Thoughts on the Matter

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...