Week of April 12, 2012 - Kerri Lorigan and Jim Kirkcaldy
Jim and Kerri are using the iPod touches as "clickers." We put a clicker app on the iPods called Student Clicker- Socrative. Kerri and Jim can create quick assessments on line and all the students, using iPods, can respond all at once to questions about the curriculum they are learning. The teachers get an immediate idea if everyone understands the concepts taught and/or who didn't "get" it. Please feel free to come and use our new iPod "clickers" anytime! You can sign the iPod Touches on our Google Calendar for computers.
Congratulations Kerri and Jim for introducing this very cool educational devise to our school.
Week of April 6, 2012 - Angela Kuzemczak
In order to better learn Italian, Angela's students made newscast videos... in Italian! You can view one of them here:
Congratulations Angela for letting your students learn in a creative and fun way!
Week of February 27, 2012 - Aviel Valenzuela
The students in Mr. Valenzuela's Spanish class made commercials in Spanish. Students wrote the script, made the storyboard, videotaped the commercials, edited them and published them on a wiki Aviel made. If you'd like to see some of these videos you can go to his wiki!
Congratulations Aviel for helping students learn Spanish in a fun and memorable way!
Week of February 12, 2012 - Laura Shock, Sam Morris, Karen Zawisza and Dan Skop!
The eighth grade teachers created another great project. Their students studied and researched Ancient China's Dynasties. They then created a blog where they wrote all about them. You can read one of the blogs here: Yuan Dynasty.
Congratulations Dan, Karen, Sam and Laura for helping your students learn and create really informative blogs about Ancient China's Dynasties.
Week of December 23, 2011 - Tom Johnson
Tom Johnson, one of the middle school physical education teachers wrote a grant for an iPad to use in his classes. Students move to different stations to work on different activities and the iPad activity uses an app Tom found to show different exercises as students work along with the video. Congratulations Tom for using innovative technology to help students participate in PE!
Week of December 12, 2011 - Jane Evans
Wow, another really cool project at our middle school! Jane Evans, our sixth grade math teacher has had her students create an exciting and informative resource for all students. Jane's students have created mini-tutorials by making screencasts where they explain and solve math equations. These are both entertaining and informative. Students become the experts of their math problems and explain them so other students can watch and learn. I couldn't stop watching them they are so cool! You can find them all on the Wiki Jane created. Here is the link to one of the pages.
Thanks Jane, for this amazing and creative way to teach students math!
Week of November 28, 2011 - Dan Skop, Laura Shock, Karen Zawisza and Sam Morris
Once again our 8th grade ELA teachers are the Geeks of the Week. Students researched the time period and people who lived during the Holocuast. Students then had to write journal entries using the viewpoint of either a victim, perpetrator, rescuer/resister or bystander of the Holocuast. Dan Skop and Sam Morris had students use blogs for this. You can see one example of their excellent work here: Claire's Holocust Blog. Karen and Laura's students created really excellent voicethreads. You can view one of them here: Hermann Goering by Amin Touri
Congratulatons Dan, Laura, Karen and Sam for a very meaningful, relevant project.
Week of November 1, 2011 - Allison Levit
ELL teacher, Allison Levit is using Khan Academy to help teach her
students about Math. Khan Acadamy is a unique program that allows
students to watch math tutorials and take quizes to improve their math
skills. There are hundreds of free tutorials on this site. You can learn
more by watching this little video: Khan Academy
Week of October 24, 2011 - Aviel Valenzuela
World language teacher Aviel Valenzuela had his students participate in a creative and unique project. Using Google Voice, he created a phone number and recorded a greeting in Spanish. After his students had written a script in Spanish, they had to call the google number and leave their message in Spanish. The students then got to listen to their messages in class. These messages can also be downloaded as MP3's! You can listen to one message here: Student's Spanish message
Congratulations Aviel for creating a lesson that helped students learn Spanish using cool, creative, fun tools!
Last Week of 2010 - 2011 Year: Sam Morris, Dan Skop, Laura Shock and Karen Zawisza
Humanities Cluster 5 and 6 students created awesome presentations for their Choosing to Participate project. Students identified a social issue, researched it and created presentations to make people more aware of the problem as well as gave suggestions about how to solve the problem. Their projects were their choice. Students' topics ranged from ways to stop pollution to the effects of nuclear warfare. Some students choose Prezis, Glogsters, iMovies, or Powerpoints to use as presentation tools. One group even created a website. You can view the website here: WMS Goes Green!
This project is a great example of students learning by doing!
Congratulations Sam, Dan Laura and Karen on an excellent, student driven project!
Week of 5/9/2011 - Lisa McDonagh
Watertown Middle School has a great new site created by students in Lisa McDonagh's class. This awesome blog critiques popular books read by our students. You can read their book recommendations at WMSGreatReads.
Lisa gives the students time to work on these in class as well as at home. This site is now linked from the Learning Commons webpage as well, so students throughout the school can get great suggestions about some very interesting books.
Thanks Lisa for this wonderful idea and resource to Watertown Middle School!
Week of 5/2/2011 - Phil Oates
Excellent, seventh grade math teacher, Phil Oates, has created a fun, educational WebQuest for his students. Students went to the computer lab to virtually shop for food. They had to calculate how to get the best deal for their money. They had to set up proportion, solve for x and choose the lowest unit rate in order to get the best deal. Students were excited about his project moving around the lab, collaborating with each other and completely engaged in their learning.
You can take his WebQuest by clicking this link: Unit Rate WebQuest
Congratulations, Phil on creating a really fun, engaging project for the students!
Week of 4/25/2011 - Sonya Marrone
Our wonderful Italian teacher has taken Google Docs to a new, impressive level. All Ms. Marrone's students do all their written work on Google Docs. Ms. Marrone saves paper by correcting and editing her students' work on Google Docs as well as requiring each student to have their work peer edited by another student on Google Docs. They then make all the corrections themselves after reviewing suggestions from their teachers and peers. They use Google Docs for their Italian dialogs and most impressively they are using them for their pen-pals. Students write letters in Italian on Google Docs and "invite" their friends from Italy to view their letters and write back... all without using any paper! This is global learning at it's best as students learn about Italy from it's own citizens.
Google Docs allows her students to access their work anytime and from any computer they are near.
Congratulations Sonya on creating some meaningful and innovative lessons for your students!
Week of 4/11/2011 - Mary Sullivan and Kellie Spillane and Kerry Boudreau
Mary, Kerry and Kellie's 7th and 8th grade students are using iMovie to create video's comparing their lives to Cesar Chevaz, an American farm worker and civil rights activist. Students are studying the lives of immigrant workers, then using pictures of both immigrant laborers lives and their lives to talk about their similarities and differences. 6th grade students read The Circuit by Francisco Jimenez, focusing on how the life of one immigrant family has changed their views of the world.
Congratulations Kellie and Mary and Kerry for creating such a thoughtful project to help your students increase their reading skills while learning about our world and the difficulties so many people face.
Week of 4/4/2011 - Ellen Fitanides and Lynette Goulet
Ellen and Lynette's humanities classes are using the social network site Edmodo to have their students learn about Mythology in a blended environment of both in-class and online worlds. Students are given assignments, videos and readings online and can communicate with each other and the teacher in this "facebook" like forum.
Congratulations Ellen and Lynette for using this engaging forum that allows students to learn any time, any where!
Week of 3/28/2011 - Allison Levit and Judy Powers
Allison Levit and Judy Powers have incorporated so much technology into their day to day teaching it would be hard to choose which project I might showcase. From their leveled reading program on the iPod Touches; their blog, where their students write and comment to each other and watch a screencast created by Allison to help them learn new skills anytime, anywhere; to their use of many different Web 2.0 tools like vox0pop, Allison and Judy keep their students engaged! If you'd like to visit their blog you may click the following link: ESL Blog. For their awesome links to other resources for their students, click here: ESL Website
Congratulations Allison and Judy for using resources that motivate and engage your students!
Week of 3/21/2011 - Lynette Goulet
Lynette Goulet's enrichment class wrote poems and set them to digital media. Using Photostory 3 students imported pictures that described their poems, narrated and subtitled their photo story and produced works of art. Click on the link below to go to Lynette's wikispace that displays all of her students most excellent projects!
Lynette's Wiki
Congratulations, Lynette on a really creative project!
Week of 3/7/2011 - Chris Cochran
Chris's class has been working on book trailers. Students have been creating trailers of their favorite books. These will be shared on the library website so all students can learn more about books before they check them out. Below is an excellent example of one book trailer: Student Example
Congratulation Chris for letting your students use their creativity to show what they've learned from books!
Week of 2/22/2011 - Abby Casey (Cordell)
Abby's drama students have been producing creative and very entertaining advertisements on Garageband. The podcasts can be heard on her wiki: A Class and B Class
Congratulations, Abby for having your students create a very inventive, cool project!
Week of 2/14/2011 - Dan Skop and Sam Morris
For the second time in a row, Dan and Sam are Geeks of the Week!
8th grade students were asked to research a specific Ancient Chinese
dynasty, write the information into a variety of styles (interview,
persuasive, informative,...), and create a blog to showcase their
writing and learning. You can view one student's blog here: Nate
Congratulations again, Dan and Sam!
Week of 1/24/2011 - Dan Skop and Sam Morris
Dan and Sam are using the educational social network Edmodo to help promote independent reading for their students. Dan and Sam set up accounts and gave their students a password to join the network. Students have their own identities and can upload their own pictures. This site is very similar to other social network sites, although this site is private and only used by these classes. Student's in Mr Skop and Ms. Morris's humanities class will update their status weekly with their reading assignments.
Congratulations, Dan and Sam, on a really cool, engaging project!
Week of 12/20/2010 - Cluster 4 (Lisa McDonagh, Phil Martin, Kerri Lorigan and Elizabeth Kaplan)
Using Lisa McDonagh's idea,the
seventh grade teachers of cluster 4 have created a project which integrates English, Social Studies, Math and Science during their studies of Ancient Egypt. Some of their many cool, educational projects include: mummifying chickens, graphing the loss of body density while chickens soak in salt, taking pictures and creating an i-movie, blogging about this project, and researching Pharaohs. Tomorrow, they will use iPod Touches to test their knowledge about ancient Egypt. If you have a chance, stop by Cluster 4 classrooms tomorrow and you can see some of the great work they are doing. This project is still happening so keep checking in to the below sites to watch the students' progress: The Humanities Blog
Elizabeth Kaplan's Blog
Congratulations Lisa, Elizabeth, Kerri and Phil on a very unique, and creative project!
Week of 12/14/2010 - 7th Grade Humanities Teachers (Kerri Lorigan, Lisa McDonagh, Ellen Fitanidies and Lynette Goulet)
The seventh grade Humanities teachers have been using Noodle Tools to help their students research ancient Egyptian Gods, Goddesses and Pharaohs. Students have been learning to correctly site sources, take notes, paraphrase, and import jpgs. They will finish their project using iPod Touches' App,
Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead.
to have students quiz their knowledge of ancient Egypt in a fun and engaging way.
Congratulations, Kerri Lorigan, Lisa McDonagh, Ellen Fitanidies, and Lynette Goulet!
Week of 11/29/2010 - Kara Conceison
Kara, using Universal Design for Learning ideas, allowed three of her students to create a Wiki about their latest novel, Where the Red Fern Grows. The sixth grade students worked together during their classes (which were held at different times) and at home to publish their work about the characters, plot, their thoughts and other interesting information about the story.
Congratulations, Kara, for helping your students collaborate and individualize their learning!
Week of 11/22/2010 - Elizabeth Kaplan and Karen MacAulay
Elizabeth and Karen worked together to teach their students how to classify organisms. They devised a unique project where their students created diagrams using word and PowerPoint. Students then uploaded their diagrams and pictures to Voicethread. They recorded themselves using a script they created describing their classifications. Students then copied the embed code and pasted it on a blog created for all the science classes. You can click on their blog, Classification of Life, to see the students' Voicethreads. They will be commenting on these during the next weeks.
Congratulations Elizabeth and Karen on a very creative project!
Week of 11/15/2010 - Karen Zawisza
Karen has created an awesome websites her students are using to find resources, blog and many other activities that require creative thinking as they learn about the Holocaust, Ancient China, the Middle Ages and more. You can view her website here: Karen Zawisza
Here are some subjects her page covers:
Congratulations, Karen!