Alien Descriptions

This lesson was a big hit with the kids. I have the formal lesson plan here.

First we did the interactive Promethean flipboard

Then the students worked in small groups to create group aliens and write a descriptive paragraphs about them.




We posted the pictures and paragraphs on the wall.  Students then tried to match the paragraph to the picture it described.

Finally we made a voice thread with the pictures and paragraphs.

Finally they made a voice thread and read their descriptions into the thread. There was a glitch on 3 of them that we will fix on Monday.

https://voicethread.com/book.swf?b=2662022

Stop SOPA

Random Thoughts Private and Public

Monday,  I went to the gym. I was on the treadmill, reading Public Parts by Jeff Jarvis. In the back of my mind, I was also thinking about what photograph I would take for my 365 day photograph project.  This passage struck me -

In the discussion, a man in the crowd said he didn’t like seeing his picture included in crowd shots that other people in the room were posting to the net. That man said he hadn’t given permission. If he got his way, I said, everyone else in the room would be prevented from taking and sharing pictures of the event. Would his prohibition next extend to what people said and heard and wanted to share? That impinges on the free-speech rights of everyone else. The ability of people outside the room to follow what was happening there—and comment on it, challenging me, adding ideas and information—would also be restricted. The public record of the event would be limited. The publicness of this event was an asset, and if that man succeeded in preventing others from sharing what happened there he would have robbed us all.
Jarvis, Jeff (2011-09-27). Public Parts (p. 29). Simon & Schuster, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

I was thinking that a picture of the Kindle on the book stand of the treadmill would have been a great picture for the 365 project. Except of course you can’t take pictures of anything in the gym. I ended up making this at home.

Later in the week my students discovered ladybugs in the clover around the track. I got some great pictures of them admiring the ladybugs.  I’m going to have them write a blog post for their blog next week.  As I was taking pictures, I made a point of getting pictures of  the kids but also pictures of just their hands with the lady bugs. There were a couple of kids from other 2nd graders in the group. My kids have permission to blog, the other classes aren’t blogging.

That made me think of several debates on posting kids pictures I’ve watched on a couple of different communities. The issue is always Internet Parent takes pictures of  his/her kids, but some other child is in the picture. The parent of the extra child throws an ever loving fit about how now their child is in danger from the boogie man.  It has always struck me as strange. I’m always taking pictures at events for my niece and nephew.  Every one of the  parents asks me – “You are posting those to Facebook right, I would love copies.” In a couple of cases they had NO idea who I was – they asked which child was mind. I explained, after they asked me to post the pictures, that I was Aunt Kimbee. The parents of my niece and nephew’s friends, friend me to get the photographs.

We are getting to the point where posting on line is the norm, and not doing it is unusual.

First Day Back

I had one student withdraw over the break. The other 15 were here with bells on.  I changed the way we did math.  Rather than have the students on the carpet. They are staying at their desks. The reason was I had some cool ideas and kept running into – but that is going to be hard/impossible to do on the carpet.  With the students at their desks, they can work together and have a surface for their manipulatives and to write/solve problems.

I think this will keep them more engaged in the activities. Also I can walk around an see what they are doing. They enjoy writing on their desks with dry erase markers.

Voicethread and iPads

Tried Voicethread for the first time with my 2nd graders this week. Monday I could only get one iPad at a time to log in and be able to comment. It was frustrating. I emailed Voicethread’s support. They confirmed that I should be able to have more than one iPad logged in at a time. They suggested it might be a Bandwidth issue on my side.

I am on a dedicated iPad wireless network at school and I’m the only one really using iPads this way on my campus. Tuesday everything worked fine.

I set up identities for each student. Next week they are going to make their own icons to use on the service. Each child is going to get a 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper. They will decorate it with their character traits using words or illustrations. They will be unique. Since theses are second graders I want to be careful with their pictures.

Next challenge – having the kids use the iPads to blog.

Replacing Centers with Menus

Image via Wikipedia

In order to differentiate more, I’m replacing centers in my classroom with menus of activities. I’m using the series Differentiating Instruction with Menus by Laurie E. Westphal to create the menus. I also found the wiki Dare to Differentiate to be very helpful.

The Good

• I’m tapping into the different strengths of my students
• I’m getting good thoughtful projects from most of my students

The Bad

• Accountability for 2nd graders. I had one boy do very little last week. A 2nd boy threw away all his projects when we cleaned out our desks on Friday. We were able to rescue them.
• The pull of the tech. I include both  tech and low tech projects. The Tech ones are still new and shiny and the kids gravitate to them even when a low tech project would be a better fit. I’m also getting some nonsense projects because they want to play with the tech.

The solutions

• Meet more frequently with the kids. Daily check ins with the kids who are having trouble with focus.
• Take up projects more frequently.
• Students must submit a plan for tech projects before they get to touch the tech. Then a schedule is set up for the next day. Child A and B have use of the Ipad 2 from Time to time. Then they must give the Ipad 2 to Child C and D.
• Teaching the kids to video themselves using the front camera.
• Using the Original Ipads for gathering information. I have to see if the mobile part of Discovery Streaming allows student user names and passwords to be used yet. (Saving the clips on the Ipad doesn’t always work – often there is a problem with the volume on the clip being very low even when the volume on the Ipad is turned up.

If you would like to see some of the menus from last week or this week check the links below

Place Value

Fiction Books

Patricia Polacco

When a book is cool but not read

Can you imagine reading only professional books, only poetry, or only the books on the Oprah table? I can’t either. But what about limiting kids to only one level and/or type of text day after day? That’s hard to imagine, too. I worry when we methodically move children through book after book, level after level, all to achieve some target number that labels them-and us-proficient. I worry about their engagement and enthusiasm for reading and learning, I worry about their concluding that reading fast is reading well, and I worry about losing the Adams, the Carolines, the Devons, and the Nicoles…

From Reading With Meaning by Debbie Miller

The problem I’m having is that my students want to check out 5th grade books for the cool factor. When I talk to them about the books it is obvious they have not read them. These are 2nd graders, wanting books that have had recent movies made from the material – or at least using the same name. I’m looking for ideas to solve this problem and encourage the kids to read rather than walk around with the book as an accessory.

Very busy

Stared my first year as a 2nd grade teacher. It has been busy. I hope to get back to posting 5 times a week.

Exhausted

I’m going to bed soon. Had a good day. Got up on time. Got to the gym and worked out. At work I got in a solid two hours before the tech requests came in. I was able to fix a few not all. The new printers aren’t working.

Tried to help our music teacher with Vbrick. We were able to figure out that the connectors from the computer to the switch weren’t plugged in. She was going to call the district person in charge, I didn’t get to ask her if they figured it out before we left.

Meet the teacher seemed to go well. We couldn’t post the homerooms like we have done in previous years. The front office people and paraprofessionals manned tables and handed out homeroom information. 10 of my 17 kids came in. They seem like a good group of kids. I’m looking forward to Monday. I hope to get all my lesson plans done tomorrow before I go to the gym, and then spend the rest of the weekend relaxing.

Heart of a Hero

Each year our principal has a theme. This year it is the Heart of a Hero.  Our first hero is the school secertary, who put in 10 work orders but finally got the school AC working.. They reorded things a bit in light of the AC problem. We were put into mixed grade groups to do a treasure hunt – that got us out of the hot building. Being the Techie person I made an Animoto movie rather than mess with powerpoint. I did it on my Ipad, so I can’t embed the movie. So I’ll link to it. When we got back there was cool air. Relief!

During the day many people were using various tech for the projects. I must have shown a 6 – 7 people how to connect their Ipads and laptops to the guest network. There was certain frustration with the “rules” about guest network. Namely the having to sign on repeatedly and the time limit. I was getting a little frustrated with the “that is a pain” and “it connects automatically at home” comments. Then  I pointed out that if every teacher and student who has a phone that connects with the wifi automatically connected every time we entered the buildings and stayed connected the whole time it would put a huge strain on systems and slow things down. That everyone understood.

We went over the usual procedural type things. Then to finish the day on a high note we had a team building activity. Each grade level team picked a super hero and created a costume for a team member to wear in that theme. This was the results.