Start the School Year with the 3 R's!

What do "The 3 R's" mean to you?

This school year I challenge you 

to look at this set of 3 R's!  

In doing some research for a school leadership project I have been searching for books, articles and videos that address...

RELATIONSHIPS, RELEVANCE, and RIGOR.

Check out this video!

Relationships could be the single most important factor in helping students reach goals in academics and in life.  It's up to us to build positive relationships with students and it starts on day 1!  Take time to learn about students' lives, likes, and dislikes... and don't forget to share your own!

Relevance in curriculum is difficult!  At a time when standards seem to be in limbo and test scores are the predominant focus it is becoming increasingly difficult to bring relevance to the forefront of our teaching.  It is up to us to help students learn to engage and connect to learning.  Take time to communicate the why and not just the what when it comes to learning targets.

Rigor is more than just more difficult or deeper content.  It means setting high expectations for all students.  It's up to us to help students set goals and reach success.  Take time to let students know you believe in them and that they should believe in themselves!

I'm eager to get this school year off to a great start and implement these 3 R's for all students... 

and for myself!  

Have a great school year!

Play in the 21st Century Classroom

Hello!  I'm Hannah from 21st Century Kindergarten and I am super excited to be one of the newest contributors to "Who's Who and Who's New!"  I am a Kindergarten-teaching-mom-of-three-wife-to-a-teacher-and-basketball-coach in Kentucky.  My goal as a teacher is to bring Kindergarten into the 21st Century while staying true to teaching strategies that help my young students learn best.

Play in the Kindergarten classroom has become a thing of the past with the advent of higher expectations, new core standards, and the pressures of high-stakes testing trickling down to primary teachers. But, after doing some research for a graduate course this summer and recognizing the needs of my students, 

I decided it was time to bring play back into my 21st Century classroom.  

Each month of this school year I have chosen a new theme for dramatic play and have centered all of my play and explore centers around that theme.  All activities are aligned to Common Core and 21st Century Learner standards, provide for student choice, and give opportunities for those important lessons about social interaction and conflict-resolution.  

By devoting time every week (if not every day) to play, I have found that the sense of community among my students has improved, their thinking and questioning skills are better, and their overall academic performance is higher than classes I have had in the past who did not have as many opportunities for exploration.

Young students NEED to PLAY!

This month our theme is Communication and our dramatic play center is a post office.  Students are enjoying making stamps, weighing packages, paying for stamps, and writing/delivering letters and postcards to family and friends.  At the computers students can play Valentine's Day games and practice typing "emails and blogs" in Word.  At the block center students are creating communication devices including walkie-talkies and cell phones.  I bought a couple of cute dramatic play sets from TpT and have also added some of my own ideas over the course of the last couple weeks.  I generally let the activities evolve as the students play and add to them as they ask for items.

Check out these photos straight from my classroom!

 Next week I plan to add a twist to the communication theme with opportunities to play "Oval Office!"  Students will be able to pretend to be the President, work at a desk, and communicate with their constituents through press conferences on the Smart Board (aka video themselves with the document camera and live-broadcast speeches on the board).  You can kick off your Presidents' Day studies with this FREEBIE from my store,

21st Century K:

Grab this FREEBIE!

Design Challenges in the Classroom

Hello Bloggie Friends!  It's Deniece from This Little Piggy Reads.  

Today we're going to talk about something you might be familiar with and you may not.  Have you heard about the Maker Movement?   Basically, it's a group of educators, researchers and even companies who are interested in allowing children to explore their creative side and incorporates the ability to be the maker, not the consumer.
My team has taken on this approach to teaching and learning our Gifted Students.  Our students visit our classrooms once a week.  We have a designated design time each week.  So far, we have completed some amazing challenges.  My favorite was our game challenge.  To begin, we watched a video called, Caine's Arcade.

Basically, Caine is a 9 year old who created his own game arcade entirely out of cardboard boxes!! HOW COOL?  My kiddos thought this was amazing.  So amazing that they actually went home and made arcade games - gotta love that!  Our challenge was to design a blueprint of an arcade game and then replicate it using only a box and/or paper products.  This was our 4th Design Challenge and my students really needed help designing a blueprint before jumping into the design challenge.  

 

We've completed other challenges...Build the tallest and widest bridge; Make Butter; Create a Floating Boat.  If you walk into my classroom during a design challenge, EVERY student is engaged, EVERY student is collaborating and EVERY student is problem solving.  

You might wonder how these can connect to your teaching standards?  They definitely can! Obviously, it's pretty easy to find a design project that aligns to science standards.  However, I have found that math is almost always utilized as well - especially measurement which is a standard that students across my district need help with.  I've also used these design challenges with novel studies and short stories.  When I read Charlotte's Web with my 3rd Graders they completed a design challenge to make a Ferris Wheel. Click here to read my post about their great designs!  

I know that many of us have a few weeks before the Holiday Break and many teachers find themselves doing a lot of the same things - spice things up with a Design Challenge.  

This Little Piggy Wants to Know...Have your students completed an awesome Design Challenge?  

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Augmented Reality is Cool

I am so excited to show you something I learned with Nancy Alvarez, author extraordinaire, on the Who's Who blog at the Technopalooza conference. Several weeks ago I flew to Texas to present at a conference. My session was on augmented reality. Haven't heard of AR? Well there are a lot of great resources and apps on the market. At its core, AR is when you scan a "trigger image" and some type of overlay appears on your device. It might be a picture, a video, or even some type of 3D image. I like to think of it as QR codes on steroids.We presented on augmented reality and I made some nursery rhyme AR dice. When I arrived in Texas, I realized I forgot to bring my scissors and tape. I needed them to cut out my AR paper dice I had made for my session. I didn't want my paper dice to get damaged on the flight. So at the conference, someone showed Nancy a fabulous idea for creating my dice using a wooden block and Mod Podge. So you might be thinking, "What does this wooden block have to do with AR?" Well rather than tell you let me show you.

Really cool, huh? If you are interested in learning how to make your own AR resources check out my Google site. If you would like the trigger images shown in the video you can click here. Hope this information helps you! I love to share ideas for using technology in the classroom. Come visit me sometime @Tech with Jen.

Why Doodle?

 

How can we afford to "waste" valuable time in our classrooms letting our students doodle?

Sunny Brown gives the current definition of “doodle” in her TED talk, “Doodlers, unite!”:

“In the 17th century, a doodle was a simpleton or a fool, as in “Yankee Doodle.” In the 18th century, it became a verb, and it meant to swindle or ridicule or to make fun of someone. In the 19th century, it was a corrupt politician. And today, we have what is perhaps our most offensive definition, at least to me, which is the following: “To doodle officially means to dawdle, to dilly dally, to monkey around, to make meaningless marks, to do something of little value, substance or import and,” my personal favorite, “to do nothing.” No wonder people are averse to doodling at work."

However before a child can speak, they can draw pictures. Drawing helps children understand the world around them and helps them to make sense of the world. When children draw, it is without fear of what others will think, or to try to make a perfect representation of their world, but rather an attempt to communicate and understand what is going on around them. Here's a drawing of friends by a young student.

To take it one step further, the beginning of humankind first communicated through the use of cave paintings and we've learned more about that time from their artwork than in any other way.

So why spend valuable class time doodling?

Doodling greatly benfits our students and gives voice to learners who learn visually. According to Linda Silverman, director of both the Institute for the Study of Advanced Development and the Gifted Development Center and author of Upside-Down Brilliance: The Visual-Spatial Learner, 37% of the population are visual learners.

Doodling helps students retain information. When students read a story or listen to a lecture and  doodle their understanding of that information their retention is increased.

As Sunni Brown states further in her TED talk, re-defining what doodling is:

“Doodling is really to make spontaneous marks to help yourself think. That is why millions of people doodle. Here’s another interesting truth about the doodle: People who doodle when they’re exposed to verbal information retain more of that information than their non-doodling counterparts. We think doodling is something you do when you lose focus, but in reality, it is a preemptive measure to stop you from losing focus. Additionally, it has a profound effect on creative problem-solving and deep information processing.”

In the arts, it allows students to draw without fear of failing and helps them to find their own artistic voice.

It uses abstract thinking skills. With the institution of the common core and it's emphasis on the higher level thinking skills, this is a valuable opportunity for students to use those skills.

How can teachers integrate doodling in the classroom?

Integrating doodling into the classroom isn't as hard as you might think. In Language Arts students can be asked to finish a doodle starter and then write about what they've drawn. I have a doodle starter lesson for elementary classroom teachers.

 

When reading a book for class the students can use post-it notes to doodle their ideas or thoughts as they are reading. This allows them to have a better understanding and recall of the story when they are done.

If you click on the image below it will take you to a great blog that explains SketchNotes in a visual way!

 

I also teach a doodling lesson in my visual arts class. Here are some pictures of my students working on a more structured doodle lesson,  Doodle Landscapes:

 

Another activity that would be fun for students is to draw flowers, or bugs and then doodle inside the shapes! What a fun, simple craft to celebrate the coming of Spring! Here's a fun blog with step by step instructions on creating zentangle flowers! Check it out by clicking on the image!

 

 

You can find lots of great zentangle patterns on pinterest. Here is a board with some zentangle ideas and step by step patterns!

 

Doodling for fun is a great way to get students warmed up and get their creative juices flowing. The video I put together using visuals of different doodles is free. Access FREE video by clicking on the picture below.

 

21st Century Skills

Doodling is about using visual skill to solve problems. Creative problem-solving is one of the most important 21st century skills that our students will need to succeed. Best of all, no student ever complains that the day was horrible because they had to doodle! So can you tell I'm into doodling?! Lol! Take a chance and let your students amaze you with their creativity. Start doodling in your classroom! I'm sure many of you incorporate doodling into your classrooms already, how do you do it?

 

So go ahead, start doodling!

Sabrina Wingren