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How to Celebrate the Holidays While Staying on Task in the Classroom
When the holiday season nears, weather gets cooler, schedules become busier, and students have a more difficult time staying on the “nice” list. But who can blame them? The anticipation of winter break beckons. Staying focused is so much harder when there are snowmen to be built and cookies to be decorated. For teachers, too, the weeks preceding holiday break are challenging; the list of curriculum to cover is long, but students’ attention spans are awfully short.
Instead of beginning a countdown to the calendar year’s end, consider bringing the holiday magic into the classroom with a few of these ideas.
Add more decor.
A little bit of celebratory spirit goes a long way when it comes to decorating your classroom for the holidays. Surprise your students with some sparkly lights around the whiteboard or with a bulletin board lined with colorful fall foliage. For added coziness, use your SMART board or projector to display a long video of a crackling, tranquil fireplace. There are plenty to choose from on YouTube, and your students will love the calming background during independent work time.
Incentivize celebrations.
As your excited students become sillier and squirrelier, get creative with your classroom management by rewarding good behavior with festive activities. Younger students will love making digital snowflakes, all while reinforcing basic geometric vocabulary. For older students, grab some cheerful props and use an app (like MonaCam) to turn your Chromebook into a photo booth. Students of any age will enjoy a hot cocoa or apple cider bar on a chilly afternoon during silent reading time. Positively reinforcing great behavior will go a long way during these long weeks.
Incorporate merriment into instruction.
To keep minds from wandering during class time, think about integrating themed elements into your instruction. For example, try using holiday-related words in math problems (such as turkeys, dreidels, or pies). Take a virtual field trip to the “North Pole” by studying the arctic through the National Geographic Kids or World Wildlife Fund websites. Take your little astronomers on a venture into space to learn about the Winter Solstice. Encourage students to study different cultures by writing about and sharing their own, unique, family traditions and beliefs.
Give back.
Channel the generous spirit of the season by planning a meaningful mission with your students. Take on a service project, write thank you cards to support staff, or commit to doing random acts of kindness around the school.
During those chilly, busy months when everyone is ready for a break, it’s important to keep your classroom running smoothly. Combining fun festivity with student learning helps make the season calm and bright for all.
How K12 Blueprint Keeps Students On Task
One of our leading educational technology programs, K12 Blueprint, specializes in maximizing student potential and simplifying technology implementation in the classroom. A top goal of K12 Blueprint is keeping students on task and engaged in the classroom. K12 Blueprint designs multiple classroom tools to ensure maximum educational success.
K12 Blueprint works through classroom tool kits. From creating “Active Learning Spaces” to “Online Assessments,” K12 Blueprint creates detailed plans for teachers and educational institutes to follow. Complete with classroom floor plans and stories of successful implementation, K12 Blueprint is a leading classroom planning resource. Each tool kit is designed to accomplish a specific purpose, taking into account students different learning styles and overall student-teacher interaction. It is clear, the goal of K12 Blueprint tool kits is educational satisfaction.
K12 Blueprint also partners with top programs like Windows, Google and Ed Tech Solution Planner to create their classroom success plans. These solutions are integrated throughout their established toolkits and are valuable additions to the overall process. Additionally, K12 offers the integration of educational apps into their programs.
K12 Blueprint makes it easy for schools and teachers to create a positive learning environment for students of all learning types. Implementation of K12 Blueprint is a roadmap to success in the classroom.
For more information about how you can utilize K12 Blueprint, contact us. We are happy to answer any questions.
Google Sheets In The Classroom
The Google G Suite platform maximizes the 1:1 classroom scenario for schools, teachers, and students. One program in particular, Sheets, is beneficially used in the classroom as a data collection and organizational tool. We’ve compiled a variety of ways to use Sheets in the classroom setting to display Sheets’ positive qualities for education.
Digital Portfolios With Google Forms
Combining Google Sheets with Google Forms can create a digital portfolio. The student creates the Google Form and the responses are collected on a spreadsheet. This student portfolio can be easily shared with a teacher for review and can provide feedback for the student.
Digital Rubrics And Rubric Portfolios
Once a Sheet-based rubric is created, a master rubric sheet can be duplicated for future use. Additionally a master rubric tab can be duplicated to evaluate each student submission. The result is that teachers have one rubric sheet for each assignment evaluated with the master rubric. Additionally, because the rubrics are digital, teachers can utilize different formatting tools to create their rubrics. Cells can be created with formulas and can be color coded to the teachers liking.
Class Resources Sheet
Sheets can be used to create course calendars with columns for dates, units, and chapters. Teachers can efficiently organize entire courses into calendar sheets and then share them with their students. The created sheet can be added to the course website if possible and can be sent to parents as well to include all parties involved in the communication.
Research Planning And Archiving
Every teacher knows the challenge of assisting students in organizing, categorizing, and tracking large amounts of research. Creating a Google Sheet can streamline this process into topics and subtopics. Also with Google Sheets, students have the opportunity to share this document easily with teachers.
Want to know how you can implement Google Sheets and other Google G Suite programs in your school or classroom?
The Digital Classroom: No Paper, No Pencil, No Problem.
Classrooms are steadily moving into the future where the need for paper and pencil is increasingly waning. With a tablet and stylus, a child can not only accomplish more, but they can work faster with less headache for themselves, their parents, and their teachers.
The addition of internet into classrooms combined with the evolution of affordable electronic learning solutions is revolutionizing the way children learn and is escorting in the age of the digital classroom.
There is a streamline in the education process that comes with the addition of tablet and stylus. Textbooks can be accessed through apps and internet browsers on their tablets, relinquishing the need for lugging around a backpack filled with pounds of textbooks. With a tablet, a stylus can be set to work as a crayon, marker, highlighter, pen, pencil, paintbrush, etc. A student’s activity can be tracked in real time and submitted from anywhere they have internet access. The professional world is also becoming increasingly digital, so students are getting real world experience working with these tools and internet based solutions.
Parents also benefit from internet education solutions, like Google’s G Suite for Education. With cloud based learning solutions, all you need is your child’s login information or an email invitation to check on your child’s progress and help them with homework. Whether in the office, on the road, or in a hotel, parents can video chat and screen share to go over homework with their child who is just a click away.
Another benefit of tablets in schools is for teachers. Teachers can upload correct answers of assignments and grade papers at the click of a button. Not only is it quicker to grade, but the teacher doesn’t need to bring home hundreds of paper assignments to grade each one individually. Schools are able to cut the costs of textbooks and library purchases by giving students access to a digital library via their personal tablets.
A tablet and stylus can realistically solve nearly every problem a student encounters. Tablets have become more and more powerful internally and durable externally--capable of word processing like a computer and strong enough to last more than just one school year. Styluses have become sophisticated and so receptive that they work just as quickly as pen and paper with all of the same realistic nuances. With a tablet, stylus, and internet connection, every student now has the ability to hold their entire education in the palm of their hand.
Want to know more about Arey Jones?
10 Best Features Of Windows 10
Here at Arey Jones our goal is technology integration in the classroom. From programs to tablets, we believe a classroom that works through technology is guaranteed to succeed. One of our top programs is Windows 10—the easy to use, easy to access, desktop software from Windows. We've given the 10 best classroom features of Windows 10 to showcase its versatile and beneficial uses in educational institutions. You can’t argue, Windows 10 is tops.
Designed For All Learning Styles
Windows 10 provides multiple opportunities for learning. Now students of all learning types can successfully participate in the classroom with pen, touch, gesture, and voice. Whatever their preference, Windows 10 can accommodate.
Put It In Writing
Windows 10 is not just a mouse-click program. Windows 10 offers students the ability of hands on ink-writing learning. Proven more beneficial for students, Windows 10 increases knowledge capacity with just the touch of a stylus.
Compatibility
No longer will students with learning disabilities be behind in classroom learning. Windows 10 is compatible with a wide variety of assistive technology ensuring teachers can creative the most inclusive classroom environment.
Safety First
Windows 10 is the safest Windows program yet. With student identity and password settings, malware protection, and data protection, teachers and students can focus strictly on education and not student cyber protection.
Collaborative Learning
Afraid technology will mean disconnect between student and teacher? Not with Windows 10 compatibility capabilities. Now student and Teacher can work from the same documents providing that hands-on classroom environment from the screen.
Expansive Platform
Windows 10 is a smart investment. Windows can expand to multiple grades with a choice of styles and form factors.
Classroom Compatibility
Windows 10 is also compatible with the widest variety of classroom connected devices. Everything in the classroom can work seamlessly together to create ultimate educational success.
Multi-Tasking Made Easy
Multitasking is in Windows’ nature. Windows 10 can help students and teachers accomplish goals faster and more efficiently with features like Snap Assist, virtual desktops, and Task View.
Seamless Transition
Worried about transitioning into Windows 10? Windows 10 provides simplified ways to manage and deploy the program seamlessly.
Wait There’s More!
In addition to Windows 10, Microsoft offers many free products and services specifically offered with the purchase of Windows 10.
Have more questions about Windows 10 or any other Microsoft product? Contactus.
Who—or What—Is Arey Jones?
Arey Jones has been making connections and strengthening communication since its initial launch in the 1880s. It began its legacy as a stationery company, and, over time, increased its scope to include typewriters and word processors. When computers entered the scene in the early 1980s, Arey Jones found its true calling: to deliver exceptional technology products, service, and accessibility directly to schools to help create the best learning environments possible.
For more than 30 years, Arey Jones has stayed faithful to that promise. We now serve school districts in California, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, South Carolina, and Mississippi by providing information technology systems that maximize school resources while minimizing downtime and disruption.
It isn’t always an easy task, but we are as equipped as ever to do it. Here’s why:
Our regional configuration centers that allow us to design and implement technology architectures unique to each district we serve.
We create a support matrix built for maximum uptime, which means classrooms spend more time learning instead of troubleshooting.
We focus on the entire system, including peripheral, network architecture, data centers, and cloud integration.
We offer preloaded and integrated curriculum packages on a variety of brands to provide a complete and customized turnkey solution.
We are centralized, which means everything we need to deploy technology for your school system is under one roof, including the ability to use our strong industry connections to procure a wide variety of hardware and software at the most competitive prices.
We are one phone call away. We have teams of designers, installers, systems engineers, and support staff who are proud to be Arey Jones employees, ready to serve you.
Arey Jones has been family owned and operated for more than 30 years, and we pride ourselves on our commitment to our community. We believe that the strength of our country’s schools is in direct correlation to the technology they use on a daily basis; it’s our promise to make sure each of the districts we serve gets not only the best computers, but also the best service, technology, and support.
We don’t just integrate; we innovate. Every. Single. Time.