One Teacher's Adventures

Have you heard about Autocrat? Autocrat is an add-on for Google that allows you to merge information from a Google Sheet into a Google Doc using a template. I learned about this add-on a couple years ago, and now I use it to create report cards, rubrics, student self-assessments, and anything else I can use it for.  Autocrat makes creating report cards super fast and easy because it can be used to automate the creation of the reports. Click on the video below for a demonstration, or read the step-by-step instructions further below to see how it works. 1. Start With a Template Create a template for your report in Google Docs. You can create tags in your template that will be populated by autocrat if they are set up in double brackets, like this: <<tag>> See an example template below: 2. Create a Google Form The Google Form allows you to easily fill in the information you want auto-populated into your tags. This can include student name, strengths, stretches, or any other...

This term, I've partnered up with the Literacy Support teacher in my school for my Social Studies 8 class.  For two blocks each week, she comes into the classroom and we co-teach lessons for the Grade 8s. She has more experience and so many more ideas than me, so it's been amazing getting to work with her in the classroom and learn from her. One idea that she had was to do an artifact study to explore culture and to spark critical thinking. This is what we did over the course of 4 days. Day 1:   As a whole class, we had a discussion about artifacts.  My co-teacher, Laurie, is Ukrainian and brought in a Ukrainian headscarf from her family.  She didn't tell the kids a lot about the scarf at teh beginning of the lesson.  Instead, she asked them to observe it, ask questions, and arrive at conclusions about it.   For example, one student noticed it was made from wool, and concluded that the people who made it must have had access to sheep to col...