It's a Wonderful Life!

I love Christmas time and everything it has to offer...including being done with my last project! Hopefully you have been reading my blog and keeping up with all the strategies I have been learning for Selection and Integration of Instructional Technologies. I have now taken all those strategies and placed them into one unit. I decided to do a unit on Balance and Motion for this assignment. While completing each part in a lesson/unit was fairly easy to visual, putting them all into one unit was a lot harder to visual. Needless to say I had to listen to a lot of Christmas music to keep me in the Christmas spirit:)


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Are your lessons universal?

Every student learns in a different way. In class we have been learning about Universal Design for Learning and how teachers can create an environment supported by UDL. Before looking at CAST UDL Lesson Builder, a website designed to help create a UDL environment, I thought I was doing a fairly good job teaching in a way that was meeting the needs of my learners. Of course reviewing the site gave me some new and fresh ideas, but I do a fairly decent job teaching in a variety of ways. The part that I need to work on the most in my classroom is creating multiple practices or independent work practices that have variety and allow the students to choose which method works best for them. This is something that I will keep in mind as I continue throughout the school year. I took a lesson that I teach each year regarding time to the nearest five minutes and adjusted it to make it more universal. Even though time is not a huge project, it is still something that is important for my second graders to learn. You can see my adapted lesson here and how I made it more universal. If there are any more ideas of what I can do with time I would be happy to
hear them.

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A Different Kind of X-Mas Card

In years past the 2nd and 3rd grade teachers have been able to eat together! Since we were separated this year we still try to get together and we decided it would be fun to remember the good 'ol days of eating lunch together and being the "lunch bunch"! Check out our first Christmas card ever!!

Photo Card

Merry Presents Christmas

Create personalized Christmas photo cards at Shutterfly.com.

View the entire collection of cards.

ITEC 2011

I had an awesome opportunity to participate in this year's ITEC conference in Des Moines, IA. There were a lot of great presenters full of resources and new ideas. Here is a quick video of some of the new things I learned at ITEC this year.

Internet: Friend or Foe

The internet can be a scary place for parents and teachers. This might be the very reason parents and teachers hesitate when it comes to letting their child or student online. While the internet can be dangerous, it also provides a lot of opportunities to learn and grow. They key is teaching kids to be smart while on the internet. Teaching cyber citizenry is something that should come from both teachers and parents. With everyone's support and effort the internet can be a safer place. Common Sense is a great place to get started with teaching internet safety for kids of all ages. I went ahead and created a mock lesson for my master's class starting with Internet safety. Check it out and see if it is a lesson that would work for you to use in your classroom or with your child.

21st. Century Classroom

You may think that your classroom fits under the 21st century classroom but does it really? A principal in NW Iowa by the name of Shawn Holloway uses a checklist like this one as he completes his walkthroughs to assess how things are going. I completed the checklist for one of my grad classes to see how "21st century" my classroom was. At first I was thinking that I was shocked by how many boxes I didn't get to check off. Then again after thinking about it I shouldn't have been surprised. You can see how I assess my classroom's walkthough went by looked at the checklist I completed. A question I throw out to everyone is how can you make your classroom a 21st century classroom when materials and resources are limited? I know this may sound like an excuse and we have heard it many times, but I feel as though it is a valid excuse. It is a fight just to get into the computer lab or use the mobile lab at my school. How do you get past that?

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Book Bags

Since I started Daily 5 after the school year started I wasn't able to get individual book boxes. We have to have our orders in by the end of the previous school year if we want anything. All I had was 14 cardboard book boxes, which was not enough for all my students. My original plan was to have them share a book box with another student that was similar to their reading level. After seeing how Daily 5 works and the importance of choosing a spot away from other kids I knew sharing a book box would not work. One of my classmates mentioned that her school used storage bags their first year. You can get three storage bags for $1.00 at the Dollar Tree. They only had large and extra-large bags so I decided to get the large ones. These bags have been working perfectly! The kids are only supposed to have 3-5 books in their and can change their books out at the beginning of the day. We keep the bags in the boxes I had already planned to use so they can find their bag easily. Of course the bags are not a perfect fit and it looks a bit messy, but so far it is working out perfectly!

TIM Model Lessons

I've been using this blog a lot for classes lately and so the trend will continue. For the past couple of weeks I've been working on writing five lessons where technology is integrated into my classroom. I will admit some of the lessons appear to be a bit weak on the technology side. After writing my lessons and reviewing how the technology was being used I placed each lesson into a cell on the Technology Integration Matrix. It is a really neat interactive matrix that allows you to focus on where your lessons are at currently and what you would need to take them to the next level. I've taken three of my lessons to the next level for this assignment. All five lessons are located on a Google Doc that I created. I hope you enjoy them and let me know what you think!

Our Expectations

When I read in the book that you meet before and after each Daily 4 session I thought that all these meetings would be redundant and the kids would get bored with them. So far I haven't seen any signs of boredom. In face the kids love to come back together after Daily 4 and fill in our graph, even if only one kid gets to do it. I think reviewing the expectations is good for them. We made a T chart of what is expected of them as well as the teacher. I have this hung on our bulletin board so that I refer to them at any time and the kids can see them if they need a reminder. Here is what we put on our T chart.

Student Responsibilities
Read you book
Read quietly
Be respectful
Pick a spot that lets us do our best
Pick the right book
Sound out words we don't know
Use context clues to help you with words

Teacher Responsibilities
Work with students

Where are the resources?

When I started looking for resources regarding the Daily 5 I didn't realize that it would be limited. So far the book written by "the sisters" has been a great resource. I've also been able to go visit another classroom using Daily 5. Being able to see how another teacher uses Daily 5 in a classroom like mine allowed me to see what would work and not work. I also found a website that a different teacher put together about her experience with Daily 5. Even though I've been searching for some articles, I really appreciate the information I've seen or read from other teachers. When you are trying to implement a new method sometimes it's better to get information from teachers who have experience with it.

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Daily 4 Bulletin Board

I wasn't quite sure what to put on my Daily 4 bulletin board at first. I tried to focus on the the important aspects of Daily 5. I was able to visit three classrooms from another school in our district so I feel as thought that also helped direct my focus. As I observed three other second grade teachers I noticed that each one did it a little bit differently. I saw that one teacher had split up the reading block that allowed for three teaching moments and two work sessions. The students participated in a different Daily 5 for each of the work sessions. I liked that idea so that's what I'm trying this year in my classroom. From 9:40-10:05 I am teaching then the kids participate in their first work time and once they finish the work they assume the role of read to self. Then I teach again for 15 minutes and after that they have another work time and participate in Daily 4 once again. Since my role is working with students I'm using the bulletin board to help facilitate their learning so that they can be successful. I made a wheel of the different Daily 4 activities so that they know which one they will complete at that moment. I also have our chart that we created of what is expected of them as well as myself as the teacher. The last thing on our bulletin board is a graph showing our stamina of how long we are able to read to self correctly. Hopefully this bulletin board will be a resource to them throughout the year.

A variation to Daily 5

After looking at the different components to the Daily 5 I've decided to revise the Daily 5 into the Daily 4! The original five components are read to self, read to someone, word work, work on writing, and listening to reading. For this year I've decided to drop the listening to reading. Until I can figure out a way for all students to be able to listen to reading at the same time I will just start with the first four. My bulletin board is up and ready to go. We will be starting with read to self!

Inquiry Project

Fellow bloggers I am back! Starting tonight I will be using my blog to record my journey with the Daily 5. For one of my graduate classes our final assignment is an inquiry project. I've been thinking about ways to make the "free time" during reading more meaningful. After reading the Daily 5 book by Gail Boushey and Joan Moser "the sisters" I'm deciding to see how it works in my second grade classroom. This blog will be used to share my thoughts about the journey. If you have any ideas as to what I can try feel free to comment. I will take any suggestions you may have! Thanks for continuing to follow me and I hope you enjoy my Daily 5 adventure:)