Resource: Quick (Free) Puzzle Makers

That frantic minute or so when you realize you either A. Completely forgot to prepare a lesson for a class or B. Need to fill about 5 minutes of time at the beginning of end of the next class.

As a new teacher, this is coming up more and more often (both scenarios unfortunately), but I've developed a small arsenal of websites that quickly and easily generate simple word puzzles.

One disclaimer: The free versions are not always that beautiful and I will often screen shot, copy, paste, adjust these puzzles once they are made in a Word Doc to fit my needs.

Crossword Puzzle Generators
http://www.armoredpenguin.com/crossword/- A very detailed crossword page, you can adjust nearly every aspect of the puzzle.

http://www.puzzle-maker.com/CW/- This site is pretty basic, choose to the free HTML version and you can either print it as is, or like I said, crop it off the webpage and adjust as you need


Word Search Generators
http://www.armoredpenguin.com/wordsearch/- Again, you are able control many aspects of your puzzle with this tool

http://puzzlemaker.discoveryeducation.com/WordSearchSetupForm.asp- Very basic and quick set-up


Other Word Puzzles
Matching- http://www.armoredpenguin.com/wordmatch/- Beta form, uses words and matches them with their definitions

Scramble- http://www.armoredpenguin.com/wordscramble/- The quickest and best scramble maker out there!

BINGO- http://print-bingo.com/print-bingo-cards.php- Create quick custom BINGO cards. It says it can only generate 5 at a time for free, but if you go back and reload the page, it will generate fresh cards every time.

My First Post-College Spring Break

I can't say I ever attended a Spring Break event as pictured above, but this year is definitely different. My friends are all very jealous that I still get Spring Break, but then I remind me them of what I have to put up with, on what is very often, a daily basis.

I went to college at Baylor in Waco, Tx and this was pretty exciting because that meant only an hour and a half drive to my favorite city in the world, Austin. My friends and I would travel down south every year to attend a few days of SXSW activities, but that wasn't even during our Spring Break! I think maybe I went home to Dallas for Spring Break? Or one year I flew to see my best friend who goes to Auburn, and one year I went gambling in Shreveport with my grandma. Its very obvious that I live an exciting life, I know... I am typing this as I watch my cat stretch and am "Ooooh"-ing about it.

But did I miss the boat on the crazy typical Spring Break?
Probably.

Do I care?
Nope.

I now live in Austin, and of course my school takes its Spring Break during SXSW (thank GOD) so I am experiencing the event as an Austinite this year. I love it, but its already gone by so fast. Its MONDAY. That means I need to either slow down and relax or back in every single thing that I can before Sunday night hits.

I don't know what teachers are supposed to do over Spring Break. Probably relax? I also still think of teachers as being moms and dads with families for some reason, so maybe like, family vacations. I don't know. Either way, its a strange phenomena, a 23 year old who is not in college on Spring Break.

Resource: Memrise.com

Memrise.com is a great new resource I came across while feverishly googling for some way to help my students who were struggling with learning vocabulary outside of class.

This is the homepage you see when you are logged in.

This site is still in its beta form so there are obviously kinks to be worked out, but it works great as a quick on-the-go tool kids can use to learn anything from vocab to history facts to math formulas. 

You can log in using a Facebook or email account, and then can personalize your profile with a username, picture, and bio.

The next step, and this is just me clicking around, is to create a new "language". This was the easiest way to consolidate all my word/study lists into one place. I created a language called Ms. D's Classroom.

Screenshot of my "language" page

Once students are logged in, they can access the "language" through the URL (no search option available yet), and then they can find whatever word list you have created for them. Mine are organized by class, and then labeled with a theme. 

Once you click a wordlist, a sort of game appears. The student will learn about 5 words at a time through typing, matching, and just clicking on the words. Its very fast paced and I think my students really like the instant gratification.

Creating the wordlists are very simple and I figured it out in just a few minutes. The site also has a few cool social networky things built in, such as a leaderboard and MemPals. Students can become MemPals with each other through URLS (again, no search feature), and can compete against each other on the leaderboards. The cutest feature of the site is that students are growing a "knowledge garden". They need to grow, water, and harvest their plants aka their memories. When memories start to "wilt", you can set the site up to email you with a reminder to grow your plants! Some kids like this feature, some don't. I was pretty indifferent and just enjoyed the quickness and usability of the site.

My pitiful little start up garden

If you are interested or have students who may benefit, please check it out. Let me know what you think, or if you need any help!

Peter Nilsson's Taxonomy of Creativity

Peter Nilsson of Deerfield Academy presented on the topic of creativity and critical thinking being more intertwined and present in the classroom.

He presented a really cool taxonomy of creativity, and people ate. it. up. Sorry I didn't take the time to awkwardly whip out my iPad and snap a photo though, I did find his presentation (link below) and took a screen shot of the taxonomy.

Level 1: Imitation
Level 2: Variation
Level 3: Combination
Level 4: Transformation
Level 5: Genesis (Original Creation)

I personally loved this because we don't always take the time to recognize that there are in fact different levels of creativity. I've always thought of myself as being exceptionally creative (why I find teaching to be such an awesome day to day challenge), but this made me realize I've been slacking. While you have to start at the base in order to properly foster creativity, your goal should always be to go up!

I'm lucky to be a Spanish teacher where Level 5 is achievable through original dialogues and skits, but I personally don't find those to be all that stimulating and most students hate them. I'm having a hard time wrapping my head about how these levels would look in my class room, but I think that's why I like the taxonomy so much.

You can watch a modified version of what we heard from Peter today at SXSWedu on Vimeo.

Just some food for thought. How do these levels look in your classroom? Do they even exist?

Thank you, SXSWedu.

This week I've been attending SXSWedu here in my transplant-hometown of Austin. I was excited to miss school, but I was also excited because this was my first time to attend a conference.


(Back story: I am only in my 7th month of teaching as I just graduated from Baylor University in May of 2011. I am currently working as THE sole Spanish teacher for the secondary grades at a K-12 charter school in Georgetown, Tx.)


I had this notion of the conference in my head. I'd heard about all the tech emphasis and read all the session information. However, I've been slightly disappointed. Every session that I walked in to, I instantly felt like a baby. I am 23 years old and being surrounded by 40, 50, 60 year olds on iPads is just weird to me. Not to alienate any readers, but its an honest experience. I know there are younger teachers out there, I just don't know where they are, and I don't know why they aren't HERE!


I got excited about sessions titled "21 Ways to Integrate Social Media" for instance, and hoped to hear about cool new applications for the classroom. But I found an hour long discussion about "What is Twitter" and "Using Google News". I had to leave not only this session but a few others as well. I've been on the internet since I was 6 years old. My students are NOT leaving me in the "digital dust", and I have more followers than any of them on Twitter. I was hoping for lots of applicable knowledge, but have yet to grasp much.


Not to say I've learned nothing though. I've taken away a great handful of information that I can and will use once Spring Break has passed.


1. Start sharing. A lot of the conference focuses on open content sharing and creative commons licensing, and for a good reason. As a first year Spanish teacher with less than perfect resources and 4 preps, I am constantly scrambling for projects, worksheets, lessons, whatever. I can't come up with all of it; I'm not a workaholic. When I find something, I grab it up, and go on with my lesson. Why am I not sharing these things that I find? Why am I not sharing all of this content that I am creating every day in my classroom? Its like the ultimate test of creativity. We all spend so much time gobbling up ideas and information (this conference), but what are we doing to give back. Possible reason for this blog?


2. Creativity and critical thinking go hand in hand. Peter Nilsson (@pnilsson) held a session on how we can combine these two forces in student work. THIS was the kind of thing I had been waiting to hear. Applicable, usefull information that I could take back to my class. He introduced his taxonomy of creativity (Pro Tip: Teachers LOVE taxonomies), and something kind of clicked. Like, duh, of course there are levels to creativity, where are my students? Where should they be? Is that my fault? (Answers: Here, There, and Yes). We (I) get lazy and our students suffer. I do mine a disservice every time I cut creative corners to save time, effort, or in my classroom, drama...


3. Be progressive. Yes I am young, no I am not an administrator, no I do not have not have any say about anything that goes on in my school, but that doesn't have to stop me, or any of us. That old saying "Its easier to ask forgiveness than it is to ask permission"? Its true. Just do it, try it, fail at it if you have to. I'm not saying to go add all your students on Facebook and create some creepy private "learning group" because that will 100% get you booted out the door... but try something new in a warm up, take 5 minutes to introduce kids to an app that could download outside of class. Baby steps.


I attended the first keynote address with LeVar Burton (duh!), but did not attend today's with the CEO of Pearson. My reason being, and I quote my own Twitter "because their butt raping of my wallet while in college is still a fresh wound". I look forward to seeing Arne Duncan speak tomorrow, which may surprise some, but I feel that many problems we have in Texas are a result of the Texas legislature, not the national. 


This blog may be a flop, fabulous. But the void of young teachers sharing positive experiences and new resources needs to be filled, y'all. Lets do this.