Who am I?

Sarah Allred is the Instructional Lead Teacher at Braxton Craven School, an all 6th grade middle school. She has 15 years of teaching experience at the middle school level. Her educational background includes a Bachelor of Science degree in Elementary Education earned at the University of NC Greensboro, National Board Certification in Early Adolescent English Language Arts, and a Master of Arts in Education in Instructional Technology earned at East Carolina University. She has taught language arts, social studies, science, and technology. She serves her school in many leadership roles. Her passion is searching for new ways to use technology to improve student learning. Additional roles she fills are mother of two amazing kids, and wife of a police officer. She enjoys reading, gardening, and digital photography.



Monday, July 18, 2011

Common Core Quick Reference Chart ELA Gr6

With the transition to Common Core State Standards coming up in the near future, I have been doing some serious study of the standards for my grade level and subject area. As I read over the English Language Arts Grade 6 Standards, I decided to reformat the standards as a chart.  I just like charts because they help me to comprehend information.  I think I ended up with what will be a helpful tool as a result.  In case you are interested, click on the link here for the pdf: Common Core State Standards English Language Arts Grade 6 Quick Reference Chart 

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Digital Art Portfolio

Ever since my first child began preschool, I have Loved it when my kids brought home school work and all those cute art projects! The hand print art, strings of colored macaroni, and multitude of drawings. These are treasures to a mom and dad, but unfortunately as time passes these treasures look worse for the wear. Besides that, there are SO many of them I want to keep them all. How could I throw our something my sweet babies made? At some point a problemem arises. What do you do with all this stuff?? Add to the fact that I am hesitant to throw things out, my daughter is showing frightening signs of wanting to be a hoarder (kidding . . . A little). How can I save all these great memories without being buried by all the paper?
Technology to the rescue! This afternoon, my daughter (10 yrs old) photographed each of her artistic masterpieces she had created so far this summer, and then I taught her how to upload the pics to a cloud storage tool. Finally I helped her set up a LiveBinder (www.live binders.com) where she could organize, name and save all her creations. She was so excited that she could then share the binder with Grandparents and friends, or even do a formal presentation from our computer screen! Great way to save her creations AND clear out the paper clutter!
We still have lots of art my son created in preschool this past year. Tomorrow I think we will try photographing with my smartphone so we can upload straight to Dropbox with one less step. I will share a link to my LiveBinder once we get it in presentation condition.

(As a side note in respect to my quest to find an ePortfolio tool to use in my classroom this year . . . I think this may be it!)

Thursday, July 14, 2011

The Scenic Route

I have gotten VERY sidetracked in my journey to find a way to implement ePortfolios in my classroom.  I have to say, although I haven't made it to my destination yet, the scenic route has been quite a treat.  I have found all sorts of great new tech tools to use in my classroom and in my personal professional learning.  I have grown to absolutely LOVE LiveBinders.  I have been working on binders for 3 topic which I am studying in preparation for the upcoming school year.  Feel free to check these out, and share resources/tools I could add to them.  Check them out if you are interested!


ePortfolios 








Common Core State Standards









Data Walls