3-D Communities

 The students in my 2nd grade social studies class have been working on the geography of our community and maps. As a culminating activity, students took on the role of community planners and developed their own communities. Before we started the building, we had to do a lot of planning. (Thank you Hippo Hooray for 2nd Grade for the awesome idea and the community planning sheet freebie) We started out reviewing rural, suburban, and urban communities and what characteristics make them what they are. Then we made a list of important features of every community such as police station, fire station, hospital/doctor's office, school, grocery store, etc. Finally, once we finished our classroom community brainstorming, students completed their community planning sheet. This sheet gave them an outline to go by as they were constructing their communities and it was a nice formative assessment for me to evaluate if students completely understood the ideas we had learned.

Once the planning phase was complete, it was time to construct. This was an in class project; however, I did send a note to parents explaining the project and that their child may need to bring in some supplies from home to build their community. I let students be creative with their constructions and allowed their likes and personalities to come out in their projects. I did not limit their communities to humans only as inhabitants of the communities, which you can see in some of the photos taken. (The first photo is of a community named Taco Kitty Town. Community members include cats and mice.)

Overall, we had a lot of fun with this project and got to show off our community planning skills and knowledge. The students were so excited to take their projects home and show them off.


Ice Cream Town




Trapper Town- Community members live in
log cabins and trap and hunt for a living.

Gummy Bear Science

It has been a very long time since I have posted on our class blog. Apparently I need to work on my personal goal of posting at least once a week. This is a great way to share your child's day with you and the students love showing off the work they have done at school. 

In our class, we are science lovers. We love the inquiry and exploration involved with science. We love the hands-on aspect too! We recently finished one of my favorite science units...Matter!!! There are so many activities and experiments we do to explore the states of matter. One of those experiments is our gummy bear experiment. This experiment also involved learning about physical characteristics, mixtures, and solutions. 

Before I introduce the gummy bear experiment, we learn about physical characteristics I like to start off by passing out a gummy bear to every student and creating an anchor chart describing the physical characteristics of gummy bears. Of course at the end we have to explore how they taste. (our favorite part) After describing the physical characteristics, we discuss mixtures and solutions. Then I introduce our experiment. We worked in groups of 4 for this experiment (I try to work in groups whenever possible).  Each group received 4 clear cups filled half way with: vinegar, water, water and salt, water and baking soda. I labeled these cups with the contents and the group number. Each group also received 4 gummy bears (one for each student). Each student in the group was responsible for dropping their gummy bear in one of the cups. Before we dropped our gummy bears into the cups; however, we had to make our scientific predictions...our hypothesis,,, in our science journals. Most of us thought that the gummy bears would be mushy or dissolve in the liquids. Then on the count of three we dropped our gummy bears in the cups in our group. We observed for a couple of minutes and wrote any observations we had in our science journals. 

The next day we checked on our experiment. What we found was incredible. The gummy bears had expanded! We found that the gummy bears in the vinegar and the water cups expanded the most; however, the gummy bears in the water and salt cup and the water and baking soda cup did not expand as much. We wrote our observations down in our science journals. We took some photos of the gummy bears after our experiment. 

 

Gummy bear in vinegar vs. a regular gummy bear

Gummy bear in water vs. a regular gummy bear

                               Gummy bear in water with baking soda vs. a regular gummy bear

Gummy bear in water with salt vs. a regular gummy bear

                                                All of the gummy bears in our experiment:
                                               our control (regular) gummy bear, salt gummy bear,
                                               baking soda gummy bear, vinegar gummy bear, and
                                               water gummy bear.

Let's Talk About Math

Common Core Math...yes, I said those words. I LOVE the Common Core Math Standards and how these standards have helped to create the independently thinking, problem solving, challenge craving 1st graders I have had the pleasure of teaching this year. These students are thinking about and solving problems I could have only daydreamed about a couple years ago, during my prep time, over a cup of coffee with way too much sugar and flavored creamer in it. I am excited to see these young, brilliant minds grow up and the paths their lives will take because they are able to think for themselves, apply their knowledge, and explain their thinking.

Our math block in 1st grade is quite extensive. There are many parts to it and it is very routined. Our daily  math block includes: Macarena Math, counting up/backwards, math facts practice, math journals, lesson/game/activity, guided and independent practice, and interventions. This does not include our daily calendar math and math power standards.

One goal I had for this school year was to get my students to hold meaningful conversations with their peers explaining how they had solved a math problem. After getting my feet wet in the new world of 1st grade, I decided to post math conversation sparkers in our classroom. These would be sentence starters that I would introduce individually, post on a sentence strip in the front of the classroom, then model and practice to 1st grade perfection before introducing another sparker. I was pleasantly impressed with how my students adopted these sparkers into their math conversations. Of course I was constantly monitoring student partnerships to ensure correct use and understandings of the sparkers and math concepts. If I heard a student struggling, I would first leave it up to the partner to help him or her. If more help was needed, the partner didn't help the struggling student, or the partner didn't know how to help then I would step in and model the process. My favorite and the most challenging math sparker was the last one I introduced, "My answer is reasonable because...". I had to make sure students fully understood this sparker and why I had introduced it before letting students try it in partnerships. But, this sparker was very important in student understanding of math concepts. When students could evaluate whether or not their answers were reasonable, I knew we had it (and we may have done a celebratory dance). 

We held math conversations throughout our school day whenever I saw the opportunity; however, we used it daily during the math journal portion of our math block. Our math journal routine includes the following: I read the word problem to the class, we read the word problem chorally circling important numbers and underlining key words, we act out the problem if it can be acted out (I felt this was super important to my hands-on, kinesthetic learners), solve the problem independently by drawing a picture and posing a number sentence, meet with math partner (students are strategically placed in partnerships) for their math conversation, edit/enhance their drawing and/or number sentence, and finally solve the problem as a class with students editing their journals if needed. During this process my job is merely acting as a facilitator. I try to let the students take control and use the problem solving strategies they know, even if they have the incorrect answer. I do this because I want the other student in the partnership to use their explanations and understanding of math concepts to try to help their peers, I want students to know that it's ok to make mistakes, I don't want math to be about getting the correct answer 100% of the time with students getting frustrated with math, and because we do go over the answer at the end with possible problem solving strategies, so students will see how to solve the problem. I love letting students take the driver's seat and they do too. It makes learning so much more engaging and fun! Yes, MATH IS FUN and students can think so too. It's a beautiful thing!

All of the math conversation sparkers on display at the front of the classroom
as a reminder to students. 

Anemometers-Our Lesson on Being a Scientist

 I bet you didn't know that not only are we 1st graders and superheroes (our classroom theme this year), but we are also SCIENTISTS!!! Yes, scientists! Through our science lessons and experiments we discuss good scientist behavior and what a scientist would do in a certain situation. Recently, we got to put a white lab coat over our superhero capes and make anemometers. In our weather unit we discussed different tools that scientists might use to measure wind, precipitation, etc. I thought making anemometers would be a great way to showcase our knowledge.

We started out the unit by taking a field trip to our playground. We just stood and observed our surroundings quietly. Then I asked my students how they knew the wind was blowing. We had lots of answers like the tree branches are moving, the flag is blowing around, and Mrs. O'Bryant's hair looked completely crazy from blowing in her face. (Nice). Next, we read an informational passage about wind, harmful wind, helpful wind, and a tool called an anemometer that helps measure wind. Then we looked at different examples of real anemometers. Next, we discussed how we might be able to make an anemometer by substituting household items, like styrofoam cups, for parts on a real anemometer. The next day I had a pile of household items waiting for the students. In the pile were straws, paper cups, styrofoam cups, paper plates of different sizes, pencils, tape, aluminum foil, clay, push pins (I kept these and students could come to me if they needed one. I would put the push pin in the location the students desired.). We started off the science block by discussing the different parts of an anemometer and what an anemometer must be able to do to measure the wind effectively (the anemometer must spin). I told the students that they had some time to discuss in their groups how they could use only these items I had set out to make an anemometer. This allowed the students who were a little apprehensive about the project to get an idea they could use. When all discussions were done, I told the students they were going to develop their own anemometers and gave the students a sheet of paper. On this paper, they drew out the steps and materials they would need to build their anemometer.

The next day students were given time to use their step-by-step plans to actually construct their anemometers. Eventually, we did discuss how some experiments don't always work out for scientists, but they never give up, as frustration set in for some. However, we got back on our feet and continued our work. We came up with some pretty cool creations all by ourselves. My role on this day was to hand out and put in any push pins needed as well as moral support. I really tried to step back and let the students take the lead. They were even helping each other out with ideas.

One problem we ran into were the straws we had to use were bendy straws. We needed nice stiff straws (I looked all over the town of Rogers City and could not find any non-bendy straws. Yes, I could have asked a local restaurant to donate, but I thought this was an opportunity to put our problem solving skills to work. Unfortunately, I didn't think ahead the previous weekend when I was in a larger town that would have had non-bendy straws.) We problem solved and used tape to reinforce the bendy part of the straws. Some of us decided to forgo the straws altogether and use pencils.

After our creations were built, we had to take them outside and try them out. We waited for a nice weather day and went outside. Unfortunately, the wind was REALLY blowing this day and some of
our light weight anemometers were blown to pieces. However, some students were able to problem solve and try to make it work. We did have several anemometers spin in the wind. SUCCESS! However, we did have a few unhappy scientists who did not have as successful of an experiment. I asked the students if they thought the person who invented the anemometer made it perfectly the first time. This led us into the discussion and the lesson that scientists (and superheroes) never give up. Back in the classroom we wrote in our science journal discussing what worked, what didn't work, why do we think it didn't work, and knowing what we do now, what would we do next time if we were to make another anemometer. GREAT LESSONS AND A LOT OF FUN!

 These were some of our successful creations!

(This also led into writing our How-To paper for Author's Creations)

MACUL

After attending the MACUL conference last week in Detroit, I had a chance today to sit down and process all of the incredible information and ideas that I want to implement in my classroom. This conference made me aware of all of the wonderful things going on in other classrooms and school districts and the potential my own classroom has. The collaboration that I was lucky to be part of at this conference was second to none. Everyone was so kind and helpful. I walked away from this conference with this new class blog already set up and a new member of Twitter. (I always wanted to tweet!) I connected with several inspiring people from the conference on Twitter. Please follow me on Twitter to get daily updates on our classroom and other educational thoughts.

With all of this new and inspirational knowledge, I am starting with Class Dojo tomorrow. This an amazing classroom management tool. You can download it as a free app from the App Store, but can also be accessed through the website www.classdojo.com. You create your class in this program and then students can choose an avatar. Throughout the day, you can award positive points for good behavior and following expectations and you can take away points for not making good choices. The teacher can invite parents so they can track their child throughout the school day. There is also a messaging feature in which teachers can message parents and parents can message the teacher. There is a letter you can print from the website to send home to parents explaining the program and how to be added to their child's class. I have my class set up on Class Dojo and will be inviting parents starting tomorrow. It seems pretty late in the year to start a new classroom management program; however, I am really excited about this and want to do a test run for the rest of this school year to see if it is something I will want to do for next school year. We already do have a positive behavior management system in my classroom tied to our superhero theme this year. I will also tie in the points from Dojo to our current system.

I also learned about some great formative assessment tools from the conference that will make assessing more fun for the teacher and the student,  it will make it much easier to assess students, I will get valuable data from it to drive my instruction, and I get to use technology. What is not to love, right? We do not have 1:1 technology at our school; however, I have access to some awesome pieces of technology like 8 iPads, 2 iMacs, a classroom set of Chrome Notebooks that I share with another teacher, and a classroom set of laptops that are on a cart and shared school wide. So, I think I can make this work. Plickers is a formative assessment tool that does not require 1:1 technology. I plan on using this a lot in the future. Some other great formative assessment tools I learned about and plan to look into include Socrative, Near Pod, and Pear Deck. Totally worth looking into. The last tool that I plan on using a lot more in my classroom is Kahoot. I have used this a few times in the past as a formative assessment with my students, but I would like to use it a lot more. It is such a fun program and the kids won't even know they are being assessed. It almost seems like a game.

During our closing keynote speakers, 2 Guys and an iPad, (check out their podcast) at the end of the conference, we were asked to get out our devices and tweet as much as possible during the presentation. My first thought was, "What?! Shouldn't we be paying attention and hanging on your every word rather than playing around on social media?" (This was totally the teacher in me coming out.) But, quickly I learned the value in this. I started tweeting the most important quotes and ideas to me from the presentation. Quickly I saw that I was actively engaged and actively listening to the presentation while I was tweeting. I also had a summary of the presentation on my Twitter wall when the presentation was over and some great, inspirational quotes to return to at a later date when I need a pick me up. I realized how powerful technology really is and that we should embrace it in our classrooms and find a way to make it a valuable piece of our day. Thanks to the  2 Guys, one last idea I would like to implement yet this school year is the classroom Twitter Wall. What kid doesn't like social media? It's in our life, so we need to use it in valuable ways and we can do this in our classrooms. Through this our students can learn how to use social media appropriately before they are using it independently as teenagers. My students are too young to have a Twitter account, nor would I want them to have one at this age, so we are going to make a Twitter Wall that is made up of laminated sentence strips with a basket of dry erase markers close by. Every morning the students must Tweet when they come into the classroom (write a thought on the Twitter Wall using the dry erase markers. This will let me know how each student is doing and it will also allow the students to share something they feel is really important.

I am excited for the rest of this school year! Teachers are students for life and always learning!

Starting Over...

I was not entirely happy with my class's Wordpress website I created 6 years ago and was hoping for some fresh ideas at the 2015 MACUL Conference. I am happy with this transformation and my introduction to educational blogging. Here we go!