How to Merge Two PDF Files on a Mac

Hi everyone! One of the teachers I work with needed help merging a landscape PDF file with a portrait landscape file. She wanted one PDF file but not every page going in the same direction. 

To help her out (and maybe some others), I made a quick video showing how I merge two files together.

Hope this is helpful!

100 Days of School

This week, we celebrated the 100th day of school. Since I have a resource room, I don't have a lot of time to do extra things due to my crazy schedule. But I am so glad I made time to do this super fun activity with my students.

We started off discussing what we will look like and act like when we are 100 years old. I took pictures of my students and used the app Aging Booth to "time travel" to our picture when we were 100 years old.

My kids were laughing so hard at these pictures.

We talked about what our lives would be like when we were 100 years old and what kind of person we thought we would be. Fall Into First has a great writing activity that we did. I gave my students the same writing template to help them make grammatically correct sentences (a huge project in my room).

This is probably my favorite bulletin board of the whole year.

We've been working really hard on reading what we write and fluency. To help tie this project into this two objectives, I used another app on Day 2 called ChatterPix.

With ChatterPix, you can upload any photo and record voice to it. By drawing a simple line on the photo, you make a "mouth" that speaks your recording.

On ChatterPix, you can only record 30 seconds of video. This was super great for me, because my students need to practice their fluency. We did a practice run reading our writing while I timed with my stopwatch timer on my phone. I wouldn't let students attempt recording until they could read their writing in less than 30 seconds. 

Here's one of my favorite videos that totally cracked me up!

After we made our videos, we uploaded them to our online portfolios at SeeSaw.

My parents always leave the sweetest comments to our SeeSaw uploads.

This 100 Day of School activity will be a favorite every year now! It was totally worth the effort, and we have laughed so much the last two days.

Using QR Codes to help review!

Before winter break started, my 3rd grade intervention students were finishing up a division unit.  I wanted them to have an opportunity to review all that we have learned and a chance for me to informally assess them.  I've seen several posts in blog land and products on TpT using QR codes and thought I would give them a try.  

As we've upgraded our iPhones, we've kept all the old ones, and my kids use them to play games.  Essentially, an old iPhone becomes an iPod once you take away the phone service.  You can still download apps to it using either wifi or plugging it into your computer.  This is an easy way to get some technology for your classroom without spending money, especially if you're upgrading anyway.

I made these Winter Division QR Task Cards for my students' review.  

I paired my kids up and divided my task cards up between them all.  They each got an iPod and recording sheets.  They solved the task card problem, recorded their answer, and then scanned to see if their answer was correct.

My favorite part was that they were super engaged!  And they worked together so well.  This was super easy for them to figure out.  I had to do some reminding that you record your answer FIRST and then checked your answer, but that was minor redirecting.

Once students check their answer, they put a check mark in the snowball if the answer was correct.  This was a really great way to review the different division skills and for me to see which students were still struggling.

I love seeing my students working so diligently!

Since this was such a big success, I think I'll be using them again.  Have you ever used them in your classroom?  If not (and you have the technology), you should!  It was super easy.