Some Rules for Teachers Who Text Parents or Want to Text Parents

I don't want this post to come across authoritative in any way, that's not the intent. As someone who has used text messaging as the primary communication with parents for the past five school years, I've learned a few lessons, and have some advice to give. So let's get started:

Rule #1: Send home a note at the beginning of the school year: At the onset of the school year, you'll want to send a letter home requesting parents cell phone numbers, and if they would like to communicate with you through text messaging (in my case, through a daily digest message). In that letter, lay out your expectations. I always tell parents that I do not take phone calls at home. If it's an emergency, they can leave a message and a call back number, and I will do my best to return said phone call. BUT, I am good about text messaging. I usually do respond. But I do put a disclaimer that I am not obligated to respond to messages sent, and neither are they. I'm a family man and sometimes I put my phone away, and won't hold it against them if they do the same.

Rule #2: No texts from students, unless it's on a parents phone and is a school related matter: This is one I've honestly had to think about over the years. The first few years, I'd get texts from students, on their own phones. I think we can all see how that can be a slippery slope at any age, but especially starting in these pre-teen years. I do get texts from students on parent phones asking for clarification on an assignment, or a question about something they needed to do or bring, and I will respond. I think it's important that it comes from the parents phone, so there is a record of the conversation.

Rule #3: Back up EVERYTHING: I use a great free app on my Android called SMS Backup +. This great app backs up your SMS and MMS (pictures and videos sent to and from your phone) messages to your Gmail account (because if you have an Android, you have Gmail), and labels them within your saved mail messages, in their own folder. It's a fantastic app that keeps an ongoing record of all conversations. You never can be too careful, and it always helps to have messages backed up, indefinitely, in case something happens to your phone. I have three years worth of backed up messages in my Gmail, and it doesn't take up much storage space.

Rule #4: Have  a way to send mass texts: Back in the day when it was still the dominant product, I had a Blackberry. The single greatest thing about a Blackberry was the ability to send a single text to as many people you wanted at once. When I went to the Android about three years back, I was saddened that I could only send a message to 10 recipients at a time. So, I did what I thought was the best thing, I created four different groups, each with 10 parents, and would have to mass send my mass text four times, once to each group. It was a little cumbersome.

I now use Handcent, a free app in the Google Play Store that allows you to send mass texts to as many people at a time as you'd like. I send daily texts to parents, letting them know about important reminders, homework that is due, etc. I type my message, click the group, and boom, it's sent. It's great, because I can do this with literally a minute of work. I can then deal with any responses as they come across. But since I made it clear in my letter at the beginning of the school year that replies are not necessary unless there's questions or comments, I often don't receive a single response to my daily texts.

Rule #5: Be prepared to have parents praise you as the best communicator they've ever dealt with: I have to almost laugh sometimes when parents praise me as the teacher with the best parent communication ever in the history of their child's education. I don't laugh because it's a lie, it is in fact probably true, I laugh because it takes so little effort, and parents love it so much. The great thing about a text message is that it is not invasive like a phone call can be. The same information can be passed on, and is received. I send out praises for students who are doing great (I can send out five or six each day after school, and it only takes two or three minutes), I can even let a parent know about a small issue. I've scheduled conferences, dealt with issues both minor and major, all through text messages.

Rule #6: Be consistent: This is important with anything you do in a school setting, you have to follow through and be consistent. If you say you're going to use texting as your primary form of communication with those who have it, do it.

Rule #7: Have a plan for parents who don't text: It's weird I know, but yes, there are people who don't text. I have a few parents this year who either don't have a cell phone, or they don't like texting. One of them prefers email, so I actually have him in my list on Handcent, and his daily text goes to his email address instead of his phone (yes, you can do that).  Another parent doesn't have a cell phone (shocking, I know). In that case, I tell them that my major announcements come home in my bi-weekly newsletter, and that I will send home notes of praise or concern as needed. I tell them to call me during school hours, and call me at home and leave a message if it's an emergency. The first year I used texting in this manner, which would have been 2008-2009, I had 15 parents who signed up and 5 who did not. This year, I have 23 parents who signed up, one who signed up but for email instead, and one who didn't. Last year, all 26 parents signed up for it. The times they are changing, and it's becoming easier to reach a broad audience in just a short message.

Good luck if you decide to text with your parents, and welcome to the 21st century!

5th Grade Civil War Unit

As I always do when finishing a new unit, I will post the content here as a post within the main pages of my blog. Unit 5: The American Civil War, which includes topics on slavery, the war, two nations, Abraham Lincoln, and reconstruction, exists as a page that is called Fifth Grade Civil War Unit. It is also listed in my subject listing under Social Studies. For those of you who like to get what you came for, you can find that entire post in its entirety listed below:

My fifth grade unit on the Civil War attempts to take students through the topics of slavery, including the roots of slavery, horrors of slavery, and the Underground Railroad. From there, we talk about the political beginnings of the Civil War, and spend the majority of the unit in a timeline taking us through the major battles, important people and events, and ending with the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

SLAVERY IN THE CIVIL WAR

I like to start the unit with the portion on slavery. I have two posts in my old literacy blog titled Teaching A Unit on Slavery in Intermediate or Middle School (Part 1: Picture Books), and (Part 2: Literature Selections) that you can refer to for some great ideas. I have a few books that I enjoy reading aloud to the students, and that they learn a lot from.

I always start the unit by reading From Slave Ship to Freedom Road, a Julius Lester book that, while it is a picture book, is definitely hard hitting and doesn't hold back. It's a great way to set the tone for teaching about slavery if you intend to show the horrors and injustices of slavery in a way that will get through to elementary students but won't overwhelm them. (there aren't really any "free" versions of this book out there, but it's definitely worth the $6 or so that you'll spend getting it on Amazon or through one of the links on Google shopping).

I also read Under the Quilt of Night by Deborah Hopkinson. This story is a great, appropriate for almost any age telling of a family on the run on the Underground Railroad. This book is available in my schools library, and might be available in yours too, it's a common book (it's in the easy section). Finally, I read Almost to Freedom by Vonda Micheaux Nelson, it's a great story of a runaway girl and her family told from the perspective of the little girls doll. This book actually stuck with many of my students more than the others for some reason.

Now, granted, the topic of slavery is deserving of its own unit, and I will eventually get there. I always expand on this unit when we get to the civil right era. I've found that my students in 5th grade seem to understand the complexity and importance of slavery in the United States when I pair it up with the civil right era. Because honestly, more than half the class always thinks that Martin Luther King Jr. ended slavery before I teach them differently. I'm going to list a few of the more high quality resources about slavery here, that you can use as part of a Civil War unit, it's own unit, or like me, a mixture of Civil War and Civil Rights.

• The Underground Railroad Interactive on Scholastic.com: A high quality interactive that takes students through an escape, full with characters and a telling of events. There are passages to read or have read aloud on the computer. 
• Pathways to Freedom: Maryland and the Underground Railroad: This neat little interactive is highly educational and plays out a little like one of those Choose Your Own Adventure books. It's well done and very educational. 
• The Listing of Slavery and Civil Rights Resources Available on PBS: It is what it says, there's stuff here on the slave trade, Jim Crow, Civil Rights, and more. 
• Timeline of Slavery Throughout World History: This is helpful if you wish to discuss the overall scope of slavery, dating back all the way to 6800 BC.
• Map of American Slavery at NY Times: A great little map with some specific areas to focus research on. 

Now, let's move on to the Civil War itself. In my class, I want students to understand the causes of the Civil War, the difference between the Confederate Army and Union Army, the basic timeline of events, and how the world recovered afterwards. With that being said, let's move on to some great resources:

THE CIVIL WAR

• American Civil War Resources: A listing with online quizzes and games. There's another listing of great resources at surfnetkids. 
• The Civil War for 5th Graders: A great little site done by a teacher. It plays out kind of like a web quest, with some good, kid friendly information presented in an easy to understand format. 
• History Channel Civil War Interactive: You can always count on the History Channel to have great interactives of the highest quality. I'm using this one as students learn more about the differences between the two armies, battles, etc. It's all here, and it's well done. 
• NY Times Civil War Interactives: There's a few great resources here, some about the war, some about life during the Civil War, and some about Lincoln. 
• Battle Casualties Map: Hosted by the Washington Post, it's a great map that shows casualties on a map in a timeline format. 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

• Abraham Lincoln's Life Timeline: Hosted by Lincoln's Library and Museum. PBS also has a great Lincoln Timeline. 
• Abraham Lincoln's Crossroads: A challenging game about Lincoln's presidency that would be great for your highly intelligent students desiring a challenge. 
• Lincoln's Major Speeches: If you're going to teach about his inaugural speeches, or the Gettysburg Address. 
• History.com Interactive on Lincoln's Assassination: Good stuff!
• The Lincoln Memorial: The listing for the Lincoln Memorial on the National Park website, there's a few great panoramas and discussions of Lincoln's importance. 

Finally, as we go through the unit, I have students complete a 6 part "history web," a little project that I will post more on as we finish them up this week. It's a great small project.

I will also have my students complete a "gallery walk," an idea I took from Lessons With Laughter. I will also amend this posting with more information on that when it's completed. 

A New, and More Difficult, Book Report Format

I have previously posted a few times about book report formats and cool book report themes. The one I used last semester was called Book Report Sandwiches, and I have also used the Book Report Brochures as both an individual book report and an end of book activity.

The sandwiches are well and good, and my class enjoyed doing the brochures very much. I kept a few of the exemplary works posted on a bulletin board in the classroom, and as you can see I constantly had many of these up there. It was a badge of honor to get a book report posted on the board, and a few students had multiples up there.

I'm going to be asking my students to do something a little more demanding... a little more "grown up" this semester. I have chosen to use what we're going to called the "detailed long format." This Detailed Long Format asks students to do quite a bit of analysis. It clocks in at 5 pages, and is very in depth for this age group. If you're looking for something a little more challenging for your students, I recommend using this format of book report. 

Some 5th Grade Greek Mythology Resources

My class will be studying a lot of Greek Mythology in the coming weeks.

Let me be a little more precise. We're reading The Lightning Thief right now, and I love to teach some Greek mythology while we're reading what has quickly become a classic in my classroom. But more on The Lightning Thief later.

My school district is mandating the use of "work stations" in reading class. This is basically just another way of saying "centers," "groups," or "guided reading." But that's another post for another day.

This post is simply just some resources about Greek Mythology that are usable in the 5th grade classroom. In my case, it will be in the reading class. Let's get started.

A lot of the things I'll be either printing out about Greek Mythology or having students read and synthesize on the internet will come from The Greek Mythology Webquest that is found on fairfieldschools.org. I pick and choose from the great selection of stories and Gods. I don't necessarily follow the webquest itself, although it is excellent if you choose to do so.

Greek Mythology for Kids - This is a listing of many resources at the timeless Mr. Donn . org (a great resource site).

BBC Primary History: Ancient Greeks - A great listing that students can use in individual research.

Winged Sandals - I can't pass on this FANTASTIC website. I'm going to have my students do some individual research this week using this great interactive, flash (or HTML) based site. The stories are interactive, are read to the students, and they can play games, download pictures, etc. It really is about as high quality as it gets.

SOME PDF DOCUMENTS:

Greek Mythology Cheat Sheet - It is what it says, a great cheat sheet for the teacher who may need to brush up a little bit (I've been there, trust me).

Yesterday's Classics - A great little reader that you can pull from for students to study a few specific Greek topics (and by a few, I mean a lot).

Listing of Greek Gods and Roman equivalents - Page 2 is a nice table that I'm going to utilize in class.

Lightning Thief Activities - I'm using this as I go through the Rick Riordan book, but there are some great activities and print outs in here that could be of service to anyone teaching Greek Myth.

Back To It and Some Great Teacher Oriented Android Apps

Today was the first day back to school for the kids. It was a nice, much needed break. Obviously I took a break from both work and my blogging, I just needed that time away from it all, and it was well worth it. I'm feeling refreshed and ready for another full semester.

I currently have a lot of little projects I'm working on. I will begin posting them as I complete them. I have so many different things going on now, from work stations to videos to units to webquests, that I won't even begin to list them here.

I've been pleasantly surprised with the steadily increasing readership of this blog, and will continue to keep it going.

Today, I wanted to share the educational apps I have on my phones. I get all of my apps from the Google Play Store (Android OS App Store), and the ones that are listed here are free apps.

My phone runs Android ics (Ice Cream Sandwich), which has so far been my favorite of the Android Operating Systems. I love that you can group apps on your home screen, similar to what Apple does with its apps. I have a group of apps I call Education apps, and they include a few calculators, and some other great tools. Let's take a quick run down of these tools that I use.

First, there are three calculators. The first one is the stock calculator. Secondly, the white icon is a great calculator that has a history function, and is called Seven+WP7 Calculator. Finally, there's a sales tax calculator that I use both when running errands and in class when teaching about the concept of tax (which isn't often, but I put it here anyways).

Next up, there is a great app called simply Common Core (if you search common core, it's the first result). I love this tool, it allows you to search through the CCSS. This has saved me a lot of time when I'm planning on the go, and I recommend it to any teacher who is under CCSS.

On to the second column, with Handcent SMS. I use the stock text messaging app for most of my texting, but what makes Handcent great is the ability to send bulk SMS messages. You see, Android only allows 10 messages to be sent at a time. This is inconvenient if you send daily text messages to your parents as I do. I want to send the same message (a daily run down of homework, things due, important dates, etc.) to 32 people. Well Handcent lets you do just that. This app has saved me a lot of time!

Next up is Goodreads. I love to read, and have a Goodreads profile. It's social networking for your books. This app is great, I can update my status, do reviews, and find new books all from the app.

Next is Embiggen. It's a simple concept: type something in, and embiggen makes it as large as your entire screen. It's a lot of fun to be able to send a quick message to students with the phone. They get a kick out of it for some reason.

The Boosed Grader app is something I've posted about before HERE, it is an EZ Grader app for your phone.

In the last column is BeyondPod, which is a podcast service (I have the paid one, but there is a free one available), and finally TED. TED lists hundreds of the TED talk videos, which are AWESOME.

So there you have it, a quick listing of some great apps for your Droid.