Connecting The Curriculum to an Authentic Audience

Yesterday was a very busy day in my grade 2/3 classroom.  We had joined Jen Wagner's Pumpkin Seed Project.  If you have not visited her site, I highly suggest you do.  She hosts a variety of online projects that involve many classes from around the world and that tie into the curriculum seamlessly.  We asked parents to donate a pumpkin in the name of math, literacy and science for this project.  My teaching partner and...

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Why Introducing Young Students To Social Media Is So Important

Last year my grade 1 students were uploading videos to their personal blogs and to youtube, tweeting from our classroom Twitter feed, face timing, skyping and participating in Google Hangouts with peers, soon to be teachers, teachers, experts in a certain field, and the class down the hall.  We participated in global projects like the Global Read Aloud and created our own global projects. Why? There are many great reasons why we have embeded...

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Teaching Procedural Writing Through Art

Last week, my teaching partner Sarah and I decided that we would start our procedural writing unit.  I always love to teach procedural writing because there are so many fun lessons to do with procedural writing.  Last year students took pictures of each other eating gingerbread cookies and they had to write out how they ate their gingerbread cookie.  They completed the assignment with using the pictures that were taken and the text...

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YOU Must Try This App!

If you teach primary children you know how long it takes for a child to type in a website.  At all costs I try not to have my children do this.  Imagine, twenty 7 year olds trying to type in a 30 character  URL on their iPads all at the same time.  It is true madness, "It's not working," "I need help!" "Is that an i or a l?" and this is why the app that I am about to tell you about is pure genius. A couple of weeks ago a colleague of mine asked me to participate in "Talk Like A Pirate Day."  Of course the catch was that...

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Ready To Use Fact Family iPad Station

My students have been working on fact families the past couple of days.  To reinforce what has been taught in class, I try to incorporate a math station that practices the skill and incorporate it into our math stations the following week.  I modeled the station today and had them give it a go to make sure they would be able to do it independently next week.  I was pleasantly surprised how my grade 2 students did the station independently....

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A Classroom For Discovery And Curiosity - Part 1

One of my goals this year was to weave a wonder and curiosity theme into our classroom.  I wanted to put the choice in the students hands this year.   We will learn through inquiry and discovery.  We will question and be information seekers.  We will be wonder experts. The next few blog posts will be about my journey, first starting with the space, second with a few of the key lessons that were delivered and finally a reflection...

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