VPEF Grant Thank Yous from My Class

Typing our essays on student desktop,
Chromebook, and hand written.

Earlier this school year, I applied for and was granted some generous funds for my classroom.  We were able to acquire two more Chromebook laptops to bring my class's grand total of available student computers up to seven (or sometimes eight or nine depending on the old ones working properly that day!).  In all, we have five Chromebooks now and those are nice for the students to use due to their speed and since my district set me up with google Classroom this semester.  So overall, this grant has had a large impact on my classes.

Working on a Slide Presentation for
Speaking and Listening Standards

I asked my students to write thank you notes to the Vacaville Public Education Foundation which granted the funds.  It was not lost on them what kind of impact these added computers had for our class and I'm sharing a

Part of our class writing essays.

handful of their notes here. Here's one below, and links to some more from the class.


Here are some of the projects we worked on using these computers this year:

• A class Padlet page "Where I'm From" poem.
• A Slide  presentation for Speaking and Listening skills.
• Some shared brainstorming ideas, in preparation for our essays--here's one:

Starting my first google Classrooms.

For the writing assignments, I was able to use google Classroom thanks to +Dawn Marsh at the district office who set up my classes as part of the pilot this semester!

Shut off Spell Checker in Docs

This I just found and it might be useful in two or three applications: You can shut off the spell checker in Google Docs. Most people are smarter than I am, and so probably already knew that.  Here's the quote from the help page: 

Spelling suggestions as you typeAs you type, Docs automatically underlines in misspelled words in red. Right-click an underlined word to see the suggested correction and replace the misspelled word.You can turn off the spell-checker by unchecking Show spelling suggestions from the Viewdrop-down menu

Click here for the full page.

There are two times I can use this:
1) During an everyday type activity when I want students to focus on composing volumes rather than editing and fretting over perfection.
2) During California Exit Exam proctoring when a very few number of my students have "use of a word processor with the spell checker turned off" written in as an accommodation during the testing.  Then I can have them sign in to a convenient Chromebook without disrupting the other testers or having to arrange a second adult proctor to escort them to a separate place with a clunky desktop that may or may not work, or possibly has an older version of Word etc. etc.

I hope this is useful for others too.

4.1.4 Test Post 2

Click here to open a new window with the document. Testing the Spreadsheet publishing to the web.

4.1.4 Test Post

Testing out display for 4.1.4 Integrated 1 

Click here to open a new window with the document.

6.1.1 Lesson Materials

First things first, here's the link to the CPM homework help site for Integrated 1:
http://goo.gl/8fN32K

Main Ideas / Skills:
Convert Standard Form to a Table then to Slope-Intercept form.
(converting a table to slope-intercept form is review from Chapter 2)

Problem 6-1
-6x + 2y = 10
 Plug in some x values and make a table:
x= 0 and x =1
-6(0) + 2y = 10
2y = 10
y = 5

-6(1) + 2y = 10
-6 + 2y = 10
2y = 16
y = 8

(table) then table to pattern and y=mx+b

Slides from Mrs. Burtram: