Below is one of my favorite motivational speeches. Well, it's not technically a speech, but it motivates me. Whenever I'm feeling disappointed with the work or activities I'm creating for my students, I take a second to listen to Ira. I used to apply his words solely to my musical endeavors. (Along with teaching, I'm a singer song writer. And even before my first album was released, I wasn't that excited about it.) I didn't really understand why I was so disappointed until years later when I saw this video. It all made sense.  
  Every time I watch it since then, it encourages me in a new aspect of my life. Today, I stumbled back upon it, and was suddenly taken back to my first few years of teaching. You know, those years when you want things to be so good, but they're just not. What a challenge teachers have. We have to teach while we're still learning HOW to teach!
  If you're new to teaching, or just need a little motivational pep talk that you're on the right track, check it out.

​I've even played this for my students to address their writing skills. Good stuff.

  If you've never used www.classtools.net , I highly recommend it. The interface is sometimes a little tricky, but it has some great content to take your classes to a higher engagement level. 
  I was happy to notice that the homepage has recently had a little makeover making some of their awesome games and classroom additions easier to spot and use. They have tons of free stuff, and of course a premium option that takes out the ads.

Here are my two favorite tools:
- The Arcade Game Generator
  (Plug in your vocabulary terms or information, and students get to choose from several games to play using your material. Manic Miner is a favorite. Who wouldn't want to try and get The Key, so you can jump down The Toilet?? It's also kind of fun because it's novel for students to play games that are somewhat old school. They love it.)

- Random Name Picker
  (I've used this before for picking names, yes, but also for different challenges and games throughout the year. Specifically, we've had a Figurative Language Death Battle the last few years. We used this wheel to house our different types of figurative language. Students spun the "Wheel of Death" for their figurative language challenge. I can tell you more about that later!

  They have other popular tools like Fakebook, crossword generators, a PacMan test creator, an audience soundboard, a movie text scroller, timers, and little additions that can really make your lessons pop. The only downside is that you can't use some of these tools on iPads (because of flash), but it's great for Chromebooks and computers. So if you've never used it, take a little scroll around and let me know what you find!

Megan Gordon
​7th Grade ELAR

*All photos from www.classtools.net 
This blog post is the genuine opinion of the author.