Extending my own Learning

With the beginning of 2016 right around the corner, I want to talk about one of the things that I want to try and learn in the coming year.  As I mentioned in an older post http://crookclass.blogspot.com/2015/11/one-teacher-two-teachers-old-teacher.html, one of the things that I think every teacher should be involved in is always learning more for yourself and becoming a lifelong learner.  One of the main things that I want to focus my learning on for 2016 is on using Chrome Extensions.

My main reason for this as my focus is that I know that I am doing a lot using technology, especially Chromebooks (both with my students and for my own productivity).  I think I often make things harder for myself because I tend to forget about the Chrome Extensions.  I want to stop reinventing the wheel and learn to use the tools that are already provided for me.  Why haven't I bothered to learn about these before?  Well, I have found that I am open to learn a new Chrome Extension if it is recommended to me by someone else.  I don't find myself searching out Chrome Extensions because I feel that I can probably do what I need to do and NOT have to learn something new.  (Sometimes it seems more tasking and daunting to find the extension, download it, and then learn how to use it properly before I can actually be productive.)  One of the ways I plan to learn more about the various extensions is to try out a new one each week...and remind myself that if I don't like the extension, I can get rid of it.  

Here is to 2016 and continual learning!  Happy New Year!

Looking Forward

As the new calendar year approaches, I often think about how I want to change things about myself or the way I do things.  While we are not starting a new school year at this point, this time of year always makes me ask myself what I would like to see happen differently in my classroom.  Just a small example of this is that there will be a new seating chart in my classroom when we go back in one week.  But thinking a little more deeper, there are some things that I have already been working on changing within my classroom throughout this school year.
Living in such a digital and technological society and time, I have felt a great need to teach students (and teachers) about Digital Citizenship.  It seems that there are so many people (of varying ages) that don't understand the importance of being a good digital citizen.  This year in my second grade classroom, I have been giving my students specific lessons on Digital Citizenship from commonsensemedia.org  When we get back to school, we will be finishing up the second of three digital citizenship units.  As part of my DALLA project for this year, I am focusing on digital citizenship.  Once we finish our third unit, the students will be working on creating their own video about different components of digital citizenship.
Some of you might be wondering why this is so important to me and why I want to invite this as a positive change into both my classroom and my whole school site.  My school site this year was able to get 1:1 Chromebooks for every single student K - 5.  The middle school and high school in my district also by the middle of January will have 1:1 for every single student.  At the high school level, the students will be bringing their Chromebooks back and forth between home and school everyday.  So now that you know a little bit of the background, let me explain why this is so important to me.
I have seen too many people (kids and adults, and not just in the education field) that don't use proper internet etiquette, get caught into web sites/situations where they are uncomfortable, or don't understand the impact that their own digital footprint can make in the world.  It is my feeling that if we change how we teach our kids about technology, its uses, and digital citizenship, that it will begin to form easy and good habits that can follow our students throughout the rest of their lives.  The only way our society is moving is forward and the technology is going to become ever-more a part of daily life.  My hope in teaching 2nd graders about digital citizenship is that not only will they apply it in their own technology use and remember it for years to come, but that maybe some of these kids will also pass this information on to other people that they associate with in other settings.  While this change that I want to see in classrooms definitely won't happen all at once, I would like to think that by continuing this in my own class that others may eventually see the importance of keeping students readily informed on technology etiquette and digital footprints.

Christmas Celebration --- LOTS of Pictures!

I decided to do just a post of pictures from our last week in the classroom before we went on Winter Break.  These pictures include some fun P.E. times where the kids had to run and then freeze in the shape of presents or trees, some from our Second Grade Christmas Performance, and decorating our sugar cookies in class as part of our class party on our last day in December.

 A little hard to see, but this is part of our 2nd Grade Christmas Performance.

I hope that everyone is having a wonderful time celebrating the holidays with family and friends!  See you in 2016!

Caps for Sale! and Hour of Code

The students this week have been the ultimate Busy Bees!  We finished up our unit on money.  The students have been counting coins and determining the values for quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies.  This week we also read the story, "Caps for Sale!"  In the story the caps were worth $0.50 each and in small groups the students designed their own caps and chose their own value of what their caps were worth.  The class had a great time showing the different cap values through drawing them and also using fake and real coins.

Our Language Arts focus for this week was a story about African-American Inventors.  The class wrote their own research papers on different inventors.  They started by taking notes from a document sent to them through Google Classroom and then they wrote their own informational pieces of text.

This week we also had some very special occasions for lunch.  We had 4 students who spent some Class Dojo Points to come into the classroom and have lunch with me.  We had such a great lunch together!

Lunch Group Selfie

The other special lunch event that started this week is the new school-wide VIP lunch.  Students who are following school rules in the cafeteria have the chance to be picked for our special VIP lunch.  These students get the chance to attend a fancy, quiet lunch and be rewarded for their hard work.  Thursday on this week was the first day of VIP lunch and from our class, Ava was selected to attend the VIP lunch.  Check out the fancy VIP lunch.

This week we have also spent a lot of time preparing for our Christmas performance, which includes some Christmas plays and fun Christmas songs.  (Our performances will be on Thursday, December 17th at 1pm and Friday, December 18th at 9am.)  While we have been preparing, we also had the chance to watch a performance.  Mrs. Hoff's group of 5th grade readers performed a reader's theater of "The Gingerbread Man."  This was a great opportunity for us to watch others perform and practice being a good audience.  

To end the week, we celebrated Computer Science week by participating in the Hour of Code.  We used the site code.org to try our hand at writing some lines of code.  The students had a great time with this and many of them were able to write over 30 lines of code.  The class did a great job at being computer programmers and each of them got to take home their own certificate to show off their great accomplishments!

Student-written lines of code

Snow, Soil, and Toys

Our first day back after being on vacation for a week we started the morning off with some snow.  It wasn't very much snow and only lasted for about 25 minutes, but it was a very exciting morning in our classroom.  Check out a few pictures from our fun time in the snow.

On Wednesday of this week we had a different type of P.E activity.  It started off with us watching a short video clip from "Toy Story."  The students had to observe how the toys moved both when they were around humans and by themselves.  Our game consisted of the students acting like various toys from the movie "Toy Story" and then when they were told "Andy is coming," they had to freeze and drop as if they were toys that didn't want to be caught by their human owner.  We had some Buzz Lightyear, Woody, Mr. Potato Head, Slinky Dog, and green aliens.  The class was able to come up with so many different ideas they could use to incorporate their movement in to match those of the toys in the movie.

Slinky Dogs

Aliens

Our focus in science for the month of December is that some events on earth occur quickly, while others occur at a slower rate.  An example of the differences here would be a volcano is a quickly changing event and erosion is a slower changing event.  This week we talked about erosion and the students got to see erosion in action.  We used a pan of dirt and gradually added water to it.  As a class we discussed why the dirt was changing.  While in the classroom, on the scale of a lasagna pan, erosion seemed to occur rather quickly, but we also discussed the amount of dirt, amount of water, and space.  We determined as a class that normally erosion will occur much slower and will also be affected if the material eroding is dirt or rock.  We had some great conversations this week about what erosion is and how it effects the planet earth.  Here is a link to one version of the science experiment we did on erosion if you want to try it at home, too.  http://teacher.scholastic.com/dirt/erosion/ 

We had a great first week back after vacation.  Now we will be working on our Christmas songs and play for our grade-level performance.  Parents, invitations for this event will be going home next week, 

How many days until Christmas Break? :)

With the holidays quickly approaching, I have to remind myself of this on a daily basis.  The atmosphere in my classroom is very different from what it normally is.  While I have a very good class this year, I am feeling the pressure and stresses of getting everything done in my classroom and in my personal life before Christmas.  Between classroom plays, grade level performances, and every day curriculum in the classroom, I think this is a perfect time to remind ourselves to take a step back and calm down (even if it is just for a few moments of the day).

One Teacher, Two Teachers, Old Teacher... New Teacher

This post is for those who are training to become a new teacher.  There are certainly many things to consider when studying to be a teacher, or any other profession for that matter, but there are some key points that I would like to touch on that I thought would have been helpful when going through my own studies to become a teacher.  I was probably given this advice within my credential program, but I don't recall that specifically.  I feel that most of the advice that I am going to give came through my own beginning experiences as a teacher.  *Please Note: I have only been teaching for a few short years and I definitely don't consider myself an expert, but I am happy to share my thoughts on some helpful tips.*
New Teacher Tip #1
Always be a willing learner.  Sometimes it is hard for teachers (or soon-to-be teachers) to be the student or learner; that doesn't mean we can't learn, but it is more natural for us to be the one giving information instead of receiving it.  When I first started my credential program, I thought that I was going to teach in the way that I was taught.  It seemed like a logical thought at the time because that is what I had known up until that point.  One of the most valuable things I acquired from my teaching program is to be willing to try new things out constantly.  During my student teaching, I tried to do things the way I had seen them done in my own educational career, but I quickly found that it didn't work for me.  I had to find my own style of teaching, classroom management, and working with individual students.  There are times where I turn to another teacher's style of teaching (usually one that I can remember from when I was in school) and I deeply appreciate those moments if it only means changing it up a bit for me and my students.  However, it is extremely important to know how your style of teaching reflects the type of classroom environment you want to create.
New Teacher Tip #2
Don't expect perfection out of everything.  As an individual and a teacher, I often consider myself a bit of a perfectionist.  I found out that in teaching there is no absolute perfection --- either for the teacher or the students.  A career as a teacher is within the people services category; in other words, you are working with people, and specifically young people.  Of course, we can always shoot for the stars and plan the "perfect lesson," but the people factor (especially 20-30 different people at a time in a single space) can dampen the plans a little bit.  One example of this for me was that I had spent a good deal of time planning "the perfect lesson" and got into my classroom that morning and the students were behaving differently than normal, asking more "off-topic" questions, and focused on the smaller details of the larger assignment.  I quickly realized that my perfect plan was not going to happen that day, or maybe any other day for that matter, and started following the lead of my students.  We took the lesson in a much different direction than I had anticipated, but by the end of the lesson I felt that not only had my students learned more than I originally hoped for, but they were learning with an interest that involved the entire class.  My original perfect plan didn't happen, and what did happen was definitely NOT perfect, but seeing active and engaged learners was worth the imperfection.  This lack of perfection can also be applied to the assignments your students turn in.  The idea of education is that the students are learning, so it most likely won't be perfect ---- and that is perfectly acceptable.
New Teacher Tip #3
Embrace ALL of the differences.  This last tip ties in well with my other two tips and is what I consider the icing on the cake.  Every... and I mean EVERY.... situation is different.  To mention a few, Every district, school site, principal, school climate. teacher, and student is DIFFERENT.  Remember Tip #2 ---- your main factor in teaching is people.  Numerous lives, cultures, social and economic status situations, and family settings will enter your classroom each year.  In thinking about the winter season that we are approaching, I often think of my students as snowflakes.  Every single student, just like a snowflake, is different.  No two are alike.  Each student has their own unique talents and strengths along with flaws and weaknesses.  When I first started teaching, the differences scared me in a way because there are so many things going on in a single classroom at one time that each student brings into the school environment.  How was I ever going to be able to meet all their needs and still teach with my own style?!?!?  I have since learned through experience to embrace the differences, every single one of them.  The different students in my classroom is what creates the climate and learning environment that encourages learning, motivation, and critical thinking skills.  From my students' various methods of learning and their various backgrounds, I am able to create a learning environment where my students can feel accepted for the unique individuals they each represent in my classroom.  Together our differences help us create a community of learners.

So.... One Teacher, Two Teacher, Old Teacher, New Teacher:
One Teacher can help many students become smart
Two Teachers can create a wonderful team of cheer
the Old Teacher has a great amount of experience to share and depart
to the New Teacher who becomes a lifetime learner with a new set of students each year

Field Trip and Family

This last week in class has been very busy, but also very exciting.  We spent a lot of our week talking about firefighters, fire stations, and fire engines to get ourselves prepared for our field trip to the Kelseyville Firehouse on Thursday.  We walked to the fire station and got to see many different things.  The class had the opportunity to look closely at a firefighter's gear.  We had a chance to see the different tools that are on the fire trucks and they also were able to get in to the back of the ambulance.  We walked through the fire station and saw where the firefighters sleep, eat, work, and play when they are not helping people and fighting fires.  At the end of the field trip, each student received a fire helmet and a coloring packet on fire safety.  It was such a wonderful trip and it was a great way to finish up our study on our story "Fighting the Fire."

The class at the fire station

Serenity with her Uncle Joey, Kelseyville Fire Chief 

Looking at tools

After our field trip, we began our preparations for our Grandparent/Special Person Event.  As a class we made bread and butter to serve our guests.  Making the butter went very well with our recent studies in science about states of matter, specifically liquids and solids.  The students realized that their heavy cream started as a liquid and changed to a solid state after shaking it in a jar in a group effort.  While we were making the bread, we talked about how baking the bread in the hot oven is also changing the bread using heat, and again going from a liquid to a solid.

 
Making butter from heavy cream. Shake, shake, shake!
 
                                                                    The finished product
         
 
 
Kneading bread,

Here is a link to the recipe for the bread:
http://www.somethingedible.com/index.php/food_drink/entry/four_ingredients_a_zip-top_bag_and_the_patience_of_a_saint_baking_bread_wit/

Our big Celebration Across Generations day with grandparents, aunts, uncles, and other family members was today and was a huge success!  The students had made a book for their special person with important things that each does with their special person.  The students introduced their special person to the class and then they got to read their completed book to their guest of honor.  We ended our celebration by eating our delicious bread and butter.  It was so great to have our class making memories with their own family members in our classroom.

As if our week wasn't busy enough, we also had an experience today where the students got to play with Spheros.   We have been working on some basic programming and coding for some of our STEAM Fridays over the last few weeks.  So, today they had a chance to play with a robotic ball that they controlled ("programmed") with the use of an iPad.  Thank you LCOE for helping us out with that one.  We had a great time with the Spheros and the class looks forward to using them again.

Spheros in action!

The last thing the class did today was become the teacher themselves.  The students in my class taught the students in Mrs. Sonneville's class how to do some basic coding using the website kodable.com  This was great because it gave my class another chance to use kodable.com and it also helped them see how they can also teach things to other people.  

After such a busy week, I am pretty sure we are all ready for a week off!  Have a wonderful and Happy Thanksgiving!