Raider Strong Network

Cause and Effect Resources: Opposing Viewpoints & Google Scholar

Our Expos Writing students are developing "cause and effect" papers.  Resources exist through a Google search, but a more refined search for resources can occur using Opposing Viewpoints and Google Scholar.

Collaboration With Arcadia SD, New London SD, Ashland SD To Make The Best Pet Food

With the help of Mr. Santy, Small Vets Instructor, we embarked on a collaborative learning experience that is unlike anything we have attempted before at Pulaski High School.

With our Bright Bytes surveys from 2016-2017, students revealed to us that "collaborating with others outside of our school district" was something we "never did".

With this data, I decided to make it a goal to decrease the "never" and increase the "every few months" as a starting point for content areas at Pulaski High School.  I approached Mr. Santy about the idea to collaborate with students in another school district.  He immediately thought of the small vet learning opportunity for creating a pet food.  I was able to provide a tutorial on the publishing tool as students will produce a website that will market their product.



I also provided a tutorial on the features of Google Hangout.


I'm thankful that Mr. Santy was willing to attempt the creation of a new pet food with students outside of our school district.  To me, this makes sense.  Learning from people more than one mile away is something that happens in so many businesses on a daily basis.

The details of the learning experience for students was well thought out by Mr. Santy, and the email communication with teachers allowed emails to be exchanged among instructors.  A spreadsheet was used to "match" students with other districts. 

I'm also thankful to Ms. Caelwarts, Ms. Kurowski, and Mrs. Uelmen for allowing the "Google Hangouts" to be opened for our two week period.  Without an "informational and instructional" technology team that has visions of innovative learning, none of this would happen.

High School and Elementary Students Collaborating On A Menu

Students from one of our elementary schools have been helping our Culinary 2 students design new menus.  Providing healthy foods that elementary students have interest in will promote healthy eating habits.

We were thrilled to use Google Hangouts as a quick and easy tool for collaborating during this learning experience.

Day 2 between Mrs. Fullerton’s 2nd graders and @PHS_ProStart Culinary Arts 2 students in developing new hot lunch menu items- this time Google Hangouts! @PCSD_PHS @pcsd @tafullerton2 @ProStart @PCSD_SS #RaiderStrong pic.twitter.com/b1eh6iXTpb

— Liz Moehr (@lamoehr) December 9, 2017

We are so thankful that Mrs. Moehr,  Mrs. Fullerton, and Mrs. Markowski are providing this learing opportunity for our students.  View more images from the day!

Day 1 of a super fun collaboration project between Mrs. Fullerton’s 2nd graders and @PHS_ProStart Culinary Arts 2 students in developing new menu item for Sunnyside Elementary’s hot lunch program. Let the menu planning begin! @PCSD_SS @PCSD_PHS @pcsd @tafullerton2 @ProStart pic.twitter.com/PUUiD6hbMH

— Liz Moehr (@lamoehr) December 4, 2017

U.S. History & Imperialism: Explaining With Creativity

Tools Used:
Mindly App
Explain Everything
Adobe Draw

I'm a huge fan of "Common Craft" type of videos.  Students will be creating "Common Craft" type videos completely on the iPad using their creativity and some tools.  Since 2012 our students have created "Common Craft" type videos, and we have progressed with our tools.  I look back on my first explanation video and we definitely can improve.  I feel we are!



Student Created 2018

Intro to Business: Creating a Radio Spot with GarageBand

Garage Band was the perfect tool for students to create a radio commercial with multiple tracks to make it real.  Creativity, critical thinking, and sharing were major skills practiced during this learning experience.  I appreciate Mr. Otto and Mr. Coenen allowing me to co-teach the lesson.

A Student Final Product

Student 2 Final Product

Student 3 Final Product

Student 4 Final Product

The presentation:

Success Is Messy: Nearpod Works To Perfection

Yesterday, I was reminded of how successful things happen.  Mr. Anderson attended a PLC day at Adlai Stevenson High School and noticed that the presenter engaged the audience with PearDeck.  Unfortunately, PearDeck comes with a price we are unable to pay.

When Mr. Anderson approached me about the concept, I initially thought that the presentation tool of questions in Google Slides would be an adequate solution.  We found this could be a tool, but being a single teacher in a classroom proved a little challenging to monitor those questions.  A teacher needs to toggle back and forth between the presentation and the question/answer window.

As we were talking, Nearpod came to my mind.  It quickly became clear that this was the perfect tool that would serve his Anatomy students in their learning experience.

• Upload a presentation from Powerpoint or Google Slides
• Upload images or PDFs
• Once a presentation is uploaded, add "activity cards", "polls", or "questions"
• No sign up required by the students.  Simply display the code that they enter into the Nearpod app. Quick, Simple!
• Teacher begins to present.  Immediately the presentation shows up on a student's device.
• When it's time for an activity or question, students interact on their iPad by writing, drawing, typing, highlighting
• Students share their creation back to the teacher
• Teacher discusses some responses by the students

Lectures are not always necessary, however when they are the correct delivery for the content, Nearpod became a great tool for our this teacher.

In a 30 minute discussion, Mr. Anderson and I did exactly what the right arrow above states.  We went around in circles, backwards at times, but eventually found the tool that serves him best for his content area at this time.

After his experience during the day, Mr. Anderson introduced the tool to his Biology team.  Teachers learning and then teaching teachers!  It was a great learning experience.

View The Images From Class

Geogebra to Solidifying Mathematical Terms and Concepts

The Geogebra app provides a great experience for students to visually see how all concepts connect with one another. 

Google Hangouts Tutorial for Small Vet Inter School Collaboration

Freshmen Physical Education Creation Tools

Throughout the week, all freshmen students experienced learning opportunities pertaining to creation tools.  Civics and English 9 instructors wanted students to create or publish so we gave them tools to choose.

The tools for physical education were different.  See the presentation below.

PHS Autos - Building A Library of Skills

Students are starting to creating their video library of skills using images, video, and voice over.  Essentially, students are critically thinking about the steps to accomplish a task (in this case it was a brake job), creatively thinking about the content and how they want their video to be viewed, and sharing it to the world!

We really want students to choose the tool that they want to create with based on what they think their skills.

Here's the presentation of tools:



View some of the final products:

Student 1

Student 2

"Walking In Students' Shoes" Google Expedition & Virtual Reality

Some of our English students related a story in which the theme was empathy and "walking in another person's shoes" by experiencing life as a refuge.

Students were fascinated on the amount of challenges that refugee students experienced in their daily educational life.  Google Expeditions were a perfect tool for our students to experience "traveling" to another part of the globe without leaving Pulaski High School.

It was fantastic seeing high school students engaged and immersed into their educational environment.