The One Looking Back and Moving Forward!

Spring Break is nearly over…but not yet!

In honor of my fun week off I thought I’d share a little of my non-teacher Colorado life. As well as a look forward to a new and exciting addition to the classroom after break.

The first part of my break a great friend from my hometown came out to visit! I always love being a tourist with friends and taking in all of Colorado’s beauty! We spent our time relaxing and hiking in Vail, touring Coors Brewery in Golden, and showing off my amaaaazing city...Denver! 

Later in the week my teacher besties (and real world besties) took a trip to the far southwest side of Colorado and saw the sand dunes! They were beautiful and I forgot we were in Colorado. Unfortunately, the winds were NOT forgettable. It was almost impossible to see, walk, and most importantly sand surf! We did get some great pics so we’ll mark it as a win. 

 

 

As I mourn the final days of break I am also excited for a new addition to our classroom routine! After months and months of researching and planning we are starting a classroom twitter account!

I love tweeting about our happenings in room 21 already and I’m excited to bring the kids on board! (@elephanteducate if you are on twitter too – which you should be!) 

To start, I obviously had to put together a new bulletin board to get me the kids excited before break. 

When we get back to school students will learn a quick overview of twitter. I’ll show them a peak at what twitter can do! For the first few weeks we will focus on tweeting about STEM and our cardboard projects. I want to start off small and specific so we can hopefully have great conversation. 

To make life a little easier I made "tweet sheets" that students will use to write out a tweet before it is sent. Those tweets will also be found on the board shown above. (I will approve all tweets and to start I will also submit them to our twitter...in the future students may use our iPads to submit tweets)

My tweet sheets are found FREE on TpT now! 

 

Check out @Room21Tweets for all the trending topics from our classroom!

Twitter in the classroom is nothing new, I’ve been watching other classroom twitter accounts, reading techy teacher’s blogs, and pinning everything useful.  

Here are some great people I’ve learned from:

First, Kayla Deltz - she is a true tech teacher who inspires me often! You can find her on twitter, blogging, and the MOST exciting in my opinion is you can find her students on twitter here!

In this article, Two Guys and some iPads have shared how they use twitter to build digital citizenship. They also show how students can share their thoughts to build relationships in the classroom.

Here is a great video on how Karen Lirenman started to use twitter with her 2nd graders and how it took off! Quick and easy way to get great tips!

And finally, if you still need more convincing, here are 28 ways to incorporate twitter into your classroom!

I hope this gives you some inspiration to use twitter in your classroom as well!