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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