I'm still working to make up for lost time, and find a little something to share each day. Turns out it's not so difficult when you haven't written for two months!
Spring break has been GREAT so far, in case you've been wondering.
Today, I wanted to share about something that will be happening full force when we go back to school next week. I'm sure you all are familiar with March Madness. All college basketball, all the time. Honestly, we're an NBA household, so June is our big basketball tournament month. However, I saw this show-and-share on Instagram and immediately took a screen shot to share with some of my idea people at school. Loved this idea!
Our assistant principal also loved the idea and, before I knew it, setting up our March Madness Book Tournament was underway. Teachers were able to make suggestions of their favorite books, and the asst. principal chose 32 for our tournament. Checkout our humongous bracket on the windows in our main hallway.
One of my parent-teacher conference day projects was finding a way to vote online. I wasn't excited about voting on little slips of paper, and I wanted something a little more private than a "raise your hand" vote. Since I'm not super familiar with Google Docs (as Sarah suggested on Instagram), I decided to check out other options.
The first one I looked at was Poll Everywhere. I just didn't feel like it would suit my elementary classroom purposes. It wasn't a bad option, but I think it would work better with older students. It also looked like I could only do one poll at a time without paying at least a monthly fee.
The second option I tried was Socrative. I really liked how easy this site was to use. I think it will also be very easy for my second graders to use. All they will have to do, is go to the website on an iPad or laptop, type in my room name, and choose this book or that book. I plan on having all my kids log on at the same time the first time we use it, but I really feel it is easy enough to use that my kids will be able to vote on their own as part of one of our literacy centers in the future.
I really feel that Socrative is a site that I could use in other ways in my classroom. For example, I could use it to make comprehension quizzes. Accessing results are super easy too! I would definitely recommend this site to other teachers. Take the time to check it out!
I'll be sure to share how our March Madness Book Tournament concludes. I suggested having adults fill out brackets to predict the winner. I predicted Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day will be the winner. My fingers are crossed, but you never know what will happen once you get the input of 400+ elementary kiddos.
