Skyward individualization and Reserve Teacher Plans

Skyward has some great options that have recently been updated. Here is a video on personalizing your skyward gradebook. You will notice that Skyward has many other helpful tutorial videos on this page.

Student Indicators help us understand the needs of our students. Wish you could remember what each letter or color indicator is? This document explains the student indicators in Skyward. You may want to add this to your drive or google keep for further reference.

One of the most important changes for classroom teachers is that you will be able to see a list of your gifted/talented students along with other important student information.

Last week Cassie’s tech tip was about best practices for sharing lesson plans with a reserve teacher. Many teachers are currently using an online plan book, such as planbook.com. Please make sure you share the link either by email or within Aesop (Frontline).  If you are using a reserve teacher folder the following video is for you!

Here is a tutorial that shows you how to add your plans to the reserve folder.

Here is a tutorial that shows a reserve teacher how to access the reserve folder. Feel free to leave this link on Aesop (Frontline).

Important information about what you leave in your reserve folder and what to not leave in your reserve folder.

Do leave:
Daily Schedule
Class Roster
Today’s Plans
Important links

Do not leave:
Student IEP, 504 information- This is available to reserve teachers for the day on Skyward
Student PIN numbers
Student Passwords
Your password (Don't leave your username and password for a Reserve Teacher!  They have their own sign in information.)

If you have included any of the above please delete from your reserve teacher folder immediately. This is also a great opportunity to check your reserve folder.

If you have any questions please ask your DLS.

Best Practices for Sharing Lesson Plans with Reserve Teachers + Book Creator

The Do's and Don'ts of Sharing Lesson Plans and Other Resources with Reserve Teachers

DON'T...

• Share your computer, Google, or Skyward login information with reserve teachers. This puts your information and your students' information at great risk. Depending on what passwords your computer might remember or passwords that are the same across platforms, a reserve teacher could access your bank account information, student data, your social media accounts, etc.
• ALL reserve teaching staff have computer and Google logins of their own. Building secretaries assign 

DO...

• Share or leave a link to your lesson plan. 
• PlanbookEdu is a great platform for keeping your lesson plans. You can share your lesson plans with colleagues or reserve teachers. 
• Click here for a 60 second overview.
• bit.ly is a great way to leave a link to a long URL, like a Google document. Using bit.ly you can shorten a long URL and even customize it. 
• Click here for resources to get started.
• Use the reserve teacher folder. 
• The reserve teacher folder is shared with teaching staff and reserve teachers in Google Drive. Within the reserve teacher folder there are folders for each school and within the folders for each school there are folders for each teacher. If you don't see a folder for yourself within your school you can create one. Your DLS or building secretary can help you with this if needed. Reserve teachers that attended the reserve teacher training have been taught how to access this folder.  
• Designate a classroom technology helper to assist the reserve teacher if needed.
• Share your lesson plans with a colleague or your building secretary as a back up plan.
• Communicate your expectations for lessons directly with students through your classroom management platform (i.e. Google Classroom) when appropriate.

Book Creator

Book Creator is a flexible tool that allows students of any age to create, publish, and share digital books.

When a book is published, the pages turn like a real book with audio and video playing right inside the app. In addition to a student creation tool, this tool would be wonderful for teachers to use as an instructional tool.