Mummify an Apple

One of the great things about teaching social studies is how easy it is to support other subjects and STEM initiatives. I teach 7th-grade social studies and my favorite unit is ancient Egypt! I created an experiment for my students to mummify an apple, essentially turning my classroom into a science class for the day. Check out the lesson plan below!

Mummify an Apple Experiment

 

PowerSchool Email

If you use PowerSchool there is an easy way to send a mass email out to all of your students or parents!

Gmail Tips and Tricks

As a teacher, staying organized is half the battle! Follow these 3 easy steps to organize your Gmail and make your life easier!

Gmail Tips and Tricks

Holiday Activity

Looking for a fun end of semester holiday activity that will keep your students entertained without having to watch a movie? Try out my Do You Want to Build a Snowman activity. It allows students to build a digital snowman and write a story about him, with self-explanatory directions and videos!

Do You Want to Build a Snowman

Operation Save the Turkey

Check out my latest holiday-themed creation! Operation Save the Turkey has your students disguise a turkey to save him from becoming a Thanksgiving feast! They will also have to create a story to go with it.

Operation Save the Turkey

Happy Thanksgiving!

Gif Creation

I love teaching with gifs! They are fun ways of reaching your students and adding a little humor to your room. A lot of times I just search for gifs that I want to use but sometimes I can't find what I'm looking for. When that happens I use Recordit. It's a downloadable program that you can use to screen record and it automatically turns your video into a gif. If I want to make it even fancier, I make my creation on Apple's Keynote, then save it as a video. Keynote has some of the best animation features that can really make things come alive. Below is an example of a gif I made.

Here are the steps I used:

1. Type and add images in a Keynote presentation 

2. Add animation

3. Export presentation as a video file

4. Open recordit and record your video playing 

5. Once your gif is recorded open it (it will open in your preferred web browser - I like using Safari with my gifs)

6. On occasion, it will not automatically open as the gif file so you will need to click gif at the bottom

7. Click file - save as - and save it to your computer. 

8. From here you can upload it to your drive, LMS, etc. 

Low-Tech Ways of Preventing Plagiarism

Plagiarism is not only becoming more common but almost too easy for students. Since the majority of our students use their computers a simple mouse click can allow them to plagiarize. I spend a good portion of time at the very beginning of school going over plagiarism and how to avoid it but inevitably students will still try. So I have a few methods that I use to help make catching plagiarism that much easier!

Option 1:
Change your font styles to something different so that when they copy and paste something from a website the website's text will stick out. Believe it or not by that is how I catch 90% of my plagiarizers (they never change the font styles to match).

To make your new font automatic follow these steps (I use Georgia)

1. Type and adjust your font to look how you want and highlight it
2. Click normal text - normal text - update normal text to match
3. Click normal text - options - save as my default style

Option 2: 

When I create my assignments I typically create the answer key first. Then I make a copy of that document to become the one my students will fill out. Then I simply delete the answers from their copy. Whenever I do this I always make the answers in blue this way it's easy to see and I won't forget to delete the answers later. If I do this, when the students go to answer the questions their text will automatically appear in blue. Now some students will change it back to black but for the most part, this becomes a quick visual check for any signs that answers were copied and pasted.