Thoughts on the Matter

Last year was my first year participating in the Hour of Code.  Prior to this I had no clue it even existed.  And honestly last year I had NO IDEA what I was doing.  I got the kids on the computer, pointed them at Code.org and off they went.  We sort of learned on the way, kids were doing some incredible stuff, and I saw how powerful the activities were. How far I have come in just a year.  Code.org is an "I'm Finished Activity" in my room.  I introduced it in the first few weeks of school.  I participated in Code training at the beginning of the summer and picked up a LOT of cool activities to do with my students. This year we started off Computer Science Education Week early.  I pulled one of the cool activities I did in my Code.org training and brought it to my students.  I had the students do graph paper coding.  The initial direction was to have students shade in 8 squares on their 4x4 graph paper and then write direction...

One of the elements I picked to work on for my growth plan is "Providing Feedback and Celebrating Progress".  When this element was celebrating success I picked it for my growth plan as well.  Mostly I want to provide my students with true, authentic, meaningful praise that encourages them to be lifetime learners.  I'm not there yet. I need to find a way that works for me and my students.  In the past celebratory cheers like roller coaster, fantastic (where you fake spray and wipe),  raise the roof, were some defaults.  But let's be honest they were hokey, I didn't buy into them and they didn't exactly work. I want the celebrations to be authentic and intrinsically motivating to my students.  I feel like the best thing I've got going right now is a high five.  Silly right?  When my students take benchmark assessments they scan their answers with the grade cam and their work is instantly graded.  I'm right there and can give them an i...

I feel blessed that I had the opportunity to try out Ozobot Evos thanks to #Tryazon. These little robots are AWESOME!  Their sensors will follow lines, and you can program them based on the patterns that you draw.  It is literally so easy my three year old can do it!  Of course when it comes to programming there is sometimes things you have to debug.  When the lines are too thin, or the corner is too sharp things don't work out the way you might have planned.  What an AWESOME learning opportunity. To be fair we already had the Ozobot Bit before we received these awesome Evos.  My boys LOVED the bit.  It was interactive, fun, allowed for discovery, all in all a GREAT product. Then along came the Evo into our lives.  AMAZING!  These are so cool.  So you have the same basic features of the Bit but then.... da da duh... it interacts via bluetooth with the Evo App.... whole new level of cool. So, while my personal children, mostly t...

About a year ago a friend posted something on Facebook about a project at the school where she taught.  A volunteer group called Project Makeover from the local university came to her school and over the course of a weekend they created some amazing learning spaces on their campus.  The thing that really struck me was the outdoor classroom.  I think this is where the idea for needing an outdoor classroom at my school came from. Then last summer at Edcamp Magic the idea grew.  I was crammed into a session, which I don't even remember what the topic was, but a teacher spoke very eloquently about the students' need to be outside.  How research shows improvement in test scores of students who spend some time outdoors.  Then while at the same Edcamp seeing some of their learning spaces, and having conversations with my colleagues I knew I had to somehow make it a reality. When school resumed I told a parent about my idea.  This parent is AMAZING by th...

I attended NEFEC's Science Instructional Materials Fair for K-5 educators, and my brain is just absolutely swimming.  In the process of watching these companies present their products, I might have jumped on to Amazon and purchased Matt Miller's Ditch That Textbook. I'll be getting that soon with my 2 day free shipping. As for these curriculum materials, WOW.  There is so much out there, and to pick the BEST one for the ENTIRE district... a daunting task.  Especially when I can only truly represent how I teach, and what I do, in my particular grade level. Currently in my classroom I don't teach from a textbook.  I have lots of GREAT resources available to me, usually too many.  I use Discovery Education's Techbook, and I like it well enough.  I don't use all the pieces and I treat it as a supplement to what the students are learning in my classroom.  But as I sit an process today's experience I am coming back to the idea of, "What if I didn't ha...

My students are awesome, yet sometimes difficult to teach.  It's sometimes hard to make the connections I want to make with my students during my instructional time.  I feel like I have to always be on, and have the students focused on their learning goals and objectives.  And well that just sucks the fun out sometimes. Last year I started inviting students in before school.  They'd "help" and come play with Rubik's cubes or robots.  I really enjoyed that down time with my kids.  I was able to appreciate them as people and not have to focus on making sure they were focused and on task.  I wanted to do something similar with this group of kids this year, but with a change in our start time, it just wasn't going to happen in the same way. Then something happened, something out of the ordinary, I assigned homework.  It wasn't hard homework, in fact we started it in class.  I was floored by the amount of students who flat out didn't do it....

A mashup between Pear Deck and Quizlet.. yup.  I am totally nerding out about this.  I was fortunate to get early access to Flashcard Factory and used it immediately with my students. and they LOVED it! So, our first go around wasn't without a few little hiccups.  Being so early in the school year we haven't really dug deep into content yet, and the vocabulary words I picked probably weren't best suited for this activity.  They students caught on quick though and were really able to pull out some creative ideas. Flash Forward to the end of the first quarter. My students are still in LOVE, and so am I.  They are eager for the opportunity to use Flashcard Factory and get excited at the thought. Some things I have changed up... 1. I don't always provide the definition, instead I ask the students to provide their definition when prompted for an example. This helps to see if students understand the word and can come up with the definition. ...

We were chosen by Tryazon to host a Orb Slime Time Party.  These products were so much fun! The kids absolutely loved the Hyper Slimer, and I think we'll be getting another one (or two) in the near future so we can have a proper slime war.   https://hyperslimer.com/   It works like a squirt gun, but with slimey awesomeness.  The clean up is pretty easy too. The biggest hit though was the Elasti Plasti.  https://elastiplasti.com/   This has provided lots of fun and creative play with the kids.  Whether it is a contest to see who can blow the biggest bubble or the sheer joy of the noises it creates when putting it back in the jar, it is a HIT! My favorite was the  Braini Putti . I found it very therapeutic.  I liked how  malleable it was.  I think this would be a great putti to have in the classroom.  It clean up easy, it snaps, bounces, melts, and is overall just cool.  I think my students would enjoy ...

For Teacher Appreciation Week one of my students gave the most amazing gift, a decorated rock. He was a little upset, since it got a little banged up on the way to school, so he told me he'd make me another.  This rock changed me. It was the inspiration I needed to be the change. In our area there is a lot of hiding rocks for people to find.  It's a random act of kindness, spread the joy, heart lifting type of movement.  There are groups for different areas sharing the rocks they have hidden or found.  I knew that one of the schools in our district had a big event creating and hiding rocks in Palatka and I just thought the concept was so stinking cool. So my classes decorated rocks.  Well they decorated rocks based on things they learned in science class this year.  Then they had to describe what the rock was, why they created it, and provide another detail about that topic.  We posted this to our Seesaw accounts.  This allowed student...

You may be aware of a new thing that seems to be sweeping the area (perhaps the world) decorated rocks. People are hiding decorated rocks for others to find and spread a little joy.  So some of my students have joined in.  Their task was to create a a rock that represents something they learned in science this year.  You can see the first of their creations in the photo below. And because I can't just leave it at that they have also included why they created the rock that they did, with a bit of an explanation. You can find those on my class blog  here.   I've hidden these rocks around my campus, hoping other students will find these treasures.  Hoping that if others find them they'll either keep them or hide them for others to find.

This week the solar system projects started rolling in.  This is a project that I have a love/hate relationship with.  The students for the most part genuinely look forward to doing it.  I have tried to kill it, but I just can't seem to let it go. As the student proudly parade in with these projects I think hard as to why am I making them do this?  What is the value?  Despite the fact that every student is doing the exact same project, the same requirements, the outcomes are completely varied.   Here are some samples of my students' awesome projects.  I am so very proud of all the hard work they put in.

Last year Edcamp St. Aug was my first Edcamp.  It changed my life, no really it did.  I went in extremely unsure of myself, not knowing what to expect, I was with my principal, and I knew no one else.  I was completely out of my comfort zone.  Best. Day. Ever.  The atmosphere was inspiring.  The student led tour of the absolutely AMAZING Palencia Elementary School was jaw dropping.  The stuff they do at this school; gardens, recycling, weather station, solar panels, nighttime ice making for daytime cooling purposes…. WOW! Above the physical atmosphere, the people, oh man the people.  So crazy teachers, principals, coaches that give up part of their Saturday to learn and share with others, these people are who I want to align myself with.  These are the people that are going to change the world. I want to be one of those people. I don’t exactly remember all the sessions I went to.  I walked away with more information that I could ...

Building background knowledge is hugely important in making connections.  Students come from a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences and need some common experiences to draw from.  While force and motion are very easy to relate to real world situations, I feel that it also important to throw a little relevance and fun into the learning equation. Enter marbles ..... Discovery Education had a really great article that discussed how marbles and force were connected.  The diagrams were great, and encouraged students to play and get that hands on experience.  We created a marble circle in our room and I printed out instructions , so students would have some rules to go by.  The marble circle was on the small side and the students encountered some glitches with the prescribed rules and tweaked them to meet their needs.  All in all, marbles were a success.  Students were able to effectively communicate what they were learning as they were playing t...

I was pretty excited today.  I've been thinking up ways to include my Dash and Dot robots into the curriculum, and today it became a reality. We're learning about force and motion. The particular standard we are working on is SC. 5.P.13.2  Investigate and describe that the greater the force applied to it, the greater the change in motion of a given object. We used Blockly to create a very simple code to send Dash 100 cm.  We attached the bulldozer bar to Dash and placed a small plastic golf ball in front of him.  At first we set him to normal speed, and recorded how far the ball rolled after he stopped.  We repeated this a few times to make sure our data was reliable.   Once we had some information, students hypothesized what would happen to the ball if we changed Dash's speed.  We slowed him down to "very slow".  After students saw the results we changed Dash's speed to "very fast". Students were able to draw some conclusions a...

I attended a workshop on Personalized Learning at FETC, and although I am not prepared to make that jump I think that  blended learning is more my speed.  I am working hard to incorporate the 4 C's in to my classroom (critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity).  As part of this I have really embraced the idea of teaching with centers rather than whole group instruction.  This changes my role from the "sage on the stage" to the "guide on the side".  I'm okay with this.  Students need to be responsible for their own learning. I am not fully prepared to give up on whole group entirely.  I think students need that whole group experience to hear a common message.  To set the stage for the learning I like to use interactive presentations such as Pear Deck.  This allows for me to have some formative assessment, and make decisions. This is the run down of day one of my science stations for Force and Motion.  It was a li...

After two successful Donor's Choose Projects I decided to try again.  This time I was seeking some cool new STEM items.  See the full project  here.     Students working with the Little Bits kit.  Putting the pieces in different order, and seeing the result.  It's great to see students problem solve and be creative. Students working with the Makey-Makey.  After they put it together they tried it out playing a simple video game.  Understanding closed circuits and conductive materials in an entirely cool way.

In my early years of teaching I always had special chairs.  I'd bring in yoga balls, give up my teacher chair, and nab any different seat I could.  Students would be rewarded with a special chair for reaching specific criteria.  Well as the years went on, I stopped.  I can't pin point the reason, but these special chairs faded out of existence.  This year I've brought them back in full force.  They aren't a reward like they were in the past, more of a rotating seating option.  I teach three classes, so we had to come up with a way for it to be fair for everyone.  Students are assigned a computer number and so I created a clip chart with the different options and the clips move down a spot each day.  One of the options is a wobble stool.  Students both love and hate this stool, as do I.  I know in my heart of hearts that its a great way for students to release some energy and get the wiggles out.  However, when there ar...