Digital Memory Book

“[Music] hello everyone I'm doctor Hensel I am an eld specialist in the state of Pennsylvania United States and this is not going to be your typical blog I am gonna be sharing with you some valuable resource that you can use in your building but today I'm actually gonna be going back to my school for the first time in since March 13th which is really weird and our job today as stated by my principal is that we are to clean up our our classrooms put everything all the tables stack them up and put them in a corner of the room so that the custodians will have plenty of space to organize everything clean everything during the summer and then we're supposed to take any valuable things that we need but the catch is we only have three hours to do all of this just because of copán 19 they just really want us to be safe and they actually have it scheduled by date so I was given today for three hours and they're only having a specific number of teachers in the building that's how serious they're taking this and I don't know when I'm going to be back in my classroom to teach my students in person or if we're gonna open up in the fall as normal so yeah I'm feeling a lot of emotions there's just been a lot going on this has been a really difficult week last week as well but I thought I would take you along with me so that you can kind of see what the classroom is and just share with you a little bit about my online teaching experience but before I go I wanted to show you to end of the year activities that you can do with your students including I'm gonna be sharing with you what I plan to do to my students at the end of the school year so I'm gonna hop up in the computer I still have some time before I have to leave for work so I'll show you that so all our class assignments this year have been done in Google classroom and our actual in person meetings have been virtually through zoom and the interesting thing is that our students did not get their laptops months later or a month and a half later and after Kovic 19 took place so basically what we do is we have been doing some enrichment activities with them on a local television station which was really interesting and then I was having any personal sessions or zoom sessions with the students who did have computers but now that all students have a laptop in their hand it has been a struggle most students are doing the work which makes me really happy a good percentage but only a few have been really tuning in in person but one of the things I wanted to do to end the year on a really nice note is to have the classroom do a class memory book which I'm gonna link in the description below but I want to walk you through it so that you can see it and perhaps it's something that you might want to do in your classroom I am aware that some of you are already finished with school and it might be something that you could do in the future but let me show you how this looks okay so here is the copy of the digital memory book that I was talking about it's really short there's really only two three four five like six slides to it and what I really like about it is that you can really differentiate it based on the language level of your students so you could have your brand-new students to the country just insert pictures or draw pictures if they like and then you can create sentence stems for students who are needing more of that support but here on this first page you know they can describe the first part of the school year but they can pace a picture that reminds them of the first year so I highly recommend you go over this with your students before showing them something like this but this is really nice because here they conclude their favourites they're from their friends of the year goals that they have you know that they have accomplished and goals that they want to accomplish in the future and then this is my students love doing hash tags I did this at the beginning of the year particularly with my newcomers because I know that they knew certain words in English but mostly in Spanish I would help them translate and so they would come up with one word hashtags and we did that with pictures and things like that so this is something that all my students are familiar with was doing but I thought I would link that in the description below so that would be something that you can have your students do so for obvious reasons field trips are hard to come by and so one of the things that unfortunately I'm not gonna be able to incorporate this year but I was looking for ideas for finishing or even throughout the school year because I don't know if we're going to be doing digital learning or I don't know why it's like digital learning online learning next year so I actually found two incredible websites where you can have your students go on a virtual field trip with you one of them is you have to go at a very specific time with your class it's called field trip zoom and the other one they are ones that you can virtually go to at any time of the year but I really wanted to show this for you in just in case that in the event that you're not fish with the school year and you're still looking for ideas so this is what I found for phil tripp zoome they have a whole assortment of different field trips that happen all around the world even different parts of the United States and they tell you specifically for what grade level it is for example this was in alaska sealife center so if you're teaching environmental or marine science on june 2nd at 1:10 eastern standard time they're actually going to have a sea lion monitoring where you can experience how researchers collect data and basically what you do is you book it you register it for your class and then it asks you for certain information that you can fill out here and you're good to go and then you just pop on with your class you so what you do is go to programs you go to zone calendar live streaming events and it gives you all the directions that you would do here here it gives you a list of all the dates so they have them pretty much all year round and for example let's see here we can click on so the last date that they have currently available is June from June 1 through 30th they have events but this is such an incredible tool and even if you are teaching in-person to your students in a brick-and-mortar this is something that you can still do with your class and have them you can broadcast it to your projector another website that I found is called we are teachers comm and it lists 25 plus different educational virtual field trips and again there are so many different topics they have science they have life on a dairy farm they have the zoo aquarium the farms and they're really short you know they're they're not really long in depth so it's perfect how this is different from the previous website that I initially shared with you is that this one you can actually schedule a specific day and time so you could do nine versat or one o'clock or so forth you don't choose the time they give you the options but they have a lot more options in the previous website okay folks I'm gonna head into my building now I'm going to show you around a little bit just you can see what how things look like at school and then we're going to head back here and I wanted to share with you some more of tools and resources you can use for the end of the school year to end it on a happy note with your your stood and then I want to share with you what I'm going to be doing so I hope you stick around to the end [Music] [Music] so surreal I mean I'm looking and it just feels like a moment paused in time almost like a type time capsule because I literally haven't been in this building since March 12th March 12th was our last day and I'm looking at the board and I'm looking at reminded of what we were learning that particular day before they told us to leave and it's just really eerie the building is really really quiet there's only one person per each floor or two people on each floor they're cleaning up their classrooms there's like a specific schedule as to when everyone's allowed to come into the building and as I said before we only have three hours lucky for me if you if you followed me for a while you know that in a previous blog I talked about how I thought earlier in the year that they were going to be moving me to a different rooms so I am fortunate that most of my things were already packed up anyway because I was waiting for the go-ahead so my plan today is just to take those boxes and put them over here on the counter so that will make it easier for the custodians to organize and not organize but to clean the floor and then my plan is just to take all these tables and put the flush against that wall I'll take that easel out of the way and hopefully I can just get all the tables stuck close to each other so that it's a lot easier for cleanup and I think what I'm gonna do is just group everything all the furniture all together one of the things that we had to do was take all our laptops or the district had to use these laptops to distribute to students so the concern we always have is that whether we're going to get our laptops back and if we're back in the building next year how is that going to look if students don't return if some students don't return laptops so it's really going to be interesting time I just ran into our assistant principal and she was very kind and asked me you know how are you how are you really and I explained to her how I felt and I might just my heart feels heavy and I'm gonna go ahead and start cleaning up and once I'm finished I just wanted to share with you a little bit more in detail as to where my heart is feeling heavy job done was able to put all the tables and chairs flush against the wall as best as I could and remember all those boxes that were on the floor I was able to put them on the countertop and everything that was inside the cabinets I put them in those crates so think I'm pretty much done here so I promised that I would share with you what has been really weighing on my heart and basically last last week almost exactly a week ago I got a text from one of the deans of our school that a student in our school had been shot and killed and I didn't know how to process that information I didn't directly I didn't directly teach this student but it still really hit the core my core because he was young was only 14 years old and he was a kid that was loved by many and it's just one of those things where I'm constantly reminded that we don't work in a safe city our city is just ridic you know riddled with so much crime and it's just really really sad so I've been me I've been in touch with my students because some of my students were friends with this young man and it's been hard it's been really hard whether you teach a student directly or not you it still impacts you in a certain way and our school really is breathing right now and we just how do you process that type of information I know that I feel that I have even a more greater responsibility to have students really find those moments where you can put the content aside and talk about violence and racial issues and everything that we have going on right now in the world but I'm sad and I'm grieving and this was really hard news to get because already our world is really suffering right now so just keep your thoughts and prayers I don't want to mention the name because he's a minor but it's something that it's a really sad so situation and no teacher should have to should have to say goodbye to a student especially when they're that young it's just it's just not right I'm gonna be listing in the description below some resources that I found that might be helpful for you if you want to have conversations with your students about violence and and different things that are plaguing our society so it's unfortunate that it's a topic that we even have to touch but it's just I feel that it's so very necessary and it's a really important conversation because I feel so strongly that as teachers part of the onus is on us to educate our students so I will make sure to link those in the description below [Music] ah I'm exhausted thank you so much for joining me on my way to work and at work I am going to show you what I'm gonna be doing with my students today it's a quick game of Kahoot I have mentioned it in videos past and it showed you how to set one up but this one is really easy my students already know how to play it it's a lot of fun and you can customize it specifically for what you're doing it because we've been using eyelet drink throughout the school year which is an ESL intervention program I thought might as well have some fun but also make it educationally appropriate where they're reviewing some of the topics that we have been doing this school year so let me just briefly walk you through that so as I mentioned in a previous video Kahoot is an interactive gaming website where you have students actually answer in the questions that or they will type in answers or choose a answer that's multiple choice and you can customize it however you would like to the game that I'm going to do with them this afternoon in a couple of minutes actually in 30 minutes is this one it has to do with the unit that we've been working on for the unit that we have been working on in eyelets and it basically looks like that I'm going to teach it in a 1 to 1 player mode that means that they're going to log in and play against each other once I start the game they're able to log in this way they'll they'll have the codes so all I have to do is literally just join with the app or they can just go on their phones on this website or on their computers and once they log in you won't actually get to see them play the game that it what will show up is multiple choices for each of the questions and they choose it and it shows you like who's the leader of the group but it's so much fun it's so interactive and they really enjoy because it's a great way for them to review information it's great for before a TAS or after a test and these are all the different questions again you can change them if you like to as well if it doesn't if you don't feel that it's you know if you have too many choices or if you just want cha a or b you can do that as well it's all up to you and what meets the needs of your students another idea that you can have and I wish again I had done this is you can actually have your session time be a talent show or them sharing their favorite songs or music and share why they like that and you can set it up where everyone has a virtual background and either Google me or zoom that is related to the talent that they're gonna share and it's one way that they can express themselves and they're having fun but at the same time and their talents can be a wide range some people can play an instrument some can show a picture so that's one thing that I would like to do so I'm just curious how are you going to end your school year it's it's this is such a surreal time for all of us and you know I applaud you for all of the hard work that you have been doing with your students and being so resilient I mean you have to be during times like this but thank you so much for joining me today on my journey and I hope to see you next week for more tips and strategies and resources and just sharing my experiences and helping you with your English language learners in your classroom so I'll see you next week bye [Music] [Music]”