Edited by John Hendron,Director of Innovation & Strategy

Above:Students in the classroom at GES of Joe Beasley and Amanda Steeley recently received instruc-tion from a local high school student who has started a non-profit to teach coding to younger students. Jocelyn Marencik met Mr. Beasley at one of his regional ScratchEd Meetups hosted at WCVE Television in Chesterfield County. Her orga-nization is called Got Tec! Richmond.

In This EditionMaking Deeper Connections at BES

Math Centers at GMS

Technology Workshops

Crucial Collaboration

Spheros at Goochland Elementary

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Fourth Grade at Byrd:Making Deeper Connections with Technology

Fourth grade is soaring at Byrd. The fourth grade team has

been hard at work making connections between literature

and social studies through the use of technology.

All fourth grade students created a Regions of Virginia book,

using Book Creator in Ms. Spencer’s Virginia Studies class.

Students used many numatic devices to recall the regions of

Virginia, bordering states, rivers that run through Virginia,

and cities along those rivers.

Students in Ms. Carter’s homeroom had choice projects as

a conclusion to reading A Lion to Guard Us. The projects

included: recreating the journey to the New World using

Ozobots; interviewing a character from the story; creating

an advertisement of a product brought to the New World;

or retelling a portion of the story. Much collaboration and

communication went into making this project successful.

Students asked if at the end of their next novel, if they would

have another fun project to complete.

Ms. Johnston’s homeroom is currently working on green

screen videos to bring The Mouse and the Motorcycle to life.

Students researched the setting, the Mountain View Inn in

California, and are creating advertisements to entice the

public to come stay for a trip.

Thank you to the fourth grade team for taking risks, trying

new things and allowing student choice in your classrooms.

by Morgan McMullin,Instructional Technology Coach

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7th grade math teacher, Alexis Lewis is new Goochland, but not new to teaching in a 1:1 environment. She knew the importance of classroom management when you have a classroom full of devices and when she heard that with our iPad program she would have access to Apple Classroom, she was ecstat-ic! Monitoring device usage is imperative, and Apple Classroom makes that easy.

Alexis’ class is structured with 3 stations the students travel through each class in a group: teacher, inde-pendent, and iPad. The “teacher” station allows Alexis and her co-teacher, Ashley Sigrest, to teach their lessons in smaller settings with teacher student ratios of around 6-8 students per teacher. The students work independently or in pairs at the “independent” station, working on varied practice activities. Final-ly, the “iPad” station is where students work on ST Math each day.

This instructional routine requires incredible management, and the iPads can be intimidating. Alexis realized that she can make groups with Apple Classroom and lock iPads of students who are at the iPad/ST Math station into ST Math and ensure their focus on the current task. This creates a frustration free station!

Math Centers in the Middle School Math Classroomcontributed by Andrea Burton – Instructional Technology Coach

m y l e a r n i n g p l a n . c o m

Workshop Title Date Instructor Location Details

Explore Learning Gizmos

October 30 John Hendron GHS For teachers of math and science in grades 3-12, come learn about how to use EL Gizmos to give hands-on simulations to students.

Integrating Sphero into the Classroom

November 1 Krystle Demas GES Sure, kids like remote-controlling a ball ro-bot around the room. But learn how using Sphero can supplement your instructional game through coding and more!

5 (or more) Ways to Use Explain Everything

October 23 Andrea Burton GMS Explore some additional ways to use every-one’s favorite app on the iPad, ExplainEverything

3D Printing November 1 John Hendron &

Beverly Cooley

GHS Learn how to find 3D models online, how to draw objects in Tinkercad, and then print them in plastic! We’ll also explore the many ways teachers are using 3D printing technology to support deeper learning.

Share an App November 14 Krystle Demas GES In this workshop, you’re the expert! Come share a favorite app you like to use and how you think it makes a difference for students. In this session,we’ll learn from one another. Indtended for grades K-8.

Coding Workshop Level 1

October 25 Henry Jones & John Hendron

GMS Learn about how coding and engage and support your discipline! Using ready-made activities, you can teach your kids to think through coding.

Maximizing the Poten-tial of Schoology

November 13 Andrea Burton GMS From course organization, to course updates, calendars, and rubrics, become a power user with Schoology to make your life easier and to increase communications with parents and students

Each year, teachers must complete one technology workshop (2 hours/2 points) the summer before the school year or during the year through our after school workshops. This is a sampling of the offerings this fall. Our full catalog is maintained in MyLearningPlan.

Ms. Leiderman will also be trying some PD learning days for teachers during planning hours at the high school this year. Please contact Bea for details of this new program in lieu of an after school workshop.

If you plan on attending a conference or outside PD focused on technology this year, please get that pre-approved with Dr. Hendron in lieu of taking a workshop after school or during the summer. For the full catalog of opportunities, logon to MyLearningPlan and click on District Catalog. (If you haven’t yet logged on, at the login screen, click that you’ve forgotten your password. After you reset your password, you can register for workshops.) You won’t see sessions if they are outside your grade level.

at a glance

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This fall, Mr. Neil Burch and the stu-

dents in his classes will be presenting Arthur

Miller’s play, The Crucible. The play is based

loosely on true historical events in Colonial

Massachusetts, but was written in the aftermath

of McCarthyism as an allegory for the actions of

the Committee on Un-American Activities. Just

as the residents of the Massachusetts Bay Colony

were subjected to false accusations of witchcraft,

many American citizens had their lives upended

by accusations of unpatriotic acts. These histori-

cal, political, and cultural moments in our histo-

ry lend themselves to excellent cross-curricular

collaboration. Mr. Burch and the teachers in

the English department have worked together

to expose their students to different aspects of

the play and to help them experience the play as

more than just a required reading.

One notable project students will execute is a ra-

dio broadcast based on the events of The Cruci-

ble. Mr. Wampler and his students will produce

audio recordings that mimic a live broadcast

pretending to be a radio station in Salem in the

1700s. Of course there was no radio in Salem,

and voices coming at a listener from a little box

would have been beyond witchcraft. This means

students have to be imaginative and creative.

What would the weather report include? What

local businesses would sponsor radio shows?

What letters could identify the radio station in

a creative and interesting way? Then we get to

the central point of the broadcast: a live news

report taken directly from the action of the play.

Students portray actual characters as well as

bystanders, and even expert witnesses. It is an

excellent way to extend the story beyond Arthur

Miller’s own writing to demonstrate a deep un-

derstanding of the language, the characters, the

context, and the action of the play.

Stay tuned as students work on this project. You

may get the chance to listen to the recordings as

part of the promotional efforts for the theater

production.

Crucial Collaborationby Bea Leiderman—Instructional Technology Coach

Sequencing has never been this fun before! Teachers at Goochland Elementary are already aiming to engage as students explore Sphero, an app enabled robot, to teach stu-dents the concept of sequencing in coding, language arts, and math.

The trip began with Lisa Brown’s third graders. The class was introduced to Sphero and tasked to collaborate as a group to create a sequence of instructions that “the driver” of the Sphero would follow. Students each took a turn learning how to drive the Sphe-ro. As students became familiar changing the speed, direction, and distance, they were given a maze to drive through. If they drove outside the lines of the maze they had to start over. Students quickly realized that speed is a big factor in stopping quickly and turning accurately. Some students were even ready to take the challenge to the next level. These students coded the Sphero through the maze. After lots of persistence and problem solving, a few groups successfully completed the chal-lenge. Be on the lookout for these robots last seen rolling around Goochland Elementary engaging students in learning and computer science!

— Kyrstle Demas,Instructional Tech Coach,Goochland Elementary School

Sphero is Cruising through Goochland Elementary School

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EastErn statEs Consortium Visits GooChland County

On Monday, October 15, Goochland was host

of educators like us who want to dialog,

share best practices, and learn from one

another as part of a consortium of medi-

um-sized districts that originally formed

many years ago. We hosted visitors from

Mississippi, Lousiana, Ohio, Tennessee,

and Virginia to help them learn about what

makes us unique. While Mr. Gardner and

Mr. Hopkins shared details of Randolph and

Byrd Elementary Schools, the short visit only

allowed for travel to GHS, GMS, Goochland

Tech, and Goochland Elementary.

After a debriefing session Tuesday morn-

ing, visitors called out our amazing school

culture, the facility with which our students

could interact with adults and easily talk

about their learning, teachers who appeared

to truly love what they were doing, and an

amazing implementation with technology.

As part of their visit, Apple lent us iPads for

the group to carry. Peter Martin loaded the

iPads ahead of their visit with school maps,

our Apple Distinguished School iBooks, links

to our school websites, and an app called

Clips. We very briefly showed them how to

use Clips and asked them to capture things

using the iPads that caught their attention:

things they’d want to remember about

Goochland went they got home.

We were proud to learn about the amazing

experience they had visiting our schools.

“What’s best, I think,” one visitor shared, “is

how you all feel the freedom to try things,

take risks, and not be a slave to your stan-

dards.” That was great to hear.

The pictures included here come from the

39 iPads our guests used, and I’m also

including 3 URLs for the Clips videos they

produced.

Kudos to all involved in playing host to our

guests! They told us Goochland Rocks!

LighSail Returns!The LightSail app and reading pro-gram will return before the end of October. We’re planning on some short after-school sessions on “getting started” with LightSail. Your librarians will also be able to purchase addition-al books this year, so please meet with them to choose what you’d like for your classes. This means our library of digital books continues to grow—with your support and input.

Once sessions are scheduled, they’ll be added to MyLearningPlan.

What is LightSail?

Two years ago we became aware of a new type of reading program that provided better reading analytics around student progress than our Accelerated Reader program. LightSail is both a digital library of books matched to student Lexile Levels (like levels in AR, more or less), but the library allows students to either freely choose books, or be fixed on books at their approrpiate level.

Throughout the books, multiple types of assessments are embedded into the text. In addition, the teacher can embed their own questions.

The class dashboard shows student progress and allows students to exchange communication about their read-ing to the teacher on the iPad. LightSail now also works on the Mac. We’re offering this resource for grades 3-5.