This Series
We wrote the NOW Classrooms series for teachers and instructional coaches who are ready to focus on teaching and learning first and digital devices second. As we designed the lessons, we included technology devices, including tablets, Chromebooks, and laptops. We also designed the lessons with many opportunities to collaborate around devices if you do not have enough devices for each student to use one (often called a 1:1 classroom). The series includes the following five titles, all organized around grade-level-appropriate themes adapted from the 2016 ISTE Standards for Students.
1. NOW Classrooms, Grades K–2: Lessons for Enhancing Teaching and Learning Through Technology
2. NOW Classrooms, Grades 3–5: Lessons for Enhancing Teaching and Learning Through Technology
3. NOW Classrooms, Grades 6–8: Lessons for Enhancing Teaching and Learning Through Technology
4. NOW Classrooms, Grades 9–12: Lessons for Enhancing Teaching and Learning Through Technology
5. NOW Classrooms, Leader’s Guide: Enhancing Teaching and Learning Through Technology
Instructional coaches might use all five books in the series for project ideas at all grade levels and for leadership strategies. We have scaffolded the lessons across the series of books so they all flow together. We have organized all the grade-level books in this series in the same way to make it easy for our readers to see how the ideas link together. We believe this series will save you hours of preparation time.
Using This Book
This book features a series of lessons written for grades 3–5 teachers. As teachers, we know how challenging it is to come up with fresh ideas for the classroom each day, so we wrote our lessons in a way that makes getting started simple.
Each of the chapters contains two to four topical sections with three lessons each. Instead of labeling the lessons for grades 3–5, we assigned three levels based on the acronym NOW, which stands for novice, operational, and wow. Teachers can provide novice lessons to students who are new to the skill or task, operational lessons to students who have had some experience with the skill or task, and wow lessons to students who are ready for an extension. Once we arrived at the three levels, it felt almost like a Choose Your Own Adventure book instead of a step-by-step recipe book. Depending on your experience with the technology and your goals for your students, you might jump around to the different sections or move linearly from novice, to operational, to wow. Each lesson has an I can statement, written in student-friendly language, to identify the learning goal, and a list of steps to follow for the lesson. We feel that the I can statements are important to help the students take ownership of the learning goals. Throughout the book, we also include teaching tips and tech tips to help simplify teachers’ use of technology with students and save planning time, and connections to support students and teachers.
Chapter 1, “Embracing Creativity,” shows educators how they can support students’ voice and choice by giving students options for creating multimedia. These skills will allow students to demonstrate what they know via various types of media. Students start creating and collaborating as they snap digital pictures, create videos, and work with audio. In this selfie-crazed world, we know our students can use audio, take pictures, and create videos on their devices, but now, we will connect those skills to the curriculum.
In chapter 2, “Communicating and Collaborating,” educators give students opportunities to practice the four Cs of communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity as they begin to share their work beyond the walls of the classroom. Starting with connecting with peers in the classroom, students will practice providing quality feedback. In this chapter, we introduce social media and how to use it in the classroom. Next, students will collaborate on projects with other students in the building, and finally, students will participate with a global audience through social media.
In chapter 3, “Conducting Research and Curating Information,” educators teach students how to identify and use quality online sources. Even though our students have had access to the Internet most of their lives, it doesn’t mean they know how to weed out the digital clutter for valid sources. The lessons in this chapter are essential to research at any grade level.
In chapter 4, “Thinking Critically to Solve Problems,” educators give students strategies for organizing different tasks and solving problems along with online collaborative tools to help with project workflow. Students will learn how to communicate with peers and others beyond the walls of the classroom using a variety of digital tools and online services.
The focus of chapter 5, “Being Responsible Digital Citizens,” is critical to students’ future success. As educators, we need to help students understand their digital footprint and what that means to their future success. A positive digital footprint carries importance, and middle-grade students need to know that what goes on the Internet stays on the Internet. As educators, we should guide young learners to make good choices every day in class and even better choices online. We tackle some tough topics in this chapter, including online safety, cyberbullying, and positive digital citizenship.
Chapter 6, “Expanding Technology and Coding Concepts,” provides lessons through which students will learn all about cloud computing and file management on devices. Because these practices are changing so fast, we need to ensure our middle-grade students understand cloud computing and how to protect their information. This chapter will provide a foundation of technology concepts and operations to help students gain the skills they need and will need in the future to perform basic technology functions, troubleshoot, and keep their data safe and organized.
We include practical classroom management tips in every chapter in clear, nontechnical language. Each chapter includes discussion questions you can use during personal reflection or when you learn with your colleagues. We also include a comprehensive appendix of terms and tools, featuring many apps, websites, or technology we write about that might help the reader and many other resources that inspired our research. Visit go.SolutionTree.com/technology to download a free reproducible version of this appendix. As authors, we understand that not every classroom is uniform, so we provided as many alternatives for resources as possible. We will continue to grow with you and share what we learn on our blog.
Building Background: Know Before You Go
Readers should be aware of a few additional concepts regarding this content before they begin engaging with the lessons and chapters that follow. We want to briefly mention suggestions for the sequence in which readers use the lessons in the book, explain the Google Drive platform to ensure all readers have background knowledge on its tools, discuss the concept of learning management systems, which we mention frequently and which play an important role in many lessons, and emphasize the importance of following policies regarding student privacy and Internet use.
Sequence of Use
We know everyone starts at a different point, so we encourage you to jump around in the book. For example, teachers who struggle with technology integration may want to focus first on chapters 1 and 6.
