The Latest Activity
Here’s a quick look at a few things happening in the MST room.
Kindergarten - Students were presented with a problem from Mrs. Benz. She asked for their help with her upcoming book order. Should she buy more fiction or nonfiction books for Kindergarten? The students figured out that they needed to vote for their choice, but they also realized that all of Kindergarten classes needed to participate (both teachers and both AM/PM groups). Next they needed to figure out a way to find the sum of the addends. They decided to use unifix cubes. A calculator was used to check for accuracy. Together using the SMART Board, students were guided in creating a bar graph and circle graph using an Excel template. Results were shared with Mrs. Benz. Next task - decide which book titles and how many of each should be purchased with a set amount of money. This job will allow for multiple answers and require decision making and problem solving skills. Students will be working on this during the week.
Pond Partners Group - (Mrs. Burns, Mrs. Erbland, and Mrs. Hoffend) Last week Martha, Eva, and I trekked out to Mill Creek in the morning to collect macro invertebrate samples to bring back for the kids to identify. While we were in the stream we didn’t think we were too successful with our nets, but when we got back to the classroom the little creatures were visible. We used the document camera to project the samples in the tray onto the SMART Board. The kids LOVED seeing the images swimming around in the tray up on the board. Using a dichotomous key they were able to identify several of the macro invertebrates. This was an excellent opportunity to work on the process skills of observing, predicting, and inferencing. Students also added information and discussion topics to our Pond Partners Wiki. Although we did identify several macro invertebrates during the activity, the limited sample did not allow students to draw accurate conclusions about the water quality at Mill Creek. Our next on-site visit will be in January. Check out some of our pictures on My Flickr.
3rd Grade - Each morning a small group of students collect weather data - temperature, wind speed, sky conditions, precipitation, shadow length, and the photoperiod (amount of daylight). At the end of 2 weeks, data is graphed and shared with teachers to use in the classroom. Our problem - we haven’t had ANY clear, sunny skies at 9 a.m. so we haven’t been able to measure our shadow stick length in weeks! That’s Webster this time of year.
4th Grade - A select group of students is working on creating a public service video regarding winter shipping on the St. Lawrence River. They are concerned about the increased dangers of an oil spill during the icy conditions on the river during the late winter/early spring months. They are in the initial planning stages of asking questions, identifying what information they need to gather, determining how they will find and research the information, and brainstorming creative ideas to incorporate into the video.
What else is happening?
- JoAnna and Eva have both started using Twitter! Be a Tweet and join us.
- The Pond Partners group has participated in several webinars through ISTE to learn more about technology in the classroom.
- More and more teachers are developing creative, multi-media lessons using their SMART Board and students are loving it! Look for new upgrades for the Notebook software soon. Join the SMART Exchange - a resource center and community network that provides a wealth of resources for technology-enabled learning.
- Several 3rd grade teachers are ready to start their first iEarn projects - Compass Kidz and My Most Prized Possession. See me if you want to explore global learning projects for your class.
- Holly and Eva have their classes set up to use handhelds daily for various ELA and math activities. Martha’s class will be starting this week.
- Ning, Twitter, del.icio.us, Elluminate, blogging, wikis…. no need to ask just me. Ask your principal, Mary Ann Krog. We are both participating in the Western New York Powerful Learning Practices group. (wny-plp)
- Still interested in joining a Collegial Circle to learn more about how Web 2.o tools and technologies can be used to improve learning? We’ll be exploring presentations from the K12 Online Conference starting after the New Year.
