I've really been struggling with one of my classes. I tried to do activities and students would get out of control.  I would end the day with a headache.  Out of frustration I went back to more traditional teaching methods.  Even I was bored by the end of class.  Today I had a small victory.  I paired my students up and they partner read three pages to get an overview.  After that I assigned them a topic and a slide in a class presentation.  They had to do a little research and create an Adobe Voice to add to the slide. They had 55 minutes to work on the slide and video. Tomorrow I will have them present and I am going to assign them a different slide to write a quiz question.  Today was a good class day. 

This is not school related except that I am working on creating clues for a BreakoutEDU game for my class tomorrow.

My dog, Izzy, was bored a few weeks ago when I was trying to get some school work done.  I had given her a Nylabone treat but that took her 3 minutes to eat.  Then I played fetch with her and her duck, I held on to one end of her pull rope and I took her outside to check for rabbits and snakes.  But I really needed to get some work done so I grabbed a plastic butter container with a lid from the recycle bin. I put some of her dog food from her bowl into it and shook it like a toy.  She grabbed it out of my hand and ran off it to the living room where she eats her treats. She threw it on the floor, she batted it around, then she picked it up and laid down on the floor and put it between her paws.  She worked at getting the container open and when she did she happily ate her food.  I've done this with her food a couple of more times since and now she won't eat her food out of her regular food dish because she likes the container game better.

Lesson learned: Dogs and people like games.

Here is a sampling of projects my students created using Adobe Voice. 
Students were tasked with taking the list of characteristics of a successful community and compare Reconstruction to 6 characteristics.  They used Adobe Voice to create their projects. 

We are starting a unit titled "Shifting Power of the Plains." I assigned the chapter, "Signs of English Possession" from the book Ceremonies of Possession in Europe's Conquest of the New World by Patricia Seed.  As they read, students were to fill in a graphic organizer to show the English perspective of English land ownership through houses, fences, and gardens.  For a reading "quiz" today I took my students outside, across the street from school and put them into groups.  Each group got a town block for their quiz.  They were to use their iPads to take pictures of the English signs of possession that they saw on their block in 7 minutes. Total student engagement.

Back in the classroom, each group looked through their pictures to check for duplicates and to make sure they fit the definitions of houses, gardens, and fences,  Then they counted their pictures (using an honor system here).  The group with the most original pictures got a candy prize.  More total student engagement.

They reflected some of their pictures on the screen and these pictures led to further class discussion.