Gaylene Young Professional Blog

Building Proficient Writers # Bookmarking101 Motivating my students to write can seem at times a really difficult task to accomplish.  I've started to use mixed ability groupings, and encourage them to all write within a shared document.  This approach enables my struggling writers to get the support they need from their peers really quickly.  I'm not sure if you find yourself in the same situation, but my reluctant writers tend to take in the words given from their friends more than they do from me.  My proficient writers also love being able to give that help and guidance. We've worked really hard this year on building that strong, supportive culture within our classroom.  Self-management is a key goal we strive to instill in all our students also.  Building Leaders comes as an added bonus! In our shared writing documents, you may find yourself in a situation where they have tonnes to write about, which leads to the students having to scroll through pages withi

Google Certified Educator Level 2 I went into the exam feeling fairly confident....I mean surely I can complete the tasks within 180 minutes right?  Well wrong - I spent a lot of time reading into the multiple choice and drag and drop questions.  Some answers seemed the same, so it's really easy to question your knowledge and understanding of different topics and scenarios. I think there was something like 12 scenarios where we had to use all the knowledge, skills and competencies we'd been studying about relating to the Google for Education tools e.g. youtube, spreadsheets, docs, new google sites, gmail, calendar, blogger, drive, hangouts, forms, google scholar and chrome extensions.  Time just started ticking away....I mean the last 10 minutes was absolutely intense and I knew I wasn't going to complete the exam...so had to race, pick and choose the tasks that i'd be able to complete the quickest. I can honestly say, that I would not have been able to com