What A WONDERful Idea! Adding A Little "Wonder" To My Student's Summer.

I have been racking my brain on what to give my students for their end of the year gift.  I usually give my students a book at the end of the year, however,

I wanted to give them something that would:

1.  Be an extension of what we have been doing in our classroom.
2.  Inspire them to continue to write on their blogs this summer.
3.  Involve their parents in the project.

One of the major changes in my classroom this year is that I have tried really hard to create a "wonder" classroom environment to let my students explore their passions and continue to foster that excitement for learning.  For too long, I have told my students what they were going to learn about, instead of finding out what they wanted to learn about and figure out how we could learn about it while still covering the curriculum.

I decided I wanted to make and give my students "Wonder Jars."  It would be the first piece of the puzzle for our "Wonder Project."

One of the websites we have visited many times this year for inspiration, fun and to get the curiosity juices flowing is Wonderopolis. I contacted the "wonderopolis" group on twitter and they responded to my request very quickly!



Wonderopolis sent me this wonderful template to use for our Wonder Jars.

I headed to the dollar store for plastic jars, however, I didn't find what I was looking for.  I also looked on the internet but couldn't find anything in my budget that was perfect.  I ended up buying glass mason jars.  I am a little worried about the glass, but they were the prefect size and price ( 24 for 20 dollars).  I also bought mini composition books from the dollar store.  They were 3 for a dollar and I thought my students could write about their wonders as well as storing artifacts in their jars.  My fabulous husband (@mrwideen) made me a template for the cover of the composition book.  All I did was cut the covers out and glued them to the front.

I also found the perfect picture for the gift tag.  I was going to add a quote that talked about wonder or curiosity.  As I was searching the internet, I found this beautiful painting that would make a perfect label.  I emailed the artist, Jenna Milward and asked if I could take a screen shot of the image and use it for our wonder jar tags.  She responded very quickly with a "yes."  You can see her work on her blog noted below. 

Source: Milward Studios - "Emma's Fireflies"

Here is the jar with the label attached and on the back of the label I taped a magnifying glass.

I want this project to become whatever my students choose it to be.  I want to leave it open ended because my students always surprise and inspire me with what they can do and come up with.  I do have one stipulation: They have to bring their wonder jars or notebooks back at the beginning of September to share with the class.  I thought this would be a great way to begin our year.  We can discuss their Wonder Jars and questions and then go from there. I did share some of the ideas I found on the internet to get their wonder juices flowing.  I have grouped them onto a Pinterest board here.  We also created a book on the book creator app titled, "This Is Not A Jar."  Students were asked to finish the sentence starter, "This is not a jar..." and draw a picture to go along with it.  We then added all of the students ideas into one book.  Here are a few of the pages to look at:

I can't wait to see how this project takes form over the Summer.  Will the students be inspired and write about it on their blogs?  What wonderful things will they discover using their jars?  I will update you later in the summer.

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The Magic of Social Media

The definition of Social Media from Wikipedia is "Social media refers to the means of interactions among people in which they create, share, and exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and networks."  

I think I can say that I do my fair share of utilizing social media in and out of my classroom.  I have my personal blog that you are currently reading, I have a classroom blog, I tweet professionally using @mrswideen, my students tweet using @mrswideensclass and have their own personal blogs.  I use Facebook personally.  I have a class youtube account, we currently have a live webcam set up for our classroom tadpoles and we regularly use Skype and Google Hangout in our classroom.  

What is funny about this story is that none of this story is new.  I am very transparent about what is going on in my class.  I document it on my blog and I share what we are doing by tweeting and collaborating with others.  My classroom is always open and I encourage other educators, parents and friends to stop by our classroom and check out what we are up to.  My students have had blogs for almost 2 years now, they have been tweeting from @mrswideensclass since October and we have had 20 iPads in our classroom for a little over a year.  

What has happened in the last 24 hours has resulted from the "magic" of social media:

Yesterday Beth Holland's article was published on Edutopia titled, "Teaching Toddlers to Tweet? Introducing Social Media to Elementary Students"   I was honored to be included in this well written article and tweeted the article to our school board's Public Relations Officer, Scott Scantlebury @gecdsbpro.  From that tweet, I received a phone call from CBC Windsor asking if I could come in to do a radio interview before school the following day.  I of course agreed!

As I was waiting to speak on the air this morning, I was approached by a gentleman at the station asking if he could send someone out today with a camera to shoot a piece for the six o'clock news.  I was flabbergasted!  I asked my principal and he said, "Of course!"  I finished my radio interview and got to school before the morning bell.

A screen shot from one of my student's blogs.  She was
blogging while I was doing the interview.

The reporter from CBC News, Lisa Xing came while the students were on their nutrition break so we had a few minutes to talk.  She interviewed me, 3 of my students and took shots of us tweeting and blogging.  As she was taping, the office was paging me to tell me that a radio station in Toronto wanted to speak to me!  When Lisa finished up taping I went and spoke to a gentleman from CBC Ontario Morning that wanted to know if I could do a phone interview about teaching social media to my students tomorrow morning at 7:45.  I again enthusiastically agreed! 

When I thought the craziness of the day was starting to calm down, Greg Layson @GLaysonCBC tweeted out this story titled "Twitter taught in Grade 1 class in Windsor, Ont. - Kristen Wideen has her kids blogging, making YouTube videos and learning with classrooms around the world."


This all began from an article and one single tweet.  

June 20th, 2013
Update:  The "magic" continues...

This morning I did a radio interview on Ontario Morning (a Toronto radio station).  After I did the interview, I had a call from Luke Simcoe from Metro News, "Metro is Canada’s most read national daily newspaper brand."  You can view the story here.  

I think the best part of my day, happened at the end of the day when the director of education popped into my room to congratulate me.  I was so honored that he took time out of his busy schedule to stop by in person to see me!

June 28th, 2013
Update:  One more appearance....

Last Tuesday, I was asked to do another radio interview, this time on AM 800 in Windsor.  It was replayed on Wednesday and then on Thursday, it was the topic of the radio commentary.  You can listen to the commentary below.

listen to ‘The Global Classroom Commentary AM800 (June 27, 2013)’ on Audioboo

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Must Have Apps For Any Classroom

I was asked to go to a meeting tomorrow to consult on an iPad image for our board. These iPads will be going to K-8 schools in our district. I am honored to have been asked to give my input and I have been thinking about how I will answer this complicated question.

I have been blessed with 20 iPads in my room this year.  I decided what apps to put on them.  I have a very supportive administrator, so if I go to him with a request for an app, he trusts that it is a worthwhile app and lets me purchase it.  There has been no red tape, no request forms for some IT guy to have to put the app on my iPads.  There is no waiting, I ask my administrator, he says yes and I download the apps.

I was at Edcamp Detroit last month and heard horror stories from other teachers about having to put in a request to get an app on their class iPads that could take weeks to complete.  Many times, with an inquiry based classroom, something will come up and I will need an app right away.  For example, we have been learning about frogs, I found a couple free apps about frog life cycles and a fantastic book on frogs that was $3.99.  The inquiry could last a day, a week or a month.  If I had to wait for an approval for an app or even worse, someone from IT to put the app on the device, it wouldn't be worth putting the request in because the inquiry might be over before the app was ever installed.  I'm not sure how my district is going to go about this.  Right now it is up to the principal on which apps go on the school iPads and who has the password to load the apps onto the iPads.  I will be addressing my concerns about this tomorrow.

Another topic that I want to bring up is that different grade levels need different apps.  I feel that we need to develop 3 images. An  early years image (junior kindergarten and senior kindergarten), a primary image (grades 1-3) and a junior/intermediate image (grades 4-8).  There will definitely be common apps on all 3 images, however I feel that it is easier to manage 3 different accounts in the school.  I know that the early years classroom teachers have downloaded many phonics related apps that my grade 2's do not need, and I like to download math apps related to what math strand we are currently learning that would not necessarily pertain to the junior and intermediate classes.

I do have a list of must have apps for my classroom iPads.  If we didn't have any "games" on our iPads I would be fine with that.  However, I would be really disappointed if I didn't see the following apps on the iPads we use in my classroom everyday.

Must Have Apps for a Board Wide iPad Image (In My Opinion)

1.  Explain Everything

2.  iMovie

3.  Book Creator

4.  Kidblogs

5.  Draw & Tell

6.  Twitter

7.  Skype

8.  Dropbox

9.  Popplet

10.  Qrafter (or a similar QR reader)

11.  Audioboo

From my list you can see that I value and use apps that are for creation, evaluation, applying understanding and analyzing.   Apps that are needed for practice or recalling information would be up to the discretion of the teacher to download.  I do use other apps that are not on this list. My class frequently uses the math apps Hundreds Chart and a free app called Number Pieces.  However, I wouldn't be crushed if these apps were not on my iPad because I could create similar exercises using Explain Everything and some class manipulatives.

At the end of the day, it's not about the technology, it's about the learning, thinking, curiosity and fueling my students' passion to wonder. 

What are your "must have" apps that you and your students couldn't live without?

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What Does Camouflage Mean?

Last Wednesday during literacy, students were trying to figure out what had happened to our three missing tadpoles when the word camouflage came into the conversation. I was surprised to learn that many of my students did not know what camouflage meant. This was a perfect time to learn! On Thursday I read the book, "Animals in Camouflage" and we watched a great video on brainpopjr about camouflage.
I then told them that they were going to create a camouflage picture and explain what camouflage means.

There were 2 Essential Questions: 

1. What does camouflage mean? 
2. How can you show your audience what camouflage means?

The wheels started turning and my students were off!

a) Students had to choose an animal.

b) Draw the animal on a white piece of paper,  colour it and cut it out.

c) Go outside with their iPad and take a couple of nature shots that they could use for their project, to camouflage their animal.

                                                                                   


















d) Students then uploaded the pictures they took to Explain Everything.


                                                                                                   

tree bark

wood chips from the playground

e) After the students uploaded the close up nature pictures, they inserted their animal picture on top of the original image.

                                                                       
f) Students then added a title page and a slide that explained what camouflage means.  Some chose to write the definition out on a slide and read it, others video taped themselves explaining what it means.

Now, instead of doing this fun and engaging project where the students owned the learning, I could have answered that question last Wednesday by opening the dictionary and reading the definition of camouflage or had them do a worksheet..... You decide which activity you think your students would enjoy and learn more from.

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Offering Your Students Choice = Student Success

If you read my blog or follow me on Twitter, you know that I run an inquiry based program (most of the time).  I also let my students choose what apps they use when explaining their learning.  We all have favourite apps that we use.  My students do too.  I give them the opportunity to try different content creation apps out and have them available.  The ones they choose to use is up to them.

It has been a frog frenzy in my room the past couple of weeks.  It all started when I brought in 7 tadpoles (and a crayfish that we didn't see until a week later) that my family and I caught in a ditch near our house.  We have tweeted about them, we have a live webcam set up on my class website because my students wanted to show their peers on Twitter and be able to check up on them while they were at home.  We also have done a lot of research about them.
                                                                When I thought that our frog frenzy was calming down, a                                                                                                                                        

student in my class brought in a toad.... in a little cage.  A rather large toad.... my students wanted to name the toad and keep it as a class pet.  First of all, it is against board policy to have any pets in our classroom.  Besides that, I felt bad for this little fella.  How was I going to persuade my class to let this toad go?  I wanted the decision to come from them, not because I told them no.  I decided it would be a great way to get a little more science curriculum in and teach about habitats.

I started with 2 Essential Questions:

1.  What is a habitat?
2.  What kind of habitat does a frog/toad need to survive?

I am happy to say that our little friend the toad, (we did not name him) was let back into his original habitat that day.  It took less than half an hour of research and discussion for one of my kiddies to share with the class that we needed to let our toad go because the cage that we had him in was not an adequate habitat for him.  Hallelujah!  My students came up with the reasons and the decision on their own to let the toad go!  I didn't have to be the bad guy and tell them that we couldn't keep the toad!

A student in my class used iBrainstorm to create this. (Look at the green sticky on the left hand side!)

I wanted to continue the conversation and research we had begun on habitats.  The students agreed and wanted to share what they had learned about habitats.  I told them that they could share their learning of habitats in any way they choose.  The only stipulation was that they needed to answer the two essential questions.  I figured this would take 2 days.  One day to create the project and one day to share.

Well, for 4 straight literacy classes, my students were focused, were engaged and were amazing!  Each morning I would do a short mini lesson, one day it was on presentation skills, one day it was on habitats, and one day I showed them the rubric I created, that I would use to mark their presentations.

I had grade 1 students writing little sticky notes to remind them what to talk about during their presentations.  I had other students who chose to use chart paper and drew a huge picture of a frog/toad habitat, with labels and notes written on the back so when they presented they would hold their picture up and they would be able to see their notes.  I had others that created books about habitats on the iPads using book creator and others that drew pictures in the app Show and Tell, then uploaded the picture into Explain Everything and recorded their learning that way.  Some children chose to work alone, while others worked in pairs.  Did I have a few students that needed help?  Of course, however, out of 40 students, there was only a handful that need extra guidance.  They truly amazed me.

When it was time to present they stood up at the front of the class confidently and shared their information.  The students that used the iPads used the Apple T.V with ease and finesse.  The students that created posters spoke proudly about their projects.

The common thread with all of these projects?  It didn't matter how my students chose to share out their learning.  They had all mastered the concept.  In every presentation, the students answered the two essential questions.  They were all successful!  As I reflect on this process, I think there were many reasons why all of my students were successful at this task.

1.  It was authentic.  They had a real problem, "What does this toad need to survive in our classroom?" 2.  It was something they were interested in.
3.  They got to CHOOSE how they presented it.
4.  Learning this way is FUN!

My good friend Karen Lirenman feels very strongly about letting her little ones choose how they show their learning.  She has written many great blog posts about it here.  I want to give her a shout out....you are right again friend!  There is no turning back now!  I have gone to the other side and I just wish that I had done it sooner!

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A Day In The Life Of A Connected Classroom

I had a group of teachers visit my classroom last week. They were there to see how we incorporate technology in meaningful ways into the primary classroom. I had a couple of teachers ask me if I had a schedule of what we do throughout the day to give to them. Alas a blogpost is born. So, here it is, a day in my room without you actually having to visit me! (I am taking the day that my visitors came in and writing what we did that day)

8:30 Entry

Students enter school and write a short message in their agendas.  On Tuesdays and Thursdays students read  or give mini lessons to their parents on the iPads in our Learning Commons.  For those students that don't have a parent come in they may blog, read independently or with a partner until 9:00.  On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays students choose to blog, read or write until 9:00.  Many students chose to blog about our new tadpoles in our classroom that day.

A screenshot of one of my student's blog posts 

9:00 Twitter Review - Reading Mini Lesson

If there are any mentions or interesting tweets on the class Twitter account, we read the tweets and respond.  On this particular day, we had some interesting tweets from a class in Singapore responding to our tweets about our new tadpoles.

After we read and responded to some tweets we were ready for our reading mini lesson. I have been teaching the students the difference between on the page and off the page questions.  I have taught the students that sometimes the answer is right in the book.  If we can put our finger or fingers on the answer, its called an on the page question.  The answer is right on the page.  We just need to use evidence from the text.  When the book doesn't tell us the exact answer/ when we can't put our finger on the answer/ when we have to add our ideas to help us answer the question then we use AEO and it is called an OFF the page question.  You need to use evidence from the text to answer the questions along with your own ideas.  I went over our anchor chart and I told them that they were going to be detectives  that day and they were going to figure out what type of question I was asking.  I was using the fabulous book, "Tuesday" by David Wiesner which is nearly a wordless book.  Because the book had very few words, I decided to read the book to the class first without asking any questions.   My students used the comprehensions strategies they have learned throughout the year and wrote about their thinking using todaysmeet while I read the story.  I made book marks with a QR code on them that took them to todaysmeet.  

Bookmark

Examples of students' responses while I read the story.

I then reread the story asking the following questions while the students saw the pictures up on the smart board. (I scanned the pictures so the students could view the pictures larger as we discussed the questions.)

1. What time is it?
2. What do you think the Detective is thinking?  What type of question am I asking?
3. What trouble do the frogs get into?  Use evidence from the text to explain your answer.

9:30 - Literacy Stations

Students are grouped in pairs and go to 1 station per day.  Here is a list of my literacy stations.  I have 2 literacy station groups for differentiation. 

Group 1

1. Word Work A - Write the room

2. iPads - blogs

3. Science Station

4. Writing - Write About this app

5. Reading-Buddy reading

6.  Smartboard - ABCya.com  spelling practice

Group 2

1. Fluency Station - Audio Boo - You read to me i'll read to you

2. Writing -  Write about this app

3. iPads - Blogs 

4. Science Station

5. Insect Write the room

6. Library - reading buddies

I will share a description of a few of these stations:

Science Station

Download Instructions Sheet Here

Download Observation Sheet Here

Fluency Station

Download This Station Here

Writing Station

Download The Instructions Sheet Here

10:10 - 10:50 Nutrition Break

10:50 - 11:40 Prep

11:40 - 12:30 - Writing

Students are learning how to write fairytales and are learning about beginning, middle and end of the story.  My teaching partner, Mrs. Belanger, read the students a different version of Goldilocks And The Three Bears.  She then had them show the beginning, middle and end using the Popplet app:

12:30 - 1:10 Nutrition Break

1:10 - 2:05 Math

We usually have silent reading for 20 minutes, however on this day we were writing math problems to share on Twitter with Mrs. Degroot's class.  We tweeted math problems and solved math problems on Twitter until 1:35 then skyped with Mrs. Degroot's class and we exchanged math problems via Skype.

2:05 - 2:50 Art

On all other days we do math stations during this time.  However, on Wednesdays we have Art.  On this particular day we read "A Color Of His Own" By Leo Lionni and students created and painted a chameleon.

2:50 - Dismissal

Phew....that was a long blogpost!  Hopefully you gained a little bit of insight of what goes on in my very busy classroom!  

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Why Have A Class Twitter Account?

I wanted to share some of the ways my class uses their classroom Twitter account.  Up until this year, I tweeted the things we do in our classroom on my personal Twitter account.  However, I wanted my students to take ownership of the learning.  Instead of me tweeting about them, I wanted them to tweet about what they were doing.  I also wanted them to gain the connections of other peers as I have through my professional Twitter.  Twitter has helped me become a better educator.  I have made so many connections, learned so many new things and have had other educators push my thinking and question how and why I do the things I do in my classroom.  I wanted my students to gain all of the benefits that I have gained from Twitter.
My students now learn and share their learning with other classes through Twitter everyday.  We are fortunate to have iPads in our classroom, so the class Twitter account is logged into all of the iPads.  My only rule is that they need to show an adult their tweet before they publish it.  Because access to Twitter is so easy for my students, they go on Twitter frequently throughout the day to read other student's tweets.  I also draw attention to things that they may have missed or mentions each morning when we start our day together.  Here are a few great learning opportunities that my students have experienced using Twitter.

#MathStory

This is an example of how my students originally teamed up with Mrs. Degroot's Class from Iowa to share math problems the children created.  As you can see from the tweets, other classes joined in the fun.  Mrs. Lirenman's class from British Columbia, @PalmyKids from New Zealand and @JanevilleK1 from New Brunswick all added math stories or answered the math stories my students tweeted out.

Learning From Others

My students were very excited when I brought in 7 tadpoles last week.  Some of them tweeted about it. We connected with a class from Singapore on Twitter that saw our tweets.  They gave us some tips and shared a picture of their tadpoles.  The students want to become experts in the next couple of weeks and want to share their learning with other classrooms that may have tadpoles through Twitter.

Extending Their Learning of Fairytales

My students have been learning about fairytales during writing.  We have been reading and studying fairytales because we will be writing our own fairytales eventually.  One of my students tweeted a familiar line in a fairytale we had read that day, and the fairytale riddles were born.

These are only a few of the ways we use Twitter in our classroom.  There are so many other great ways to incorporate it into your classroom in meaningful ways.  My students' engagement level goes way up when they know that they have an audience.  These 3 examples show 6 and 7 year olds reading, writing, responding, creating and computing on Twitter.  When my students tweet, I don't have any that are reluctant to share or think that the work is "boring."  They tweet because THEY want to and because they love communicating, collaborating and learning with others.  I encourage you to sign your class up for a Twitter account if you haven't already.  Start following us @mrswideensclass and come learn with us.

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