Extensions and Enrichment for Testing Season

-

By: Koralina McKenna, Teacher Specialist, Office of Instructional Technology

It’s that time of the year again; perhaps the most dreaded time of year - testing season. Where teachers everywhere scramble to keep their students engaged with meaningful content in between this test or that. For me my greatest challenge during this time was trying not to overwhelm the brains of my fresh-out-of-testing students with brand new material or highly rigorous activities without completely blowing off my instruction. I spent my planning periods trying to delicately map out how to keep my classes in sync, debating whether to introduce new content or review prior content, all while managing my own stress brought on by testing. 

This is the tightrope walked by teachers everyday but I found it particularly arduous during testing season. With this post I offer you the gift of ready-to-use activities, challenges, games and more. Below you will find a wide range of whole group or individual options, with a variety of levels of use from plug and play or customizable templates to components that enhance an existing lesson. Engage your students with new, upcoming or prior content, enrich their current learning or offer extension opportunities for those who are ready. Explore the resources below to find the right one(s) to match your content and students’ ability level. I hope this takes one thing off your plate so you can keep chipping away at your never ending to-do list. 

  • 🌍Discovery Education - Discover engaging, ready-to-use activities that provide students with opportunities to explore their curiosity around a variety of topics. Be sure to click on Discovery Education in Classlink before clicking on the link. Once in Discovery Education, select your grade level to be shown the most appropriate resources.

  • 🌷Seasonal Activities for Spring - A whimsical collection of activities celebrating all things spring; from Women’s History month to Memorial Day. Choose from choice boards, virtual field trips and more.

  • 🔬IF/THEN Collection -  Expose your students to authentic and relatable images of real women in STEM. Combine any of these resources with your favorite graphic organizer, placemat or discussion strategy. Not sure how to  use the resources available? Explore the Activity Sheets collection to pair with their thousands of photos and videos.

  • 🌐Virtual Field Trips - Give your students the opportunity to explore outside of their classroom and community, by taking them on virtual field trips to local, global, and other-worldly destinations. As they explore, consider using some of the suggested activities to provide enrichment, writing, and discussion opportunities. See the Activity Ideas for any Virtual Field Trip page.

  • 📡Voyager Stories - Professionally curated virtual field trips built in Google Earth. Imagery includes interactive Street View and Photo Spheres that allow viewers to immerse themselves in the virtual experience. In addition to imagery, stories include information boxes about each location with an option for a student to click to learn more.

  • 🔮Choice Boards - Digital choice boards open the doors for students with access to accessibility tools like read alouds and speech to type, multimedia options for learning and demonstrating knowledge, virtual field trips and more make digital choice boards a fantastic option for whole class, small group, and independent activities. And just because they are digital, doesn't mean all the activities have to be either.  Traditional hands-on options should be included as well; just have students submit evidence of their work by taking a picture!
  • 🎲Game Boards - Games provide the opportunity to make learning fun while building classroom community. Whether gamifying content, or just letting kids be kids, the game templates on this page can be utilized in a variety of ways. Need game components? Click here for suggestions on where to find interactive spinners, dice, and more.

  • 💡Google Based Lesson Ideas - Most comfortable with Google? Search by “App” or “Content” to find an activity or resource that fits in your comfort zone.

  • 📖MackinVIA eBooks & Audiobooks - Open MackinVIA from classlink to explore the eBooks and Audiobook selection offered by your Media Center. *Book collections and availability will vary by school.

    • 🔎Wixie Choice Boards - Wixie has an ever-growing collection of choice boards for grades K-8. Open Wixie from Classlink and search "choice."



    Popular Posts

    Book Studies in Brightspace

    -
    Image
    By Melissa Connelly, Behavior Specialist & Brightspace Campus Champion at Belle Grove Elementary, and Stacy Langhirt, 1st grade teacher and former eCoach, Severna Park Elementary Books clubs about technology, really? Yes! It was an awesome experience. When asked to facilitate a class during the summer of 2021, feeling a little burned out on technology we asked if we could try something new. Guess what the answer was a  resounding, YES. That is how a five week technology book study came to be using our new LMS, Brightspace. Facilitating a book study about tools and technology that we have available to us everyday and that our students are familiar with just made so much sense. We were able to share a wonderful text, Eric Curts' Control Alt Achieve: Rebooting your Classroom with Creative Google Projects ,  that was rich with ideas on using Google Workspace for Education in the classroom and we had conversations centered around those ideas that helped all of us to grow as e...
    Read more

    Computational Thinking: Its really not that scary!

    -
    Image
    By Kerri Lambert, Instructional Technology Teacher Specialist Computational thinking. It’s one of those current, hot educational phrases that leaves most teachers scratching their heads and thinking, “Does this really apply to me?” Especially when most articles and books stress its relationship and importance to computer science.  However, the more I read, the more I’m convinced that computational thinking extends to all content at all grade levels. After all, at its most basic, computational thinking is all about the process of problem solving. And let’s face it, that’s something we all do, all day long!  So what exactly IS computational thinking? By definition, computational thinking is the process of breaking down complex problems down into parts, recognizing patterns, and devising a solution. It has four pillars or processes: Broken down into the processes, computational thinking seems a lot less intimidating. I mean, even cleaning the house can be broken down into comp...
    Read more

    Who to Follow on Social Media

    -
    Image
    by Kerri Lambert, Instructional Technology Teacher Specialist In OIT, we are often asked how we learn “all this stuff” and how do we keep up with all the changes across our platforms. There are several ways, but one of our favorite ways is to peruse Twitter when we have a moment. This allows us to get information from one place and in the small snippets of time- and it doesn’t fill up our inboxes! If you are on Twitter and looking for people to follow, here are a few that we recommend. It’s no secret that OIT supports a variety of instructional applications and yes, sometimes it can feel overwhelming! But, many of the programs we subscribe to are active on Twitter. Not only do they tweet out updates or upcoming features, but also showcase ways educators across the country are using their products with students. This is also a great way to find out about learning opportunities such as webinars or conferences. Following the companies gives you the best of both worlds- updates and inspir...
    Read more