From Textbooks to Chromebooks

Last year at Pepper Tree Elementary 5th and 6th grade went 1:1 with Chromebooks.  This is how we integrated this increased use of technology in 6th grade.  First, we continued our adoption of a middle school schedule.  We all taught one block of math daily and PE twice a week.  Then each of the 6th-grade teachers taught a subject. Here is how we broke up the responsibility for the rest of the subject material:

         Mrs. Allen-Reading  & Theater
         Mr. Bjelland-Social Studies  & Speech/Debate
         Mrs. Sperling-Writing & Dance
         Ms. Robinson-Science & Art
         Mr. Hammond-Computer Literacy  & Videography
         Mrs. Whipp-Band (Monday & Tuesday 1/2 hour each day)
         Mr. Bell-PE (50 minutes every Wednesday)


We wanted to have a computer literacy class to teach specific skills that could then be utilized across all subjects.  For 15-20 minutes every day in computer literacy class the students worked on improving their typing skills.  We used typingweb.com  to teach students proper hand position and fingering technique.  We felt this was important to improve student accuracy & speed when typing papers and working on other projects that required typing.  In September average student rate was 24 wpm.  By May, the average wpm increased to 49.  Then for the rest of the daily class period, the students were introduced to various apps that they could choose from to complete work in other classes.  Here is a list of the apps and/or websites that the students learned about during the school year.  I will talk about each of these items and how they were used in each of the other classrooms in future posts and will provide student samples.

1) Google Docs                                                                                
2) Google Slides                                                                                
3) Google Sheets                                                    
4) Google Drawing                                                  
5) Google Keep                                                      
6) Classroom Google                                              
7) Glogster                                                              
8) Prezi                                                                    
9) Screencastify                                                      
10) Lucidpress      
11) Edublogs
12) Code.org
13) Peardeck  
14) Tourbuilder
15) Edpuzzle.com  
16) prodigygame.com  
17) khanacademy.org
18) Grammarly  
19) Kahoots                        
20) WeVideo                                           
21)  Spheros with blockly