OneNote - The Beginning

This month I tried using Microsoft OneNote in my classroom. I've been eager to try it for over a year, but finally jumped in and did it. I was originally going to try it out with a small group of students. Another student overheard and asked to try it too. I took that as a sign to go ahead and launch it with the group.

My regular double block students LOVE using OneNote. It took a bit for them to become comfortable with using it. We still have some kinks to work out, but overall I can see the value in this particular program.

When we return from Winter break, I plan to try to utilize OneNote on a more regular basis. I'm thankful my kids are willing to "try" new technology related things with me. They seem eager to try and are always more than willing to share their opinions with me. Here's a sample of one of my student's bellringer journals. They beg me to continue to do the bellringers on the computer. The sad part is that they are slow typers, but they welcome the practice.

We tried another activity digitally instead of on paper. My students were working on combining sentences using a comma and a conjunction. Instead of running it all off on paper and having the students complete it one paper, they were able to manipulate the sentences using OneNote. 

Things I like about using OneNote:

• Automatically saves changes.
• I only create one master and push it out to the student's notebooks.
• They are learning how to use technology.
• They look forward to using it.
• I like being able to have all of the information in one location for the students. 
• I save time on making copies! 

I look forward to learning how to incorporate this into my classroom on a more frequent basis. 

** The sentence activity is by Jessica Osborne and can be found here on teachers pay teachers.
** The bellringer activity is by The SuperHERO Teacher and can be found here on teachers pay teachers.

Dialogue Journals - Launching

On the day that I launched dialogue journals with my students it was different than I imagined. I've selected once class to do this with. They were given about 25 minutes to read, write, and respond to me. This was the quietest my classroom has ever been. They were working so hard and actually writing without complaining. I am quite eager to see how they respond to this. It's interesting to see what they come up with and how they choose to respond to my short letter. My hope for the dialogue journals is that it will grow my students as writers. Some of my kids went ahead and personalized their journals.

Something I've noticed about the dialogue journals is that many of the kids really enjoy them. They begin to tell you things that you wouldn't normally get to know about them. One kid shared that he didn't really know how to use commas, but tried to use one in a sentence.

"My other ELA teacher's never taught me how to use comma's so I tried to use one last sentence." 

I was able to pinpoint when he used commas well and show him how to use them in his writing. It was nice because the journals opened the door for that dialogue with my student. Also, he was able to say that he tried something in a place that was not threatening.

My students beg me to write in their dialogue journals. It's been a bit rocky trying to find a routine for answering them. We've sort of worked out a system. The students know when their journals are in the basket, that it is filled out and waiting on them. When they've responded, they return their journals to my answering bag. I try to answer a few at a time instead of trying to answer them all at once. That was kind of a mistake when I tried to do that. I couldn't keep up and they begged me to fill them out. My instructional coach and I worked through a process to keep the momentum going. So far it seems to be working well.