Making the Grade = Making My Life Easier

So I use this program at school called Making the Grade (MtG). It has to be one of the best things ever invented. All you need to do is click a new column and write the description and points and fill in the grades and MtG does the rest. All of my grades can then be printed out so I can have a way of recording new grades quickly. MtG also does seating charts, publishes grades online, and even randomly picks someone to read. It's a pretty sweet piece of technology.

(I hope this didn't sound too much like a sales pitch.)

Video Time

My teaching compadre Mateo wrote about some video technology in his class so I thought I would jump on the bandwagon. My video was meant to show the kiddos some of the sites of Ancient Egypt and give them a view that they didn't get from the book. The video was about the Great Sphinx. The kids got to kick back, watch the movie, and write down some facts along the way. The video was well received by all of the classes and they were happy to hear to hear that they would be able to finish the movie the next class period. I personally found the video helpful because it gave a lot of visual images to the students, something that class discussion sometimes misses.