait to create more glogs and see how effective they are in my future classroom.  Try it out, I bet you'll get hooked.  

Glog Video: