Friday "Wrap Up"

I have been spending my non-teaching hours this week looking at new furniture for the library.  As part of my transformation plan, I asked kids what they wanted to have in the library and they said "comfy chairs to sit in".  Right now I have hard wood chairs.

I have been looking at some fun furniture that I hope to decide on in the next few weeks.

In the library this week...

- 3rd grade makerspace

- 4 Second Grade note-taking lessons

- 6 First Grade President notetaking and then record in Puppetpals

- 5 Kinder Research lessons 

- I met with my director 2x about furniture

And my nails this week are one of my favorite retired pairs. Boysenberry and Stitched Away. It's true what they say about not missing something until it's gone. So wish I had more sheets of these 2. 

And if last's weeks Jam news wasn't big enough. Jamberry has announced that they will soon be bringing Jamberry to the UK. So if you or anyone you know lives in the UK and wants to be one of the first consultants there, let me know! 

Technology Tuesday: #DLDayRap Challenge

I am a big Jimmy Fallon fan so when I saw this tweet in my feed I had to click on it.

Kasey Bell  has some great ideas about how Jimmy Fallon uses games to engage his guest and audiences and that similarly, we could engage our students.  

In honor of Digital Learning Day  tomorrow, she has thrown out the #DLDayRap challenge -tweet out a rap of your Digital Day Learning with the #DLDayRap.  Kasey tweeted out this one...

Inspired by the Grammys, I decided to take a crack at it.

It was better, but when I put it in Twitter it was of course way more than 140 characters, so I had to delete a whole line.  I tried again...

I got creative with emojis and abbreviations.  And then one more.  

Yes, I cheated on this one.  I screenshotted it and put it in as a photo because I just couldn't get it down to 150 characters.  

This was a fun way to think about a topic and it is definitely difficult to taper down raps to 150 characters, especially when you also have to leave room for the hashtag. I think I am going to add this challenge to my makerspace this week and see what the students can come up with.  

Feel free to take Kasey up on the challenge and post your own #DLDayRap to Twitter.   

Friday "Wrap Up"

This week Jamberry made a HUGE announcement!  I am talking about the mother of all announcements.  They have partnered with Disney to bring us...

The Disney Collection by Jamberry

Oh, yea!  You heard right!  21 new wraps all things Minnie and Princess!  Check these out!

 

Awesome, right!!  And check them out on hands...

See the whole collection here 

Technology Tuesday: Virtual Valentines

Here's a fun connecting opportunity that I saw on Twitter this year and sent to my teachers.

This group pairs up classes to exchange virtual valentines across the miles and learn something on the way.  

Here is a blog post from one of my 5th grade teachers that participated in the program.  

Mrs. Foreman's Virtual Valentines

Friday "Wrap Up"

Kinder kids are so funny.  I read the book Early Bird by Tony Euly to kinder this week.  It is a cute story about a bird that gets up early and goes on a journey to the garden to get the early worm.  It has good position word usage like over, under, across and through.  While I was reading to the first class of kinder students I asked them what the opposite of early was.  The first student I called on said, "You know, like early in the morning."  I said, "That is what early means, but what is the opposite?".  The next student I called on said, "Like before breakfast."  I again said yes and that the opposite of early was late.  

The next kinder class I had decided to start with "What does early mean?" and about 4 of them shouted out "Late!"

This week in the library...

- four days of makerspace 

- 4 Second Grade Augmented Reality + Writing Lessons

- 6 First Grade Inch by Inch  Measurement Lessons

- 5 kinder story times

- 1 Teacher Makerspace Faculty Meeting

And I am still wearing my wraps from last week, but here is a picture of the St. Patrick's Day wraps 

Shamrockin, Bit O' Luck, and Over the Rainbow

Teachers Make Too

I posted this tweet on my personal Facebook page and got some pretty funny responses from my teachers.

In my mind, I told myself that it was because they were jealous of the students getting to come to makerspace and learning and playing with new things.  We thought it might be fun to have a Teacher Makerspace Faculty Meeting and so that happened yesterday!

At first, I was nervous about it.  My teachers, like any other, are strapped for time and have a million things to do.  I was a little worried they would think it was a waste of time and not be receptive of the idea.  So I did what any good presenter does when faced with having a meeting with teachers...

I brought snacks!

I had a handout waiting on the tables when they came in from dismissal and number 1 said

1.  MakerSNACK at the snack bar.

I had put out bowls of cheerios, raisins, chocolate chips, goldfish, nuts and pretzels for them to create a snack of their own (get it... makerSPACE - makerSNACK).

Once everyone had their snack, I put on the projector a list of the 5 activities (one for each of our STEAM areas) with a brief description of each one.  I told them briefly about each one and about the materials needed (I had materials set up all around the library) and how to get to the resources on my library page.  Then I let them go.  

I gave them the choice of 

Science - Balancing Act

Technology - Augmented Reality and Stop Motion(I couldn't decide)

Engineering - Pipe Cleaner Challenge

Art - Finger Knitting

Math - Fraction Pictures

There was a lot of chatter and a lot of creating going on. Surprisingly the teachers reactions were similar to students.  Some were frustrated with the finger knitting.  Some picked it up right away. Some were competitive about building the tallest pipe cleaner tower.  Others were trying to make the weirdest structure.  Some were very serious about their Stop Motion video.  Some were being extremely silly.  All were super excited when their augmented reality picture came to life.  

And then there were these...

Yep the off-task ones!
There's some in every group, right?

Actually, I very rarely see kids off task when they come to makerspace.  But these teachers were creating something... just not what I intended.  Maybe they are the G/T ones?

Here are more teachers engaged in the different activities...

Finger Knitting

Augmented Reality

More Finger Knitting

Pipe Cleaner Challenge

            

             Stop Motion Video

All in all, I think the teachers enjoyed themselves... a little stress relief goes a long way this time of year.

Technology Tuesday: Augmented Reality + Writing

I have been wanting to use Augmented Reality in a lesson for a while and finally figured out a way to do it.  I am using a Chromville coloring page to inspire writing in my 2nd graders.  Chromville is a website and an app.  Print the coloring pages from the website and thenuse the app to make them "come to life".

I printed off a page from the character, Zoe's stash.  I gave the students about 10-15 minutes to color and told them to be thinking about a story that could go along with the picture of Zoe swimming. 

When they finished coloring, we used the iPads and the Chromville app to make the picture in an augmented reality picture of Zoe swimming and diving with the fish.

The students are super excited to see the picture come alive.  It is always so fun to see their reactions.  The hardest part is keeping the iPad still for the 3 seconds it takes for the camera to read the picture. 

Within the app there is a camera button so the students took a picture of their 3D picture.  Then we opened the Write About This App (we used the free version which only allows you save one story, but there is a paid version where you can save multiple times).

This app allows you to import a picture and then write a story to go along with it.  The students put imported their picture and began writing.

When they finished, the can save it to the gallery and email or save it to the camera roll.  THis was a fun way to change up writing.  I think using the Augmented Reality picture helped to engage them a little more than just a promt.