Institute/Election Day

Today was crazy!  Institute day was done "in-house" at each school, with the iCoaches traveling to different buildings to support teachers.  I spent the morning at Hiawatha working on some eChalk basics with a few teachers, then made my way over to Heritage.

I spent an hour working and planning with all of the middle school PE and Health teachers for the Fitness Gram application.  THEY ARE FANTASTIC!  They cannot wait to have some data to help support their student's health and wellness.....knowing full well that they will held accountable for these scores in the coming years.  They want to jump right in and get this program implemented district-wide.  They have so many great ideas!  John has been a great leader of this group.  He is really pushing to make this happen and make it happen soon. Cannot wait to see where this goes!

I then spent some time training Piper teachers to use eChalk Lesson Planner and wrapped up the day at Emerson helping some teachers with some ideas for how to implement iPads more efficiently.  I showed them one of my favorite apps, Sight Words (FREE!).  It has sets of sight words that included recordings of the words so kids can listen to the words.  They can also create their own lists and add their own recordings.  It now has a new feature that allows you to share lists across a Dropbox account.  This will make it easy for teachers to create their own custom sets of words for a class!

Fitness Tracking and Common Core

Because of a rescheduling, I spent most of today in the office :(  It was good to have the time to do some necessary research though.  I researched different options for PE teachers to have students track their fitness data over time.  Discovered that the best option is http://www.fitnessgram.net/home/. It allows teachers to track student fitness data long term, can be used district-wide, and has reporting tools to share information with families so students can set goals.  The only challenge now is find the money to pay for it!  Spoke to our superintendent about it briefly - next is to contact the district wellness coordinator.

I also spent some time working with Sue to do some research to help one of the middle school teams boost their Common Core implementation.  Common Core is so new to everyone and has been a challenge to figure out just how to transition.....Sue and I still have more to do!

I met with the PE teachers at one of the middle schools this afternoon to find out what their goals for the fitness tracking are.  They are excited about having access to the program - they know this is the direction PE education is going and want to start soon!