Mega Bites and Messages

The Best Laid Plans

I love January- March. There are a lot less “special “assemblies, field trips, and parties that pull students from my classroom. I look forward to these nice long uninterrupted times for instruction. Here is where I hope to begin. A kind of road map for January.

Student Projects:

1st GradeAfter examining the last few projects I want to challenge my students to write more descritive stories using adjectives. Since this group of students studies mammals, fish, reptiles and birds I thought it might be fun to make up imaginary animals.  We will start by using the “Make my Wild Self Website” and then move to KidPix where we will design our own mystical creatures and give them  magical powers.  Using the 5 senses template  from Inspiration students can brain storm descriptive words to use in their writing.   After the pictures andword banks are saved, Students will have the tools to write desriptive sentences about their creatures. We will then email these to a class in the UK and have the student there draw a picture using the descroption the students sent. It will be fun to compare the two drawings.  We may even submit our drawings to http://www.monsterexchange.org/ ”Monster Exchange”This should segway nicely into a unit of Fairy Tales.

1st Grade

Virtual Flat Stanleys

I am going to read a funny book called “FLAT STANLEY” by Jeff Brown to students.

This book is about a young boy named  I am going to have students email virtual Flat Stanleys to visit cities in the US. We will be asking each person who gets a Stanely to tell us about the city he is visiting and email us back.

3rd Grade-

 I tend to ignore much of the preparations for the elections as  I have found politics and religion have caused more headaches for classroom teachers then they are worth. That being said, once the election is over and the new president has been choosen an  opportunity presents itself to have students  learn about the inauguration, and discuss the issues our country is facing. To this end I am having my third graders write a friendky letter to President Elect Obama, After the letters are completed I am going to have the students read the letters using voice thread.

4th Grade-

Our school  gives out something called AtACats. It is a similar to at-a-boys.These are read over the school PA and everyone looks forward to having their name read as someone who did something nice. Since 4th grade is a real transitional time for children and learning how to be more accepting  andgetting along with other is always a good thing….I am going so a  project that prpmotes  and looks for positive quailiesin others. We will begin with a word web and brainstorm qualities of good friends. After each student has typed in the word list we generated it  will be  copied  and pasted  into Wordle. A quick screen shot will save the list for each student. During the concluding sessions eaxh students will Open a word Processing Document andtype their name  at the top. We will them play roundrobin with students rotating through each computer station typing in a compliment about that person.

5th Grade

The term thinking outside the box is likely one of the most over used terms . My goal is get them to look and think beyond the worksheet written text and  memorized facts. My goal is to make use of the knowledge that they have been assimilating, and use it in new and different ways. To this end we will be using a media-rich authoring environment and visual programming system  called squeak. We will be making toys- well actually e toys. We will begin by using http://www.squeakland.org/tutorials/demos/ .  Printables for my visual learners will be found here.

6th Grade-

Animation is a highly engaging avenue for student learning. By 6th grade students have put pen to paper to write any  number of stories and sometimes you can hear the groaning sounds, when you are passing  in the hallway , when a writing is assigned. This generation of Brief Facebook type sentences and instant messaging  tells us students will write -when it is important to them. Add cool little avatars that will act out the drama-and write they will. Using Divilver, and Keerploff students will be able to write scripts and create animated features. Digital Story telling+animation

Junior High

Students will learn how to license their creations.. http://creativecommons.org/videos/  Students choose Gimp or Google to create a unique design and then upload it under the creative commons license. We will viewed several videos at the Creative Commons website: Wanna Work Together, Building on the Past, and Mix Tape. This has introduced the concept of selecting a license based on how you want others to use your work.

Projects for the Teacher

I also believe students need to see that their teachers are still learning as well. So I have given myself a few assignments as well

• I need to check out Twitter and see if it is any different from Facebook and figure out if I have time for it.
• Do a better job of keeping up on my RSS reader
• Learn Flash
• Put together a unit for GPS devices
• Start creating handouts for the MACUL workshop I am giving.