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:)


Picture taken from http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2605/4141782065_a1078d61d0_t.jpg

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.

Photo taken from http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5009/5289725686_849216e97f_t.jpg

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?

Picture taken from http://www.flickr.com/photos/bartbv/4502746840/

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.

Picture taken from http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2532/4145419287_43c4280126_t.jpg

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:)

All good classes must come to an end!

Today was the last day of my first class on my journey through the Instructional Technology program. The entire week was filled with great people and tons of great new technologies. Our final project included incorporating all the different technologies we have learned throughout the week. These technologies included Glogster, Google sites, Google doc, Jing, iMovie, Skype, Garage Band, and so much more. My team used lots of these technologies to create a lesson for second graders about community jobs. We focused on having the students make a Glogster. If you haven't heard or used Glogster it is definitely worth checking out!! I had never used Glogster until we started our final project, but it is definitely something I will be using in my classroom next year. For our small unit on community jobs we had the students use different types of medias to learn more about the different kinds of jobs in a community using an RWLD. Then the students picked the job they wanted to have when they got older. With the job they chose they would create a Glogster with 4 different facts, 2 pictures, and an optional video. If you would like to see the lesson in more detail please check out the website we used! Even if you can't use our community lesson I would recommend you find a different way to use a Glogster in your classroom.

Resources for using Glogster:

Here is a video on how to use Glogster Edu- http://i41.tinypic.com/2drv3ao.jpg
Here is an article about using Glogster in education: Glogster Launches Education Development Program
Here are some written directions on how to use Glogster- http://www.ehow.com/how_5941261_create-poster-glogster.html

Mac = Frustrating

I was never a Macintosh user growing up. When I got my first teaching job I had to learn how to use a Mac because that was the only type of computer in the entire school. It was frustrating to learn how to operate a new computer system. When I moved to a new school I was back in my comfort zone, a Mac free zone that is! I know some people love their Mac's, and they do have some good qualities, but they aren't for me. Today we had to create a video using iMovies and the process was exhausting and I found myself frustrated with a Mac all over again. Not only were were working with a new program, but also a system we weren't familiar with. Fortunately I remembered a few things from using the Mac last year. It's crazy how two pieces of technology that do essentially the same thing can be so different. Look at this site to see which is best for you. It comes down to your needs and which type of computer meets that need. For those of us in this class that aren't Mac users, well we will just have to get tough and suck it up! Here are a list of sites to help us get through iMovie.

This site gives you a basic visual of how to get started with iMovie:
http://www.cmu.edu/computing/doc/contributed/imovie/index.html

At this site you will find a more detailed description of how to use iMovie, add pictures/videos, and edit your work:
http://mvtv.org/imovie.pdf

Here is a video you can watch on how to get started with iMovie 9:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjrS9iX_txU

Picture courtesy of http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4058/4528239534_c3b20f96ef.jpg

Top Secret!!!

I love taking field trips in school and our field trip was very cool today! We had the chance to go out to the Cedar Falls Industrial Park and take a look around a very top secret place. What makes this place so top secret you ask????? It is full of servers from several companies whether that company is important or not. Some of the servers were main servers for a compnay and some were just back-ups for a company. Another cool part about where the servers are kept is that if there as a fire that fire could be put out in a matter of seconds by a chemical that sucks out the air. As we toured the building it was amazing to see how many fans they need, the number of generators ready to start if there is a problem, and the amount of electricity they use to keep everything running. I believe our tour guide told us that they use 30% of Cedar Falls electricity! This would be a great building to think about using solar energy. What a great day!

Picture from http://mpalternativeenergy.com/images/windmills.jpg

Oooopppsss

http://i33.tinypic.com/qqrceo.jpg
I learned today that I am supposed to be blogging after each class this week. Sorry faithful readers that I forgot to blog yesterday! Yesterday was very interesting as we looked at Second Life. At first I thought Second Life was pretty cool. I created my character and set forth going from island to island. As we kept exploring Second Life I got a little bored. I'm not a big video game person and Second Life reminds me of a video game. It was also a bit frustrating that I couldn't change my second life character the way I wanted to and the islands weren't loading up very quickly. I would say the coolest part about Second Life was when I went to Hallucination Island where I got to experience what it was like to be a schizophrenic. The "voices" in my head never stopped and you can truly appreciate all that a schizophrenic has to deal with. We also learned that this is not a program to be used with kids under 18. As a teacher of 2nd graders I was a little annoyed that we spent 4 hours playing with it! However, Sara from our class had some amazing alternatives for Second Life that we can use with younger kids. Check out the other alternatives on her blog at Sara's Sighs.

Rockin' Robin Tweedle-lee-dee-dee-dee, tweedle-lee-dee-dee

Today was my first day on campus for one of my classes and it was awesome. I thought I knew how to use a lot of different tools but today's activities took me to a whole new level. We looked at Twitter/TweetDeck, Diigo, Jing, and, iGoogle, and Google Docs. I'm not sure if I'm sold on the whole idea of tweeting yet, but it has proven to be useful today in class. We downloaded TweetDeck which allowed us to organize and group our tweets. Through TweetDeck I've been able to see all my classmates comments during and after class. For a project we are working on creating surveys for the class to fill out and sending them through Twitter. I think the coolest TweetDeck experience of the day was when we skyped with Vicki Davis author of the blog Cool Cat Teacher. While we were talking to her we were able to tweet questions/comments to her for her to respond to. This teacher does amazing things with her students and having the chance to speak with her and ask her questions was incredible and I encourage you to check out her blog up above. So how will I be using Twitter you ask? I think it will be used for educational purposes only on a needs basis. I follow Superman (Tom Welling) and even he doesn't use it 24/7...too busy saving the world I guess.

Will computers ever replace teachers???

http://tiger.towson.edu/~sharre2/images/technologygraphic.jpg

My brother always tries to tell me that someday there will be a time where a lot of teachers won't be needed because computers will take over. I personally think there will always be a need for teachers, but then again I don't want to lose my job:) Awhile back when I was at home visiting my parents I read an interesting article in the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier about a new performance based diploma academy for students that are "digital" learners. This academy is literally taking away the teacher and replacing him/her with a computer program that teaches them the concepts digitally and allows them to work at their own pace. Of course there is one teacher supervising the group of kids but it makes you wonder, can computers replace teachers? The program targets those that are failing or on the verge of dropping out of school as another alternative for getting the education needed. While this concept is a great idea I feel that those who study hard in school to get good grades and are also digital learners are being left out of this opportunity. Both Waterloo high schools have had a huge success rate with this program, but the only downfall is that students aren't getting the writing and science lab requirements needed through the program.