ohhey[blog]

Thoughts from Home

My wife had our second daughter last week. I’ve been fortunate to be able to stay home with them this week and help out with the newborn and our tw... Read more

Columns and Colors

I’ve taken a big dive into test analysis lately. Spreadsheets, formulas, correlations, and color-coding have become the norm after an exam to help ... Read more

Language

The language I use around grading is very specific, especially when I’m speaking with students. “Your grade is based on how much you learn. You mus... Read more

Close Reading – Day 1

We’re working on our close-reading skills. Indiana has changed the standardized test format (again) and students will be doing very Common Core-lik... Read more

Newton’s Laws Posters

I don’t know what day of class this is, but here’s what we did today. We took a test a week ago that did not go well, to say the least. I already w... Read more

Cultures

I gave a test a week or so ago. When I scored the test the first time, I didn’t think I made my key correctly. So, I double checked it and re-score... Read more

An Easier Way to Get Plain Text

Our school is moving to more active use of Lexile scores for reading selections. The Lexile website has a nice analytic tool which allows you to up... Read more

My Robot Will Fight Your Robot

Spam on Twitter feels like an all-time high right now. Twitter itself is woefully horrible at taking reports of abuse and spamming and all a user c... Read more

Natural Consequences

This is the hardest part of teaching, if you ask me. What are the natural consequences of not completing a task in the given amount of time? It sta... Read more

An Experiment in Process

This post outlines a recent lesson and activity I designed for my integrated chemistry/physics students. Fair warning: science ahead. The Problem I... Read more

Make a Website for your Flash Drive

The Problem If you’ve ever been in a situation where substitute teachers can log onto the computer but not do much with the Internet other than tak... Read more

Getting the Axes Right in Google Sheets

I think I finally figured it out. Getting charts and graphs created in Google Sheets (or Excel for that matter) has always been somewhat of a wrest... Read more

Building Rigor

I missed two days of school last week. One day gone is enough added work on it’s own, two is nearly unthinkable. I wanted to make sure my students ... Read more

From Crappy to Okay

One of my goals this year is to help students struggle productively with ideas before I loop back to teach it. I don’t remember who said this first... Read more

Quickly Make Bulletin Board Words

Marc Seigel is always doing great things in his classroom and he tweeted out a great picture of a bulletin board that now lives at the front of his... Read more

More Scripts to Make Life Easier

It’s been an intense week of teaching, church band practice, and Google Apps Scripting. I’m really focusing this year on using the computer to do w... Read more

Updated Student Response Template

A while back, I wrote about a new Google Sheets response system I created for use in class. I suggest you go back and read that first if you haven’... Read more

QR Codes Everywhere

In my continuing effort to make things more available for students, I’ve started rearranging my Google Drive files. I’ve realized that thinking of ... Read more

Start of Year Notes

It seems appropriate to bookend my summer writing hiatus with some notes on the start of the year on August 6th. I’ve got a lot of things planned a... Read more

End of Year Notes

I just finished my fifth year teaching after an 18 month hiatus. I usually jot this stuff down in a notebook, but it’s full, and I haven’t replaced... Read more

In the Silence

In the silence, a shuffle is a landslide. Clicks and ticks shake the air. Furrowed brows rattle individual hairs. Teaching is a human invention, th... Read more

Thinking Smarter

I want to think smarter. I don’t want to know more facts or spout more trivia. I don’t want to just work smarter, either. I want to actually think ... Read more

Withholding Opportunities or Planning Accordingly?

11 days left. There’s a lot of review happening right now – we’ve finished our final chapter tests and looking ahead at a double-whammy final exam.... Read more

Trashketball

Review kills me. I struggle with finding a good balance between fun and actual, deep, review of ideas we’ve talked about during class. I also like ... Read more

Think Before You Periscope

Bill Fitzgerald is someone you should follow on Twitter if you need help interpreting Terms of Service or Privacy Policies. He pays real close atte... Read more

Google Sheets Student Response System

Part two of a post from the other day. First, head over to the master spreadsheet and make a copy. What Now? It's important to note that this works... Read more

How To Get Text Messages into Google Form Responses

Continuing on my data collection and analysis streak, I’ve got a little project to throw out into the wild and see what happens. Student response s... Read more

Data as Actionable Information

Continuing on my data-trends this week, I’ve realized (consciously, at least) that when quantitative data is shown to students, it’s a report of so... Read more

Using Confidence Data with Student Responses

I tried something new today with my students – I asked them to rate their confidence in their answers on a 1 (total guess) to 4 (definitely know I ... Read more

Notifying with SMS

I meant to grab a bag of stuff for school this morning on my way out the door. Turns out at 5:45 in the morning, you don’t remember to grab things ... Read more

If You Have It, Use It

I took the time the other day to show my students what exactly I look at when I’m grading tests. I use standards based grading, so I’m going way de... Read more

Making Endnotes from Footnotes

**Update 12.22.2016** Since this has become quite a popular script, I’ve converted it into a Google Docs Add On so it can be used across documents.... Read more

Transparency Matters

Some backstory. A month ago I wrote about Geddit going out of business this summer. I mentioned another response-system app, Kahoot!, which has exp... Read more

Denotification

I went about four months this year without a smartphone. I used an unlocked flip phone that barely made calls and didn’t have reliable text predict... Read more

The Talk

We had school on Good Friday this year because of snow day accruals, which means we had a ton of students out. I wanted to give one short assessmen... Read more

Get in touch

Comments are always open. You can get in touch by sending me an email at brian@ohheybrian.com