Curriculum

Are you currently a blogger? I know that there are many teacher bloggers out there, and I’m proud to say that I subscribe to several for inspiration and ideas. While I haven’t always been a blogger, I’ve been dabbling in it off and for the past 2-3 years. I’m definitely more consistent now, and have […]

While some teachers are just embarking on their school year, my district just wrapped up its first grading period! For the past 16 years, I’ve taken the time to reflect on several areas of my teaching that are essential to my students’ success. Where am I at in my pacing in relation to where I’d […]

It’s that time of the year….TESTING! At my site, the English and Math teachers test students while the other classes teach on a block schedule. This may not be a big deal for you if you already teach that way, but the transition can be tough for some. One of the best ways to make this […]

Last week I featured Googlizing a unit: Part 1, where I outlined the first part of a multidisciplinary unit that involves evaluating presentation apps. Throughout the unit, students used various Google Apps to work collaboratively. This week’s post features the second part of that unit, including the summative assessment at the end. Here are the remaining […]

Last month, I mentioned in a post that I had attended the San Diego GAFE Summit. During this conference, two sessions really stood out to me: one on the SAMR model and Google Apps and one on how to survive the zombie apocalypse with Google Apps. While the facilitators were wowing me with their content, I started thinking […]

This past weekend my fellow Blended Learning Specialist Erin Southam and I participated in the San Diego Google Apps for Education Summit in beautiful Coronado, CA. During this summit, I learned about Edpuzzle during a session with Roni Habib. This tool is one of the ultimate cross-curricular tools, and is relatively easy to setup and manage. Why […]

This past weekend my students diligently worked on their blog posts for the 2015 Student Blogging Challenge. I created an exemplar for them so that they could see exactly how their blog post should look like (which included embedding multimedia), and gave them the weekend to work on it. One of the most exciting components […]

Ah, the joy of back-to-school in-service days. The long meetings with agendas set by administration. At least an hour poring over the staff handbook (again).  Being the passive receiver of content rather than engaging in or creating it. The double-standard of constantly being told to not teach this way, while enduring it year after year. This […]

It’s hard to believe how much stuff I have stored in the cloud.  I have files in Dropbox, in Google Drive, my whole computer is backed up to Backblaze, and I also have Time Machine backing up more files to an external drive.  I’m kind of a storage backup freak. In my school, teachers and students are […]

Educators know that all-too-familiar feeling of desperately trying to teach an important skill or concept, only to be faced with a sea of blank and/or confused faces.  We try and try again, convinced that we found the right angle, and nothing changes. It’s as if our teaching has suddenly become ineffective, even if we’ve taught for […]

My students just finished reading “The Monkey’s Paw,” and walked away with mixed feelings.  They liked the mysterious mood of it, but HATE stories with unresolved endings! I explained that they must infer the ending, which makes it so deliciously suspenseful! I love that incredibly creepy story with a powerful message: be careful what you wish for!  To […]

We finally did a Mystery Hangout, and it was so much fun! This past Friday my first period participated in a Mystery Location Call with one of the classes at Shawn Churchill‘s school.  I originally connected with her via the Mystery Location Call Google+ Community, which has many members and is still growing.  We exchanged messages via email, […]

I received an email today at 7:09 AM from a parent: Mrs. Lepre, why aren’t you using the traditional grades in your class? What does a “3” mean? It’s easiest for me to look at A B C grades to keep up with how she’s doing. I never agreed with pretending WE ARE ALL DOING […]

Thinglink is a tool allows you to create interactive images that can be used in a variety of ways. Both students and teachers can create these images, which helps to drive student learning and motivation. It offers a free and paid Premium version, but I’ve been able to do just fine with the free one! […]

Why I switched to English Language Arts In a past life, music was my life. In fact, I was a competitive pianist for all of middle and high school, and entered college at the University of Washington (GO DAWGS!) as a piano performance major. After realizing that sitting alone for 3-4 hours a day practicing my […]

How to use Google Docs in your class tomorrow (using an iPad or computer) During the past few years I’ve had the chance to try out Google Docs as a collaborative tool with my students.  Group work is a breeze when everyone can work together simultaneously! Google Docs isn’t always perfect: If a student starts […]

As I mentioned in my last post, I’m looping with my students from 7th to 8th grade. One of the greatest benefits of doing this is that I get to kick-start our curriculum right away by getting up and moving for a gallery walk. After some discussion with last year’s 8th grade teachers, my PLC […]