MC Digital Blog

How to Add Co-Teachers: Open the classroom you wish to add a teacher to and go to the "About" page, then click on the invite teacher box and enter their email address.  Draft Assignments: Now when you start typing in a new assignment it is automatically saved and a "Draft" section appears at the top of your classroom stream. Only teachers can see the "Draft" section until you post your assignment to the class. These updates should really increase the usefulness of Google Classroom. For more detailed information about the new features,  click here  to view the Google Blog post.

The Most Commonly Used Terms on Common Core Standardized Tests If you cannot see the graphic above,  click here to view .       According to  education research , student success on achievement tests are based in large part on students' vocabulary.  This is not new information to teachers.  But what can we do about it? Which words are most crucial?  Read below to find ways to support both students and teachers in preparation for standardized assessments. Top 10 Terms Students Need to Be Successful on Standardized Tests ( Article  &  Resource ) Scholastic  recently released an article listing the top 10 terms students should know for success on standardized tests.  A quick list of these terms is below.  For more information regarding each, view the full article  here . Interpret Analyze Persuade Compare Contrast Summarize Demonstrate Describe Explain Infer As end-of-year te...

Do you need any assistance designing your Sharp School webpage? I have compiled some  short tutorials  to help you get started. If you have any additional questions and/or need some 1:1 assistance, please let me know!  Click HERE to check out the Sharp School Tutorials.

There are times as a teacher when you want your students to make a copy of a Google document for a class assignment. As a presenter or colleague, you may want to share documents, templates or presentations. Unless they are familiar with making copies within Google drive, this can be a time-consuming task helping individuals make a copy. Google Drive now has the ability to force or automatically create a copy of a shared document. To get started open the document to be shared/copied. Edit the sharing settings to anyone with a link can view. Next, look at the URL at the top of the screen. At the end of the URL, you will see the word “edit” . Change these words to copy . Now copy and share the changed URL. Anyone opening the document with the new URL will now see the following prompt: The person getting the copy will have to be logged into a Gmail account in order to get the above prompt. If they are not logged it, the link will redirect to the G...

For All:  5 Ideas from Schools on How to Use Lexiles How to Use  Lexiles :  5 Ideas from Schools The following are the top 5 ideas we have heard from our schools regarding how  they are currently using  this data point to drive reading comprehension deeper.   Lexile.com Barnes & Noble Lexile Reading Level Wizard Destiny  (library management system, searchable by Lexile, genre, etc.) Sample chart of Lexile ranges Newsela can be accessed here:   NEWSELA Lexile Analyzer can be accessed here:   Lexile Analyzer There are many more ways to use Lexiles.  These are just a few ideas to get you and your school started.   Information shared from the JCS Data Central Blog. 

It is research paper season and this week we are sharing my favorite EASY and FREE referencing tool- RefME from Harvard University. RefME works in your web browser and has free apps for iOS and Android. To get started, go to:  https://www.refme.com You will need to create a free account by entering your email and creating a password. From your homepage, the first step is to name your project. This makes it super easy to keep references and notes for multiple projects separate. On the right side of the page, select what type of resource you would like to create a reference for. You can search by title, author, ISBN, or keyword. If you have the free  RefME  app, you can scan book or resource barcodes to find references as well. Once you added your source, you can easily add notes and quotes from the resource. Once you are done adding sources and notes, you can click the export button to create an exportable list in a variety of f...

Sunday is daylight savings time! It's time for "Spring Forward"!!! On Monday, please follow these steps exactly as listed to change the time on your classroom phone: Push "speaker" > * ># >0 (zero)> * >0 (zero) >1 > Enter date: 030915 > Enter time (military) > # > Hang up