The Babbling Box

Welcome to the Class Contract Activity This activity will bring a new class of students together to set expectations on what it means to treat eachother, peers and the teacher with respect. This is a great activity to do at the start of school especially if one of your guidelines for success is respect. This conversation opens up students to discuss what respect, looks like, sounds like and how it will feel in the classroom. This unit is an activity that can be adjusted to fit your class’s need

Welcome to the All About Me HTML Project This 9 day unit will introduce your students to the process that web designers go through to write a basic HTML web page to create an interactive website by creating a basic one page All About Me webpage through the use of notepad. There are a lot of different methods and programs to create a website but notepad really allows the students to focus on learning codes but also allows a lot of creativity depending on the range of your students abilities.

This is a five day powerpoint for the first week of school, it includes space for editing and adding your own classroom procedures and suggestions for activites for the first week of school. This powerpoint is geared towards middle school students in a Robotics class but can be edited for any middle school class. The preview file I included is a checklist of all of the activities the students would do the first 5 or so days: About Me Activitiy, Internet Safety Activity and Supply Safetey Activit

I revamped and combined all of my blogging materials into one streamlined unit. Included is a powerpoint, project rubric, lesson plan and worksheets. I use the free site kidblog to have students blog but the lesson can be tweaked to use any platform you prefer. This unit gets students writing, reading and commenting in a safe manner, we also spend time discussing cyber bulling and positive digital citizenship.

This powerpoint is a very good introduction to NXT lego mindstroms education. It teaches problem solving skills, team work, responsibility and goes through the kit labeling and defining the key pieces. This is a 3 week long unit that allows students to create a creative design while still learning how the kit works as a whole. Included is a rubric, warm up questions, thinking questions, wrap up questions and labeled NXT pieces.

In my robotics class we compete in a Robot Race project using the NXT lego minstrom education sets. This unit will run about 3 weeks depending on class time. Students learn how to complete the programming for a simple back and forth race. We discuss turning, force and torque. This powerpoint is specific to how I teach my class but can be edited based on your needs.

When Robotics students first join my class they have never worked with the kits before so this unit is the starting off point in our classroom, not only will it allow students to learn the functions of the brick, motors and sensors but they get to be super creative by designing their robot for a class talent show. The majority of students will follow directions from the NXT programs website and download the programming to make their robot preform an action, but some students will go above and be

This packet challenges students to us the technology problem solving method to complete the egg drop challenge using a limited number of supplies. The challenge took 3 class days for my students to complete, so there are also three warm up questions included. You can change the supplies out to fit what you have on hand.

This is 101 slides, that I used over a three week period to introduce my students to blogging and various other forms of social media. Each day has an agenda, warm up and wrap up. Slides have links for related websites and video's regarding social media. This relates to the rubric that I already posted, but the activities are already built into the slides. This can be used for a tech media class or any languages arts class that is focusing on writing, editing and critiquing. We used kidblog.or

This 9 day unit will reinforce your students understanding of the process that web designers go through to write a three to four page HTML website to create an interactive website by creating a cohesive website on a topic of their interest. There are a lot of different methods and programs to create a website but in my opinion notepad really allows the students to focus on demonstrating knowledge of codes but also allows a lot of creativity depending on the range of your student’s abilities.

This 13 day unit will introduce your students to Microsoft publisher, graphic design and working for a ‘client’ at the end of the unit each student will have piece of work that they can use and be proud of. I print each of my students calendar’s for them, yes it uses a lot of ink but they absolutely love this unit and the engagement is always high so I think it’s worth it. Over the 13 days students will learn the design cycle, graphic design terms, how to use text boxes and shapes within publish

Welcome to the Dream Room Project This 10 day unit will introduce your students to understand personal financial management and recognize the value of personal financial responsibility. This project is designed to apply real life skills, determining taxes, calculating the cost of living with an engaging side of letting students design their own dream home. (Yes the budget is high, but my students loved the freedom and creativity it allowed while still learning that the cost of living was higher

Included are 19 editable classroom rules and procedures signs that can be adapted to any classroom setting. I included my classroom rewards chart, lists of consequences and rewards. In my classroom I used the school poster maker to blow up each sign and then laminated them and hung them up. This also makes it easy to copy and paste from a classroom management plan, like my school requires.

This is a 7 page packet that I use for a project grade to teach my students about the financial decisions they will be making one day. It walks them through the steps for finding a career, college expenses, house expenses and car expenses and then setting up a final budget. You could combine this with my excel template and have it be a complete project grade or just use it for different activities for calculating loans and budgets. My middle school students really enjoy looking for houses and ca

This project is called How Strong is Your Box, it teaches the 7 steps of the technology problem solving method while allowing students to create a 3D product that follows the 7 steps. Included is a powerpoint, worksheet, rubric and technology brief. Students are challenged to create a box with limited supplies that will hold more than 50 pounds before crushing. Our class winner created a box that held 160 pounds before crushing.

This powerpoint will last a class for 3 weeks, and it covers all of the financial TEKS for middle school students. This powerpoint is accompanied by the Game of Life Packet and Template in my store. Or could be used individually. It has some great guiding questions for discussions about financial vocabulary and links for fun activities for students to play with and really opens up the discussion about credit cards, credit scores, loans and their future.

This 10 day unit will allow students to use game design as activity that will build technical, artistic, cognitive, social and linguistic skills suitable for our current and future world. Game design is a popular topic or career opportunity to introduce students to but the aspects of game design take time to learn. I enjoyed using gamestar mechanic with my students to allow them to each create an account, play games to earn items to later build a game and then create a final game. I also wanted

This packet focuses on the vocabulary and careers associated with building bridges. Using the pbs kids website I have students look up the bridges terminology and look at the different types of bridges. Then using an achieve texas website we explore the types of skills and the demand for the architecture and construction careers. Then using the technology problem solving method students work in partners to design and construct a bridge that can hold a car and withstand "wind" a fan. This whole u

Welcome to the Careers A-Z Activity This 5 day unit will introduce your students to careers available, how to research the careers, completing a research project through collaboration, and at the end of the unit each group will have created a career presentation that helps them discover a variety of careers available to them. This unit is a 5 day unit that can be adjusted to fit your class’s needs and pace. In this unit you will have: • Lesson plan, which includes a day by day breakdown of how I

Before any group based project I have my students sign a team contract in order to hold each other accountable. There is also a back page that can bring the team together in some simple team building activities like coming up with a logo or team name. At the end of the project students then provide their partners a grade based on how well they held up the contract.