Where Does Your School Fall on the Lego Movie Continuum?

Last week, my husband and I took our two children to see the “Lego Movie.”  I can’t praise the movie enough.  It was funny for the whole family, clean, very entertaining and it had some great messages.  Believe in yourself (and your students); everyone is special; there’s a time to follow the rules and a time to break them.

As I was talking to my Principal, James Cowper, this past Friday about the movie, he told me he was writing a blog post about the movie from a principal's point of view and invited me to write one from a Teacher’s point of view.  This blog post could have gone many ways with this movie and as my husband Eric, and I brainstormed all of the themes this movie had that were symbolic to the teaching profession we settled on the following.

In the Lego Movie, there were 3 distinct levels of hierarchy:

Image from Lego.com

The Evil Lord Business – “The Man upstairs” When Lord Business rose to power, he began capturing master builders because of his disapproval of them being innovative and building things that were not made with instructions. Lord Business planned to use the Kragle (a tube of Krazy Glue with some of the logo's letters rubbed out) to freeze the universe perfectly in place.

I believe that the “Man Upstairs” in a building definitely sets the tone of a school and can make or break a staff.  Is your principal like Lord Business, where he or she has to be in complete control?  Does it need to be their way or the highway? If you push the boundaries will you be Kraglized? 

On the other end of the spectrum is “Vitruvius.”  In the movie, he is the heroic wizard.  He tries to teach Emmet, the main character, that the key to true building is to believe in yourself and follow your own set of instructions inside of your head. 

A great leader needs to value the uniqueness of each individual on his staff.  A great principal realizes that “everything is awesome when we work as a team” and that everyone on staff can rise up to be a leader. School leaders also need to play an active role in planning and supporting instruction instead of demanding how it needs to look like and sound like.  Most of all, great principals need to lead by example.

Image from Lego.com

The Micro Managers – In the Lego Movie, the "Micro Managers" were a type of robot used by Lord Business to pose and prepare civilians to be Kraglized (In a frozen perfect state). Micro Managers also put all of the blocks back together following the instruction manual.

I see these “Micro Managers” as teachers.  On the one end of the continuum, you have teachers that micro manage their classrooms and students.  These Micro Managers offer no choice, engagement or creativity.  The teacher “manual” is the “Bible” and they don’t deviate from it.  There are only lectures, worksheets and textbooks to deliver curriculum, and paper- pencil tests to measure student achievement.  This is an environment where students do not value the tasks and the only form of feedback is a grade on the top of a paper.

On the other end of the continuum is when teachers are like “Wyldstyle.”   Wyldstyle is a free spirit who loves pushing boundaries and being creative. She has a strong, independent streak that makes her question when things are wrong and makes the main character, “Emmet” feel special.  She is the encouragement Emmet needs to give him the confidence to stand up to Lord Business.

Innovative teachers are constantly pushing the boundaries in their classrooms; they are creative in their thinking and approach.  Great teachers know their students, build trusted relationships with them, and create an environment where their students feel comfortable to take risks.  Great teachers are not micro managers; they embrace student curiosity and empower their students to learn about topics that are important to them through inquiry.  They also give students choice on how they show and share their learning to the audience of their choice.

Image from Lego.com

The Master Builders - Master Builders are creative free spirits that can instinctively build anything without instruction manuals. 

The “Master Builders” are our children.  When children come to us beginning in Kindergarten, they are full of questions, curiosity and excitement.  They have the attitude that they can do and be anything that they want. Just ask a kindergarten student what they want to be when they grow up. 

We can foster this attitude, by encouraging personal interests through inquiry, letting students follow their passions and teaching them collaboration skills.  This way, they can have positive working relationships with their classmates, their community and the world through face to face interactions and through social media.   As educators we  have a choice to make every child feel that they are the most special person in the world.   Or we can stifle them, with rigid routines, boring lessons and isolation from working with others.  We can have quiet, neat classrooms that produce robot like children that cannot create any original ideas and cannot think independently.

At the end of the movie, Emmet convinces Lord Business that creativity is not messy or weird, and that it is okay for people to build brand-new ideas from all the things Business himself had made, which makes him special, too.

Hopefully you are part of a school on the winning side of the Lego Continuum.  If not, take a stand.  It's time for a change at your school.  You ARE the “Special One.”

If you would like to see James Cowper's take on the Lego Movie, read it here.

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Different Ways To Share Your Students' Work From The Book Creator App

A common question I have, is "How do I share students' work from the Book Creator App?"  This is a fabulous app for students to share their learning, however, when it comes to embedding on a blog or sharing it with parents, it can get a bit tricky.  I have taken one of my students Book Creator creations and will show you a handful of ways to share it with parents, embed it onto their blogs or the classroom blog and where you can store it online for easy access for parents.

The first way to share a completed book is to export it to Dropbox, Evernote, or Google Drive.   Once you have saved it in your preferred application, you can email the link to whomever you wish.  All your recipient needs to do is to open it in their iBooks App.

I personally do not email my students' parents, so this option is not one that I can use.  Another option is to save the book as a PDF.  Note, if you save it as a PDF and you have video or voice recordings in the book, it will not transfer.  The website, Flipsnackedu is a special web too for educators.  You can create a flipping book from your students' PDFs and it has its own private and safe learning environment.

Click Here to view the book

Flipsnack does have an embed feature, however you need to purchase the premium account for that option and I only have the free account.

Another option is to have your students take screen shots of their book, upload the pictures in iMovie then add voice over to the movie.  This option takes a lot of extra time but if you really want to share their books on their blog or on Youtube then this is another option. 

My favourite option is to export your bookcreator creation as a PDF.

Then, choose to open the PDF in another app.

The last step is to choose to open it in Explain Everything.  

Once you have opened the PDF in Explain Everything, you will notice that your book is laid out the same way as it had been in the Book Creator App.  You now have the option to add video, audio and the ability to annotate on the page.  How about having your students record their voice while pointing to the words with one of the cursor options?  Or add a video on top of a video?  How about using one of the pages as a background and use Tellagami to read the page or describe the picture?  The options are endless! 

 Instead of your students doing all of their work in Book Creator, have them create the pages without audio and video.  After they have created the pages have your students add the video, voice and anything else they want to add in the Explain Everything app.  The best part is that you can export the completed project to just about anywhere!  Youtube, the camera roll (so they can add it to their blog), Dropbox, Google Drive or Evernote to name a few!

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When Inquiry Groups Don't Get Along

Can you think of a job that does not work in some kind of team, partnership, group, or staff?  Collaboration skills are so important to ensure that our students can work effectively together.  I don't mean, find a partner and work, I mean that children have the skills to work together in a variety of groups (teacher created, student created, inquiry driven, or interest driven.)

Collaboration skills need to be explicitly taught and modeled.  Just like reading, writing and math strategies, students need to learn a repertoire of social skills, like active listening, how to take turns in a conversation and how to receive others' ideas respectfully.

While our students have been working on their latest curricular inquiry circles, my teaching partner, Sarah and I had started to notice that we were putting out a lot of fires and devoting a lot of time to refereeing battles between group members.  Here are some of the mini lessons we delivered to help remind our students of their collaboration skills.

At the beginning of our Inquiry students created "Ground Rules" with their new groups.

I love rule #3!

We took all of the rules students created and made an anchor chart for the whole class.  We decided that it would be a good idea to create a looks like, sounds like chart to remind our kiddies about what effective small group discussion looks like and sounds like in our classroom.

The next day, Sarah showed this youtube clip

After discussing the clip, Sarah had our students role play in their inquiry groups what it looks like when students are listening carefully, taking turns and monitoring their own participation.  They also role played what it looks like when they do not work effectively.  Students discussed both ways and it made them realize the mistakes they were making in the group that was sabotaging their learning.

Sarah also found a great book titled "Sorry" by Jean Van Leewen that is about two brothers that get into a silly argument and never speak again, nor do their children or grandchildren until one day their great-grandchildren meet and one says he's sorry.  From that one magical word the silly feud is finally over.

We also thought it would help our groups work more smoothly if they had a plan and a reflection area where they could reflect on how they thought they worked with their group that day.  Our fabulous special assignment teacher Lisa Galvan created the following student planning and reflection sheet

Download here

This sheet really helped students make a plan, stay on track and were for the most part very honest with the reflection part.  Everyday, we stop 5 minutes early to give the students that reflection time and it is their ticket out the door when they leave for recess.

Let's not forget a very important piece of the puzzle...us.  We also are collaborators.  We collaborate with other members of our team everyday, we have to model what we teach and be there to facilitate, coach and teach our students how to effectively use those social strategies and try to figure out the problem before the group goes completely off track.  

Is there still problems with group members in our classroom?  Of course, we are working everyday to teach and reteach those skills that students will need for the rest of their lives.  

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Indoor Recess Survival Kit

I don't know about you, but the weather where we are has NOT been cooperating! I can think of only a handful of times my kiddies have been outside for recess in the past month.  This creates a HUGE problem.  My kids need to move!  I wanted to share some of my students' favourite activities to do to get the wiggles out.  Hopefully you can use them to make the upcoming week of school go more smoothly.

Our favourite brain break in my class is any of the "Just Dance Videos" on Youtube.  @MauiMickey and the fabulous people at #kinderchat have created many Symbaloos using Safeshare.  Safeshare is a website that you can use to take out almost all of the advertisements and commercials of your Youtube videos.  You never know what could pop up after showing a video on Youtube.  This ensures that the video is safe to show to your kids.  The following symbaloos have already been converted to Safeshare.

Just Dance 1 Smbaloo

Just Dance 2 Symbaloo

Another great set of videos to get the kids' blood pumping is Adventures To Fitness.  Adventures To Fitness are free physical activity videos that incorporate the common core and have the feel of  a video game.  If you have boys in your class that don't like to dance, these videos will be a hit with them.  Thank you to my husband @mrwideen for creating the following Symbaloo with Safeshare.     

Adventures To Fitness Symbaloo

Yoga anyone?  How about yoga for kids with Cosmic Kids Yoga?  Grab a mat and try this Symbaloo created by Cosmic Kids.

                                                                  Cosmic Kids Yoga

If you don't have a projector or screen to show videos on, how about a couple of fun activities for your students to do during indoor recess?

I love this idea I found on Pinterest.  Arrange the classroom with lasers!  All day have students avoid the "laser beams."  Lots of climbing throughout the day!

I also love the idea of using red solo cups to build structures.  Put a few packs of cups in a box and voila, you have a fun building center that can be taken or knocked down in seconds!

I hope some of these ideas have inspired you and arm you with some tricks up your sleeves for the next indoor recess!

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Using Our Class Twitter Account To Learn About Surveys and Graphing

I love using Twitter in my classroom.  If you ask my students what the purpose of Twitter is for them, they will likely respond with, "To build relationships, learn from peers and to teach others."  I have done my best to model for my students that Twitter is a tool for learning and I hope that my students continue with this mindset as they grow older.  This past Tuesday, during math we used Twitter to extend our learning about surveys and graphing.  We have been working on the entire process of how to conduct a survey, asking a question, using tallies to record the results and then creating a graph to show the results.  Here is our anchor chart that we co-created this past week.

I felt that my students had a good grasp on the concept so I had them formulate a survey question about what foods their survey group would like best.  My students created a question with three choices, then tweeted it from our class Twitter account.  I was ecstatic with how many classes, and people responded to our questions.  The following day, we had enough responses for my students to gather to create their graphs.

When we connect with people outside of our school walls, it creates excitement and engagement.  My students couldn't wait until math class the following day to see how many people responded to all of their surveys.  Students created their graphs on chart paper and now have decided that they would like to create their graphs on the iPads so they can tweet their results to their audience.

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Inquiry Overload - Ideas, Resources and Tips to Start Your Own Classroom Inquiry

At the beginning of the school year my Principal, James Cowper  asked the staff what they would like to do with some of the PD time the school is given.  So, the staff filled out their ideas and who they might like to work with and my Principal did his best to make it happen.  (How great is that? A principal that actually asks you what You want to learn about and then follows through with your ideas!)  One of the things that I wrote down, was being able to facilitate a book talk and be able to have planning time to implement the ideas from the book.  When James told me that I would be given  4 full days with coverage in the month of January for the book talk, I knew exactly what book to use.
I read Inquiry Circles last year, with a group of colleagues from Twitter and I loved the book.  Also, Inquiry is a hot topic in our school board and even if you don't end up going through with Inquiry learning there are some fantastic ideas on how to teach comprehension and collaboration in the book.
Nine teachers at my school signed up for the book talk.  They received the books before the Winter break and our first meeting was the first week back in January.  I didn't want this to be a traditional book talk.  After talking to the teachers that signed up, we agreed that this was a fantastic time to look at our curriculum and create some Curricular Inquiries that we could do in our classes.  We had coverage for the teachers to be able to get from half a day to a full day out of the class to meet as a group each week in the month of January.  We also had teachers that had never done inquiry in their classes before and some that have done many inquiries in the past year.
My teaching partner, Sarah Watson-Jones and I have had time to create a Social Studies Inquiry on Early Settlers and First Nation People and a Science Inquiry on Soil and Plants.  We have created or found resources that have become very important in our set up and execution of our Inquiries that I wanted to share with you.
First, Kristin Ziemke is a friend, colleague and an awesome teacher that has answered my questions and helped me out with my own Inquiry questions.  She also has co-written a fantastic resource Connecting Comprehension and Technology that is a must read if you are looking for ways to connect inquiry and comprehension with technology.

How To Find Resources For Your Students

One of the things that takes up a lot of time when doing Inquiry with younger students is finding resources that are at their reading level.  I already had made a research folder on my students' iPads that has links, apps and search engines that are suitable for my grade 2/3 classroom.

Idea from Kristin Ziemke in her book Connecting Comprehension and Technology

A great way to curate articles from the web for your students is to use Readlists.  Readlists is a group of web pages and or articles that you can send to pretty much any device. For education purposes, my teaching partner Sarah and I each created a readlist for our students.  She curated a list of articles and websites about First Nation people and I created a readlist on Pioneers.  Depending on what question our students come up with will depend on what readlist they will need.  We then created a QR code for each list so all they have to do is scan the QR code and it will take them to a list of websites with information on either First Nation People or Pioneers.

The Readlist I created on Pioneers

Of course there are other ways to find information.  Here is a list that we made up in class:

Another great resource is your students!  When you begin your inquiry, have each child find an article or website on the topic and bring it to school.  You can look through all of the information your students have brought in and share the information with the inquiry groups.  This past week, some of my students used Twitter to ask some of their questions about pioneers.  Karen Lirenman's class answered some of our questions within a day.

How Long Will A Curricular Inquiry Take?

This was a question that came up many times during our planning time.  I know, for me, some inquiries seem to last forever! This was a question that I brought to Kristin and she broke it up as follows:

The average inquiry will run approximately 5 weeks.

5-7 days of front loading.  (Students can't ask good questions if they don't know anything about the topic)  Sarah and I learned this first hand....We asked our students to write down their schema about Pioneers on a padlet wall before doing any front loading.  It was a great moment for Sarah and I because we realized in 1 minute that our 40 students really knew nothing on the topic! 

Created with Padlet

After the week or so of front loading, you then spend approximately 2 weeks on creating a question, putting the children in their inquiry circles and having them research the topic.  

Then a week for creating their sharing piece.  The sharing piece might be anything from a media presentation on Explain Everything to a poster, an art piece, a presentation or anything else your students can think of.  Finally, a week of sharing and covering any curriculum that may not have been covered through the inquiry.  Due to your students having so much more knowledge on the topic, you will now zip through any other pertinent information your students need to know.

How Do I Begin?

The following explanation is how Sarah and I are doing a curricular inquiry in our room and so far it seems to be working....

After the debacle padlet wall, Sarah and I knew that we needed to do a lot of front loading.  Sarah began reading a chapter book about living in the Pioneer days.  We then started modeling many of the comprehension lessons that are in the Inquiry Circles book.  By doing this we were teaching the concepts they needed, to be able to read with a question in mind, annotate their thinking while reading etc. and we used articles that were about Early Settlers and First Nation People.

A modeled lesson about reading with a question in mind

Last week we taught a lesson about using the iPads to stop, think and react to information.  We read aloud a book about how it was back in the pioneer days and the students needed to compare it to how things are now.  I loved seeing their thinking on the iPads and how excited they were to post it onto their blogs.

We had another chart up that students would place sticky notes on while Sarah read her read aloud each day.  Students would write down if they made a connection, if they thought something was interesting or if they had a question.  

Our chart doesn't have any Questions left on it because Sarah took the questions off and with the students, started grouping the questions into categories.

Students now have many questions to choose from and are beginning to form inquiry circles based on their interests.

What Do I Do With All Of The Projects?

Our wonderful 5/6 teachers, Amanda Mundy and Sandra Deters were discussing with me how hard it is to keep track of all of their students' inquiry projects.  Some were digital, others were posters, and some were written projects.  I gave them the idea of creating a padlet wall for their students to upload their projects to.  They flew with the idea and after talking to them about it this week they had a couple of great points to share.

First, there are two ways to set up a padlet wall layout.  Free form is the first option where posts can be put anywhere.  The second layout is a stream, where posts are placed one below the other.  Sandra told me that their students prefer the stream layout for displaying their work because it is easier to read and the posts are not on top of each other.  

The second point was that Amanda and Sandra tweet out the padlet to their class Twitter feed so students can easily find the padlet wall to upload their projects to.

Here is an example of one of their stream layouts:

Created with Padlet

Here is an example of the free form layout:

Created with Padlet

Using a padlet wall also encourages feedback from peers on their projects.

I can't wait to see where this inquiry takes us,  I love that with inquiry, the teacher doesn't need to know all of the answers.  We get to discover the answers and form new questions together!

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A Letter To My Husband

Today, January 3rd, 2014 is my 8th wedding anniversary.  My husband and I have decided not to do gifts this year because frankly, if we really want something we will go out and buy it.  Truthfully, is it nice to get gifts, but the moments shared between the two of us and the little ways we show each other we care are far more meaningful.   Life is made up of memories not things.  This is the reason that we have decided that we will be spending the day together (thanks mom for watching the kids) and going to a nice place for dinner instead of gifts.  This year, instead of buying a card from Hallmark and signing my name to it,  I wanted to write him a letter instead.
My husband is also a teacher @mrwideen and is the tech junkie in our family.  If you have a question about anything tech related he will find the answer for you.  He is my go to guy for everything about my blog, how to set up anything tech related in my classroom, and my trouble shooting guy all rolled up into one. He is the expert at the tech, I am the expert on implementing it into the classroom. Whenever I ask him to help me out (which is ALL of the time) he jokes to give him a footnote at the end of, my blog post, my website, when I author something, etc.  So honey, this is your GIANT footnote.

Dear Eric,

Can you believe it has been 8 years since we exchanged our wedding vows on that little beach in Grand Cayman?  A lot has changed from when we met teaching at the same school in Inkster, MI.  Somethings have not changed though, my heart still skips a beat when you walk into a room or when I see that you have texted me during the day to tell me you are thinking of me.   I think back about when we met, and how we overcame a lot of obstacles and hurdles to be together.   Thank you for sticking through it and not giving up on me.
We now have 2 beautiful children, a beautiful family, content in our careers and our relationship is stronger than ever.  I know that our fantastic life is because of you.  When I am stressed out, you are my calm.  When I need help, you are always there to lend an ear, a hand or a reassuring hug.  When I leave you with our two little ones because I am at a conference speaking or on my computer for hours at a time, you never complain.  You are an amazing father, husband, colleague, teacher and friend.  The success I have had in my career is because you have encouraged, supported and said, "Yes, I can help" every step of the way.  I would not be half the person I am if it weren't for you.  I take full responsibility and ownership for all of my mistakes and failures and I share all of my success with you.  You are my constant calm and keep me grounded.  I feel loved and cherished by you each and everyday.  Without a doubt, you are my soul mate.
I hope that I fulfill your life as much as you fulfill mine.  I now realize that my life was incomplete before I met you, and now, everyday, I wake up excited to continue our journey together, because with you by my side, anything is possible.

I love you today, tomorrow and always.

Happy Anniversary,

Kristen

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