Thursday, March 14, 2024

MagicSchool Rubric Generator


I came across MagicSchool quite by accident and was immediately intrigued due to the Rubric Generator. One thing I'm not great at is creating rubrics, so finding an easier and reliable method for making them is something I'm always on the hunt to find. I have used it for a couple of Project Based Learning assignments now and I'm happy with the outcomes. It is easy to use and can be exported to Google. You can select the grade level, add the standard, provided the title and description of the assignment, select a point scale, and add any additional information. After that you click generate rubric and — BAM! You have your rubric. Here is a sample one from my class about Short Answer Responses.



Friday, December 15, 2023

Using Bard in Creating Grammar Lessons for ELA

I'm back in an ELA classroom part-time at ASP for G6 and G7. I'm loving being with students everyday in the role of teacher, rather than principal. I enjoy the challenges and struggles of administration, but being in the classroom is always more fun. Our current textbook for ELA is from HMH and it is a good book, but sometimes I feel like not doing certain work online. Grammar is something I feel works better offline for me. Giving students time to practice reading examples of sentences and then creating their own examples without the distractions of the online world can be a good break from digital life. The grammar lesson for this particular unit is dealing with Simple, Compound, and Complex sentences. The HMH lesson was good, but I thought — let's see how Bard handles the idea.

I typed in the following prompt: Explanation for 7th grade students about simple sentences with 10 examples of simple sentences. The results were this lesson about Simply Sentences. I was pretty happy with the results and the style, so I used the prompt two more times, but changed it to Compound Sentences and Complex Sentences. I'll be teaching these lessons next week, so I will return to provide my experience with the students.

Update 12.19.23

I used the lessons with both of my middle school classes and it went quite well. Students asked many questions about how I used AI to create the lessons. It lead to natural discussions about ethical use of AI technology. We wrote our practice sentences together in class. We will be working on Argumentative Essays after the holiday, so they will be expected to use Simple, Compound, and Complex Sentences correctly in the essay.

Tuesday, September 26, 2023

Make One Thing Better Everyday 2

For those of you who have followed my blog for awhile, you probably remember a post from the past I wrote called Make One Thing Better Everyday. It was moderately popular as far as my blog goes. The idea came again to me today at my new job at ASP. One of our teachers was struggling with Google Classroom. For some reason, she wasn't able to make a Google Classroom on our domain. I guessed that as a new teacher, she was never added to the Google Group for teachers at ASP. Later after several discussions with the IT ladies, we determined that the teacher was, in fact, on the Google Group. We had her log out and log back in, restart the computer, checked to make sure she wasn't on a different Chrome account — everything was set up as it should be. I told the IT ladies, "I have one last idea. Take the teacher off the list and put her back on." They did me one better; they removed every teacher and then put them all back on... And it worked! Now the teacher's account can create Google Classrooms in our domain. So that was my making one thing better for today. One teacher is now very happy, because she can use Google Classroom and the IT folks know one more trick to try if something isn't working for a teacher. I guess it is really like making two things better, but who is counting? LOL.

Monday, September 4, 2023

New School Year, New School

It has been one heck of a ride during the last year. I had a short tour at a principal at a school in Cambodia and then returned to Korea to be at an ASP branch in Daegu. Both of those situations were difficult, but I found ways to survive them. Luckily both of those experiences lead me to where I currently am — American STEM Prep in Gwanggyo. I'm currently serving as the Vice Principal. My focus in on the secondary school and the Principal is focusing on the elementary school. We have a small, but thriving little school that has grades 6 to 10. I'm also teaching middle school science until the science teacher arrives in late October. Science is a stretch for me, but I'm excited to be back in a classroom with middle school students. Once the science teacher arrives, the Curriculum Director and I will split the middle school English classes between us. As it stands right now, we are both teaching full-time in addition to our admin roles. Not easy, but definitely worth it. The kids are great! We have a nice little leadership team for the secondary that includes a Head Teacher, Curriculum Director, and me (Vice Principal). We are utilizing Google Chats & Spaces to facilitate communication and it is working quite well so far. Day one is in the books! Looking forward to finishing the first week of school at ASP.