State Posters

In grades 3-5 we have spent the last two weeks creating posters to celebrate our states birthday. Nevada day falls on October 31st and not being a big halloween person myself it works out well. I can spend time with students working technology skills, writing skills, and social studies skills. We used Microsoft word to create the posters, following a guideline, and turned the completed assignments into Edmodo. The students had to use the internet to research at least three facts about the state of Nevada and use the facts on their poster. My students in grades 1-2 created word and picture webs of Nevada using Kidspiration and imported pictures of Nevada. The kindergarten students used Kidspiration to make a collage of Nevada pictures.

Example of student made Nevada Poster

After school tutoring

Okay, so it is honesty time, I like what I am doing right now. Working in the computer lab and getting to know all the kids but I miss those days or those moments with the awhah's. I volunteered to be a part of my schools after school program that gives students that extra leg up and offers homework help. I have one student in particular that I also see during the week for computer class, at first he just seemed to be a handful but today both he and I had an awha moment. Since I am not with my students for more than forty five minutes once a week it is harder for me to get to know them as individuals and how they learn best. Working with this student today I learned that he is as much a visual learner as you can get. He was having a hard time understanding how to divide and multiply. So, instead of going around and around again with a paper and pencil explanation I took out some manipulatives, showed him how to group the manipulatives, and how to use the groupings to get an answer. We then walked through it together, and then I let him start working on his own. The student became more and more confident with each math problem and I learned something new about the "difficult" student. It is moments like these, no matter how few and far between, that remind of why I wanted to become a teacher.

State Celeration

Since we live in a state that still celebrates it's birthday to include a state holiday and a day off of work I use this opportunity to talk a little social studies with my students. I am having my third through fifth graders create Nevada posters, in word, that include three facts about our state and a picture from either the clipart selection or internet. My first and second grade students used Kidspiration to create mind map bubbles with Nevada being in the middle. They then had a bubble branch for a state of Nevada picture imported and labeled the picture. Since kinders are still very much in the phase of me they also used kidspiration, but instead they choose pictures that reminded them of Nevada, things they see, interact with, or do in Nevada. I will post pictures later this week, well, maybe tomorrow depending on how my bulletin board turns out and the assignment goes for some of my other classes.

Exciting things

Well,  it is only Tuesday and it seems to be a week of frustration. I am hoping it is going to get better, oh wait, it already has. My fifth grade students received there first pen pal letters from Taiwan today. I am hoping this will help the students see how similar and yet how different they are. We also got one of our first adopt a soldier replies. The students acted so uninterested when I introduced them to the project but have asked almost everyday since they were told that I mailed their letters if there had been an answer yet. So, I now have a yes, well, for one class anyway. The soldier answered their questions and sent some photo's of him on the job. The students are really going to enjoy it. I have some other projects to intertwine with both of these but one thing at a time. We are having a hard enough time remembering our Edmodo user names.
The students have been excited about Edmodo but I think it is more for a social aspect. I know it is a lot of new things for them to take in but I think they can do it. I think that students can rise to the occasion as long as the occasion is still within their reach.

Edmodo

The next phase of my first year in technology is underway. I had one more fifth grade class to find pen pals for outside of the adopt a soldier program. On the Elementary Tech Teachers website I connected with a fellow teacher back East and we were discussing ways to get our students to communicate through technology. She found the Edmodo site and we both liked it so much we decided to use it for the pen-pal's. I also decided for my students in grades 3 through 5. I can post assignments keep track of who turns in assignments, give grades right on the site (yes this gives me two places to put grades, but the students always know how they performed), I can also post links, documents, and other things the students will need to complete their assignment all in one place. After spending the week getting my students signed up and logged in I think this is going to be a great virtual classroom. The students are excited about it because the layout is some what similar to Facebook so they are already familiar and it gives them even more readily available access to the computers.
I went to a technology meeting on Tuesday and found out that our pilot programs for notebooks (iPads) in the classroom will be using Edmodo also. I was even more excited that my students will be a little ahead of the learning curve. By the time the pilot begins using Edmodo we will have already been using it for several months in the classroom and if the pilot goes well the third graders who would get to use the notebooks as fourth graders will be ready for the virtual classroom environment.