If you have been following along with Teaching in Room 6 lately, you know that I am mildly obsessed with using Google Apps in my classroom.  I love finding different ways to incorporate the GAFE (Google Apps for Education) into my lessons in a practical and authentic way.   (You can see some of what I have done so far here . )  I have access to at least 9 Chromebooks all year long (thanks to DonorsChoose.org !!) so I am planning on getting my students up and running with GAFE starting on day one of school this year. Our first project will be a take on the whole "hold a frame up and take a picture" craze that is going on now.  I created this slide for each student in which they will get to use their basic Google Slides knowledge and insert a selfie (that they will take that day using the Chromebook) and some text boxes with general information about themselves.   I am hoping to do the same on the last day of school, but I think I will tackle the first day ri......

In social studies, we are currently studying about early European Exploration of the New World.  To get the students researching and learning about the time period, I thought I would combine our computer lab time with something related to our social studies topic. I wanted something that my students could complete rather quickly (we only had a few sessions left in the computer lab) *and* would allow them to apply the lessons we have been learning about researching, parsing questions, and word processing skills such as changing the font and importing clip art.  When I went on an internet search and came across this fabulous {free} template for an Explorer Trading Card from Ginger Snaps . There are two different templates.  One is a static, prefilled topic one that you can use if you don't have computer access for the students.  The other one, however, is an editable power point that the students can actually type on! Once I found the template, I knew that th......

Sometimes you stumble upon things quite accidentally or unwittingly that make a huge impact in the classroom.  This past week, one of those such things became stumbled upon.  During our computer lab time (thanks to the aide who runs the computer lab) we have been participating in the Hour of Code , a fantastic introduction to computer coding, from Code.org .  For a total of 45 minutes, my students sat mesmerized by the computer.  It was SILENT in the room as the students navigated the games on the screen, building code all the while. Now, if you are anything like me, you probably are a bit confused right now.  How on earth can 5th graders write computer code?  I mean, I can barely handle the html tags that I need to know to write this blog post (did I lose anyone there? ;) )  But the the people at Code.org have actually made it really easy for the students to work with the code.  On the screen, there is a little maze with Angry Birds or Plants......