International Dot Day

Our 3rd graders celebrated International Dot Day by reading the book, The Dot, by Peter H. Reynolds. This is a story about Vashti, a young girl who can’t figure out what to draw in art class. She is encouraged by her teacher to “make her mark” which sends her on a journey to discover her potential.

Before reading the book, I had the students open MS Paint and draw a “dot” of any size on their canvas. Then we read the book. As I was reading, I could see the students start to think about what they would be doing with their dot.

When finished reading, I gave these directions: Create something using your dot. You can add more dots, a background, and you can also add other features but you must have at least one dot in the picture. And you must finish in one class period. Everyone came up with something – it may have been an abstract drawing or something more realistic. We had a Circle of Life, Pac Man, elephants, outer space, a sunset, balls being kicked, and much more. Below are their creations.

 

The second part of our celebration was to upload the drawings into the students’ blog and then have them write a post about what they did. This was good practice for them since we’ve really been focusing on how to write quality posts and comments (still working on this!). I gave the students a “challenge” where they were to answer one or more of the following questions:

Hello boys and girls,

Had you ever heard of International Dot Day before our class? We’re eager to hear about your dot picture. Write a new post and answer some or all of the following questions.

  1. When you first drew your dot in MS Paint, did you have any idea what you would do with it?
  2. Did an idea come to you right away or did it take a little while to figure out what your dot could become?
  3. Describe your thoughts on how you decided what to draw.
  4. Could you relate to Vashti, not able to think of something to draw? How did you feel about that?
  5. Vashti started out really frustrated because she couldn’t figure out what to draw. How and why did she change throughout the story? Why did she decide to help the little boy near the end of the book?

I’m looking forward to your posts!

Take a look at Mrs. Weth’s Class Blog. Not everyone had a chance to finish but Mrs. Weth and I thought they did quite well working under pressure since we were running out of time. I wish they had answered more of the questions such as the one comparing how Vashti felt and how they felt as they tried to decide what to draw. Next year, I’ll be sure to allow more time for the blog part of the project.

 

Paper Blogging with Students

After enduring “runaway” social blogging last year with students, the goal this year is to guide them to work toward producing quality posts and comments. For the first few weeks of school I could see we were headed in the same direction so I searched for tips on how to teach students to blog effectively to help others grow in their learning.

I discovered all kinds of resources that helped me develop a lesson. Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano has created an extremely helpful Guide to Blogging flyer; an excellent tool to share with teachers who wonder about the benefits of blogging with students. That led me to her post about Wall Blogging with Students. She talks about tips for writing quality comments and the importance of preparing students offline before they actually make an online comment. Silvia also worked with third graders at her school to create a video titled Making Quality Comments on Blogs.

We use KidBlog with our students and as I searched that site, I came across a link to 14 Steps to Meaningful Student Blogging. The author has shared several extremely helpful techniques to help students in their blogging journey. She also had a link that let to another paper blogging lesson from Notes from McTeach and this is the one I ultimately decided to use. Below are some photos of the 4th graders doing their paper blogging.

I was actually amazed at how engaged the students were in this lesson. Our class is 40 minutes long and they didn’t even get on the computers but there wasn’t a complaint from anyone! On Monday I had told the students that we were changing the focus of our blog from social to one that will help others learn. Groans and moans immediately filled the room. “That’s not fair. How are we going to communicate with our friends. Aren’t you going to let us use something like Facebook?” My answer was that you should communicate face-to-face or by phone call if you have social things to talk about with friends in the area. I certainly don’t want them to think the best way to “talk” is over the internet! At that point, I thought blogging with this group was doomed to failure.

However, we watched the video by Silvia’s third graders on creating quality comments. Then I used Wallwisher and had them write a comment about keeping safe on the internet. They were amazed that they could refresh the page and see their classmates’ comments so the technology got in the way of the lesson at first. We had some inappropriate comments (silly and meaningless); those I just deleted. When they realized that I would take away comments, most decided to come back with an appropriate one. They wanted to be sure theirs showed up on the wall! We talked about the comments – Were they proper sentences (punctuation, capitalization)?, Were they relevant to the topic? The next assignment was to make a comment on a favorite book they had read. Unfortunately, we ran out of time so not all were able to contribute but overall I though the quality increased with the second attempt.

On Tuesday, the students were given a sheet of paper and some sticky notes. The assignment was to write a post about a favorite food – what they like, why, best place to get it (home or restaurant), what makes it so appealing. I gave an example about my favorite food – guacamole. As soon as I said that, someone called out, “Yuck! I HATE guacamole!” That was the perfect opportunity to discuss how to disagree in a polite manner!

Armed with colored pencils and the paper, the students started writing their food post. They drew an illustration and added tags (at least some did). After about 15 minutes, everyone returned to their computer and put the “post” on their keyboard. I then told everyone to go 5 chairs in a clockwise direction. At that point, they had to read the post then write an appropriate comment (with their name) on the sticky note. I don’t think it’s ever been so quiet in the lab! We did this 3 more times and there was so much concentration you could literally hear a pin drop!

We had just a small amount of time to reflect on the activity (we’ll do more tomorrow) but the students were impressed with the comments received and even said they needed to answer some questions that had been asked. They were annoyed at the “anonymous” comments – those that forgot to write their name.

I was really excited about the entire lesson and amazed at how well it worked. Now the question is, will this transfer to online blogging? We’ll find out tomorrow!

“Can’t Do Without” Resources

Just wanted to let you know about two fabulous resources!

The first is ICT Magic. This is a wiki created by a teacher in England who has obviously spent hours and hours collecting educational resources for use in the classroom.  He has categorized all of the links by subject – common subjects such as math and science and other categories such as games and web tools. This is one of the most comprehensive sites I’ve seen!

  ICTmagic

 The other site that has an abundance of excellent information is the Langwitches blog, written by Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano. I was able to attend a workshop presented by Silvia at the Building Learning Communities conference in Boston in July. She is an absolute wealth of information. Plus, she shares everything that she does on her blog in great detail with the goal of guiding other teachers. Click on the image below to reach Silvia’s wiki, which is also filled with numerous resources and tips.
 

 

Username Challenge

Our first graders visited the lab for the first time today. What a fun group but, wow, they keep us moving! In kindergarten, a student’s username was his/her first name. In 1st grade, this changes to “last name + first initial.” Oh, what chaos this causes! I carefully explained what their usernames were, how they were different from last year, and that all they had to do was to look on the back of their name cards to see what the new username was. Suddenly several hands went up. “You didn’t spell my last name right. There’s no a at the end!” For some it took quite a bit of convincing that, “Yes, everything really is okay. That letter at the end of your last name is the first letter in your first name.” Very confusing for a young first grader! But everyone was able to log on and have time to do some math activities. In a couple of weeks, they’ll be little experts!

Blogging pt. 2

Today 2nd graders had another lesson on blogging. This time we focused on creating a quality post. I really want to avoid the “social” blogging that the students did last year; where a post might be, “I’m bored. Who is on the blog?” We discussed some guidelines dealing with netiquette, safety, proofreading but we also talked about how we want the use the blog to help students AND teachers grow in their learning. Some of the children were truly surprised that teachers could learn from what they post so that led to a lively discussion! It is so important that students see their teachers as learners; just like they are.

This age is fun to work with. They are very excited about sharing their knowledge and the teachers are finding all kinds of ways to incorporate blogging into their curriculum.

Blogging with Second Graders

I work with some terrific teachers who are eager and willing to try anything. This morning I introduced making “quality comments” to our 2nd graders.

We’re using KidBlog which is a simple blogging platform for younger students. Although KidBlog doesn’t have the capabilities of other blogs, it’s very easy for students (and teachers) to use. The teachers are excited about using the blogs in their classroom to encourage writing as well as to share what’s happening at school with parents.

Although our 1st – 4th graders blogged last year, I didn’t do a good job of guiding students to create quality posts and comments and I was determined to do better this year. I discovered some excellent blog resources from Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano’s Langwitches blog. Silvia has created a fabulous “Guide to Blogging in K-8.”

First, the students watched a video about quality comments created by third graders in Mrs. Yollis’ class. What makes this so effective is that the students are giving tips on leaving better comments – teachers can say the same thing but kids listen to their peers! The 5 tips were:

  1. Compliment the writer in a specific way.
  2. Add new information.
  3. Make a connection.
  4. End with a question.
  5. Proofread your comment.

Then we talked about some sample comments to determine which ones would be appropriate. Finally, we let the students give comments on a post about some stories they had read in class. For a first try, and with not a lot of time to write, we felt like the children did a good job. One of the teachers even went back and responded to each comment! Feel free to read Mrs. Cooper’s blog.

Everything worked well for 2 classes. However, by the time the 3rd class came in, the internet was not cooperating! A few of the students in this class were able to submit comments but with an unreliable connection, too many didn’t have time to do anything. I must say, though, this was a very patient group of students! Hopefully, we’ll be more successful next week.

“Welcome to the Web” Webquest

For the past three years I’ve started the year with our fourth graders working through the “Welcome to the Web” webquest. The webquest is designed by Mark Warner who has done a phenomenal job creating an interactive tool for students to learn about navigating the World Wide Web in a safe manner.

Mark has divided the information into 7 sections. In addition, he has worksheets for students to fill in as they work through the various parts. What makes this so much fun for the students is that they are earning secret codes as they navigate through each step. The codes are vital in “The Challenge” as the students try to catch the culprit who is trying to infect the town’s computers with a nasty virus.

The webquest takes about 5 days to complete (I see the students for 40 minutes every day). But the kids don’t care – no one has ever complained about it. They are ALL eagerly engaged in the activity. In fact, I always have at least a couple of students who work on this during recess or complete it at home!

This year, as the students finished the webquest, I had them blog about what they had learned and also had them complete a survey.

 

A Little Vacation Time

After the BLC conference, we took a few days to travel around southern Maine and the Cape Ann area before heading back to the real world. Our first two nights were in a gorgeous Victorian bed and breakfast called Angel of the Berwicks. We’ve stayed in several B&B’s over the years but this is by far the best we’ve ever come across. Ben and Sally have a true gift – making everyone feel like a part of their family. Breakfast was scrumptious; we’ve never had a 3-course breakfast before: homemade muffins, fresh fruit, hot entree – with a different menu every morning! If you ever have a chance to visit North Berwick, Maine, we highly recommend the Angel of the Berwicks. It’s a short drive from Kennebunkport, Portland, and other beautiful areas.

1 30 31 32 33 34