Google Docs and Clickers

Last week I had a blast working with the fourth graders! They are currently learning about our solar system! They conducted research in the library about the 8 planets. When they came to the lab as a class they made two QR Codes (one linked to a cool fact about their planet and one linked to a picture of their planet)! I wasn't sure how they would do BUT they did amazing even with the few glitches that we ran into! I am learning that teaching something THREE times (we have 3 teachers per grade level) allows for you to reflect and make any changes and really perfect a lesson! They were so excited about the QR Codes that they continue to bring me ones they made at home daily! I have a huge pile on my desk.

Then I took a small group for extension and they used Google Docs while working in teams of 2-3 to create test questions for a clicker quiz that they will be giving to their classmates this week! First I had them "marry their laptops" so they were side by side which they thought was the funniest and grossest thing EVER! One person opened the planning document and the other had the curriculum. They LOVED logging into gmail.com and thought it was beyond cool that they could see what the other teams were writing. They used their research as well as the 4th grade curriculum (Science SOL 4.7 & 4.8) to create questions. I asked the teachers to give me a few things that they wanted me to make sure was on the test but there was no need for my guidance. They rocked it and came up with awesome questions. I was VERY impressed. They begged to stay and finish on the first day so I told them they could work from home and over half of them accessed it from home! On the second day I taught them CTRL. C and CTRL. V which they thought was magic and they copied and pasted their questions and answers into SMART Notebook SMART Response.

I was worried that by taking this position (ITRT) I would miss all those funny things that kids say in the classroom but I am not missing out one bit! On the 2nd day the class was working on editing the questions for proper spelling, capitalization, punctuation and marking the correct answer with an * to make the copy/paste process go faster and to stay occupied while their classmates added questions. I sure wish SMART Notebook could be in Google Docs! Anyways, while working with a student at my desk on adding her question to the notebook I heard another girl say, "Who put "your mama" as a choice for "What's the hottest planet?" It took everything in me not to crack up laughing but when I got it together I told them that they were being inappropriate. If you're wondering... Venus is the hottest planet in our solar system!