Remember the other day when I told you about Global School Play Day? It was SO great and I’m so glad we participated. Well, a few days later, I saw another tweet (I think someone actually sent it to me knowing I’d be game!) about the JAM World Record. And yep, I was indeed game. We love to move and groove, and who doesn’t want to break a world record with a million-and-a-half of their closest friends? 🙂 We joined in today and it was such a great time!
We voted and decided to follow the routine they provided on the website, rather than go to our beloved GoNoodle for movement. The routine was kind of hard, but we were gritty and moved, moved, moved for our participation in the world record.
Yay! Rm. 202 is moving and shaking through 2015! Did you participate? We’d love to hear about your JAM day!
Ok, so this may not end up being a weekly thing like math warm-ups, and it might not be anything that people even want to read, but for those that do–here you go! Last week I FINALLY got to participate in #1stchat on Twitter. I have wanted to “attend” all year, but the timing had proven to be a really hard one for me to be at my computer (it’s 7 CT on Sunday nights–bedtime!!). For whatever reason, it worked out for me and boy was I SUPER excited to have been able to learn and grow with my #1stchat friends! The topics were many, but one theme that came up was Morning Meeting and how we use this tool to set the stage for a positive learning day. One thing I shared was the in our class we do a joke of the day. It is just a part of the morning welcome screen I have up on the ActivBoard when my firsties come in, and has easily become part of the routine.
(the punchline is under that rectangle and so I just move it when we’re ready to see the answer!)
I started this earlier this fall after reading much about how important laughter and joy are in the classroom. I was working on my school improvement project to complete my Masters’ program; the theme was encouraging grit, perseverance and engagement in the classroom. We’ve found that starting with a good laugh (and then continuing that on throughout the day) is good medicine for all! So…since many seemed interested in the idea, I figured I’d share what we’re doing in Rm. 202, hoping it would help someone else! Whether you start this in your classroom–or your house, for that matter!–or not, I appreciate your reading my journey. 🙂
Before I even start, I feel like I should say that most of these jokes are not new, nor or they necessarily funny (I teach 1st graders, remember–their humor is different than most!). I get most of my jokes from jokesbykids.com, which is a huge database of kid-friendly riddles, knock-knock jokes and other funny things, but also so from my own kids (who are 4 and 7), or from books we’re reading (and since I started writing this post, I’ve gotten a tip to try out Ellen’s classic jokes–thanks for the recommendation, @amerced!). I am not, nor will I ever be, funny enough to write any of my own. I’ll leave that job to someone more qualified than I!
Monday
What does a teddy bear eat?
Nothing! It’s already stuffed!
(this one is courtesy of my daughter, Allison–she learned it at school and thinks it’s SUPER funny!!)
Tuesday
What goes up when the rain comes down?
Umbrellas!
(I have seen this one on jokesbykids, but also from Allie’s school. Just for the record, my friends DID NOT think this was funny! Their answers were much better, like FLOODS and RAINBOWS! So, buyer beware–might not be 1st grade worthy material. LOL)
Wednesday
What’s brown, hairy and wears sunglasses?
A coconut on vacation!
(had to try out the Ellen tip–that’s a pretty good one for kids, I’d say! Well, except that half of them said, “That’s not funny…” Tough crowd. We had a conversation about opinions and how jokes are subjective.)
Thursday
What’s a frog’s favorite soda?
Croak-a-Cola!
(ok…so I had to explain this one, too! Man, I guess I need to get better at my joke choices.)
Do you have a funny joke to share with my students? Perhaps if I used more that were FROM kids, the kids in Rm. 202 would think there were funnier (because apparently the adults who write jokes have no senses of humor)….I’ll keep trying either way. 🙂
We were out of school for a PD day on Friday, so this week there were only 4 jokes. I’m really loving the ones from Ellen. There are about 250 of them on there, so it looks like I have at least 2 school years’ worth to work through! Happy joke telling! 🙂
A couple of weeks ago, I saw a tweet about Global School Play Day. Being one who truly believes in play as an important learning tool for kids (and adults!), and being one who likes to jump in with both feet when I see something that looks like fun (like I did with World Read Aloud Day, for instance), I knew that this was something I wanted to try. And honestly, we have choice time and recess every day anyway, so it wasn’t that far out of our norm.
Before the special day, I told kids to bring something they could play with during our time, but the rules were it couldn’t be electronic or have batteries. There were a couple of “whys?” but really it wasn’t any big deal to them. I wish I had taken a picture of all of their toys in the bucket when they brought them in, but what I thought was funny was that most everyone brought something stuffed–My Little Ponies, dogs, cats, and all other sorts of animals. There were some cars, a couple of American Girls and 2 Barbies who attended our GSPD as well. 🙂
We reserved the afternoon for our official time, as we had some exciting and necessary work to do in the morning with our current studies in reading and math. Before we got started with our fun, we had a little chat about why we were even doing it. They had great ideas, like for them to learn to take care of their things, as well as how to solve problems and how to play together. All were right, and I had some additional ideas of my own:
1. Negotiation: By participating in free play, children get to learn how and practice what it is like to initiate play with someone else, as well as negotiate with that playmate about what to do, where to do it and how to do it. They get to learn give-and-take, as well as how to work with others in a positive way (because unfortunately, if you choose NOT to do it positively, your friend may not want to play with you anymore!).
2. Problem Solving: Much like negotiation with friends, kiddos learn and practice problem solving in many ways when they play. From what to do when the Legos don’t go together they way you want or you don’t have enough big blocks to build your castle, or even where to put the pieces of the puzzle you’re working on, problem solving is a crucial part of play. Even choosing what to play at any given moment is a kind of problem solving in itself. Letting kids figure these things out for themselves helps build and encourage grit and perseverance.
3. Winning (and losing!) Graciously: Child-directed play (including playing games) allows kiddos to learn how to win–and also to lose–graciously. We all know an adult who didn’t get the chance to learn this when they were younger, and now has such a hard time knowing what to do when things don’t go their way. That same adult might have a really hard time not being overly proud or boastful when things do. Allowing (or even planning for) situations where students DON’T win are crucial! Life is not fair, things don’t always go as planned and sometimes someone else does better than you. How great that kiddos have a chance to learn to deal with these disappointments when the stakes are low, so that when they are higher, they’ll know the appropriate choices to make. And yes, winning is a good thing that can happen occasionally, too (and how great that kids can learn how to deal with their happiness without sacrificing the feelings of others).
4. Creativity: A big pile of paper, blocks, Legos, cars or any other open-ended toys allows for such a great development of creativity in kids! Being able to figure out what that pile of “stuff” can become is a great practice in trial-and-error, trying new things or even working with a friend to put two great ideas together to make an even better one. This practice of creativity in free play can easily be transferred to learning, then, when a kiddo is given open-ended opportunities for both gaining information and showing what they’ve learned. When they’ve had a chance to try out new things and take risks in a safe, play environment, many students will be more willing to take the same creative risks with their learning.
5. Beating Boredom: I guess this one is another idea that’s related to some others on this list, but being given free time to play is a great way to figure out how to entertain yourself (either alone or with a friend) and keep a kiddo from being “bored.” Knowing what to do when there’s [seemingly] nothing to do is a life skill, really.
6. Respect, kindness and including others:Play is a great opportunity for kiddos to practice skills they’re learning about showing others respect, using kind words and helping make sure everyone is included. Helping kids pay attention to who doesn’t have a playmate is a lesson in empathy and is definitely a bucket-filler for a friend who longs to be involved but is perhaps unable to initiate themselves. Knowing how to speak to others kindly is a skill that can never be mastered and can always be improved upon.
7. Fun!: Um, how have I not mentioned that playing is TOTALLY FUN!? Yep. Should have mentioned that one first. 🙂
8. Organization and Care: Emily was the first to mention it, and I hadn’t really thought of it until she said it, but yes, I think that kiddos can learn about and practice putting things away, organizing and caring for property (theirs and others’) when they’re playing. Great idea, kiddo!
Ok, so enough of my rambling…I know what you really came to see were the pictures of Rm. 202 kiddos PLAYING!! Here you go!!
I had to be out on Friday with a sick little girl, and so let my kiddos in the able hands of a really great sub. We’ve had her before and I remember that she had them write me a note about their day to leave for me. I hadn’t forgotten about it, though, until I walked in this morning and saw this on the easel:
This note would be super special anyway because it came from my awesome class, it was super duper special because it meant they had an AWESOME day even though I wasn’t there, AND it has a hashtag. We had noticed it last week and added to our punctuation study chart, and Lauren suggested they put one on the letter. That’s amazing. And it’s an awesome hashtag, too, isn’t it?
A few years ago, I was part of an iPad Scout as our school district made decisions about how best to implement a 1:1 initiative. Since then, they decided to go with iPad Minis for everyone (well, except for K this year, who is utilizing the iPad 2s the teachers used to have), and now it’s finally first grade’s turn!!
Since we’re a little ahead in Rm. 202 technologically speaking (partly because of my scout experience), we were the first class to get our Minis! Check out the faces here–they say it all!
Ok, but I’m getting ahead of myself…there was much work that happened before we could take this picture. Let me explain.
As a member of our district’s Technology Leadership Group, I have the opportunity to learn and grow with other tech-minded friends, and share resources for our tech-learning journey. So as I got started with iPads in 1st grade (which is very different than getting started with them in 5th grade!), I was glad to have help from my friend Jen Bartin, who has had several years of experience with using them well in 2nd grade. She shared her version of iPad Boot Camp, and it was just what we needed.
So before we even THOUGHT about unpacking the box of bright red goodies, we had to talk about the expectations. More than anything else, these little friends of mine need to be on teh same page as me about why we have them, how we will use them and how we will be safe as we do that. The first thing we did, then, was read and discuss the student iPad agreement:
This conversation was a bit long, and probably one of the most boring things we’ve done in a long time, but SUPER IMPORTANT to our work. They seemed to get it, and are dedicated to doing the right thing. That last line seemed to weigh heavily on them. They understand their choices and consequences are related. 🙂
We spent the rest of the day learning some logistical things, like turning the iPad on and off, using the lock button for the screen, creating shortcuts to some important places on the home screen, and turning off the clickety-click sounds the keyboard makes. While it is really important to me not to be solely app-focused, there are some good ones that we will use often, like Raz-Kids, which we have been using already on our class iPads and laptops. This was an easy one to get them going on and is a great way to build our reading skills. We also learned how to use the Kidblog app (which is a little different than the way the website works) to work on a post related to our history study in Social Studies. Dreambox–another app we use regularly–is also our iPads and we checked it out before we had choice time. It’s not usual that we’re all doing the same thing at the same time, but hey, if we want to, now we can!
Kids checking out Raz-Kids on Thursday!
Yeah, but we weren’t finished there. The last lesson of the day was how to put these little beauties away and how to charge them so they’re ready to use every morning. We already had the cart (that our laptops used to go in), and just had to figure out how to best organize the iPads inside it. I had seen a post this summer that used a dish drainer to hold devices and thought we’d give it a try. I had one on my table (that I was using for something else), but threw it in the cart to see how it would work. Empty, it looked like this:
I know it looks like a big jumble, but the idea is that every cord (which are all already labeled for each kiddo) is in order and will be available for kiddos to pull out easily. Right now (until I buy another tray) there are 13 on the top and 7 using the dividers that were already there. It seemed like a great idea.
And then we started putting them away. I took time to carefully and clearly show each kiddo (two or three at a time) which cord was theirs and where their iPad went in the tray. It took about 10-15 minutes to get 20 in there, and it looked like this once we filled it all up:
And now I’m not so sure. Now all I see is a big jumble of cords. It seems like unless I stand there every time with every kid, it will ALWAYS be a headache. I’m thinking I’m going to scrap the dish drainer idea and install more of those plastic dividers. Any suggestions, friends who are already doing this? I want to have a system that is both functional and completely kid-sustainable. Like with most everything else we do, I don’t want this to be something an adult has to do for them. I want them to take the lead. Thoughts?? 🙂
UPDATE: After a suggestion from Jen Bartin (remember her smart ideas for iPad Boot Camp?) and a reflection on HOW LONG it took to put them away that first time, I decided to chuck the whole “dish drainer” idea and just use the dividers. And it didn’t actually take as long as I was told to put them in. It works better and boy is pretty! What do you think?
So much better, no? This picture makes my heart happy for so many reasons! It’s weird, but I think my favorite part is the stickers. Functional and cute:
Rather than labeling with names, I just put numbers that correlate to our class numbers that we use for almost everything else. This system works so. much. better! 🙂
Seems like I am always giving a reason for why our week was crazy. This week was the same way! Wednesday we participated in Global School Play Day, so didn’t have math, and yesterday my 3-times-longer-than-usual commute (because of snow and ice on the road) meant that I didn’t get to school in time to write one, and then add in our first day with our iPad Minis yesterday as well and VOILA, you’ve got crazy! See what I mean? But hey, there were 3 warm-ups this week, so here we go!
Monday
It only seemed right to have a Super Bowl themed warm-up the morning after the big game! Still working on adding 2-digit numbers efficiently with this one. 🙂
Tuesday
The problem yesterday actually brought up a great (but unexpected question) as a friend only read the first sentence and then assumed she knew what it was asking. She thought that it was asking her to SUBTRACT the numbers because she figured the last part asked by how many points the Patriots had won. We were able to talk about how important reading the whole problem was, as well as how different bits of information can produce many different kinds of problems depending on the questions you ask. They’re not quite ready to think this way yet, but I gave them a challenging warm-up on Tuesday asking them to think about the questions they could ask (oh, and thanks for not commenting on the ages mentioned in this problem–thankfully no one said anything about how OLD Mrs. Bearden is!!).
Friday
You’ll notice that this one doesn’t have any post-its on it. I was actually home with a sick little girl on Friday, but snapped a picture as I put it up to leave for the sub to talk through with my friends. This one was based on both our 2-digit addition work and a conversation we were having the other day about how many 1st graders there are. How would you solve it? What model would you use to record your thinking?
I started our blogging story yesterday, with how I introduced the whole idea to my first graders. Like I mentioned, they’re pros already!!
After we made our paper blogs, we were ready to talk about comments, and how the whole point of a blog in the first place is the conversation it starts. We talked generally about how to comment, and then studied this document, another great resource I got from @mcteach. It’s called the “Art and Aspirations of a Commenter,” and while I had to paraphrase much of it for 6-7yos, the idea still applies:
We discussed what the parts of a comment were supposed to be, and then tried it on each others’ blogs. Much like we do when we have a gallery walk in math or a writing celebration in writing, everyone laid out their blogs and kids read and wrote: one comment on each post-it, then post-its on paper posts. Check out this amazing video to show how quiet and focused everyone was during this time. Seriously. Believe me. It’s good stuff.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
So after that experience, our paper blogs looked like this:
These kids are picking up this whole blogging thing so fast and furiously! Can’t wait to share the next step! 🙂
As with past years, I was SUPER EXCITED to get my kids blogging! This year was no different, well except that my bloggers are only 6 and 7 years old, and they don’t have iPads yet, and most of them didn’t even know what a blog was when they started in Rm. 202. Ok, so yeah…really different. But my excitement to bring this experience to my students was no different–I just knew I’d have to figure out how to make it work for first graders. I think I’ve figured it out, and thought I’d share my steps here. Many are the same as in years past, but I’ve added in a few that are specific to younger learners. Here we go!
As with years, past, I thought about starting our conversation with the question “What is a blog?” Like I already mentioned, the background knowledge of my students was much less than previous (older) students. I had to go all the way back to the beginning and be really explicit with what in the world I was talking about. Luckily, we’ve been reading this blog since the beginning of the year, so that was a place to start. But, because of my experience with blogging and the connections you can make from all over the world, I started there instead: Wouldn’t it be cool if people from ALL OVER THE WORLD could read what you write? Wouldn’t it be cool if you could TALK to people you didn’t know from far away places?This was the hook they needed. Just the mention of all the people I know from other countries got my kiddos all giddy and ready to go. So “go” we did!
This time around I needed a more visual way of explaining exactly what a blog is and how it is used, and so BrainPop Jr. came to the rescue with a video all about blogs (I should add that it’s actually my 2nd grader who told me this video existed. He’s a big fan and watches lots of Brain Pop while he’s in the classroom waiting for me–which is alot!. He said he knew there was a blogging video and I should try it with my kiddos. Teacher in the making? Thanks, Riley!). It was great in how it told what a blog was, what the parts of a blog are, as well as about comments and some safety tips about what to do/not do online. And since it’s short and familiar, it kept everyone’s attention. Win-win. 🙂
After we watched the video, we looked at some other examples of blogs. I shared many of the ones that I read, and we talked about what we noticed about how they’re laid out, what the theme is, what kinds of things are written on them, etc. (In case you’re wondering, here’s my list: Make It-Love It,I Heart Organizing, The Candy Blog (this one is actually not one I read, but my hubby does and I knew the kiddos would love it!), and Life with Lily (And Daisy and Caleb!). I should have also included Weelicious (which was once a blog and is now more like a traditional website) and Im4Students (my teammates’ blog!), but I forgot until after we were done. 😦 You’ll have to be sure to check them out or use them when you teach about blogs!
It’s a wonder how they waited through all of that explanation and waited for me to explain their next steps, because, like I said, that were EXCITED to get started! And speaking of next steps, the next part was for them to create their own blogs. But on paper first (this is a technique I learned long ago as I started blogging and was learning from other teachers like Karen McMillan (@mcteach) and Pernille Ripp (@pernilleripp) who shared their resources online for others to use!).
One last thing before we got started: I showed them some examples from past years, and we created a chart to show what should be in our posts.
I was SUPER IMPRESSED with how quickly they took to it! They understood what to do, and did it effectively. Here are some pics while we were working:
This week was CRAZY busy, so only 4 warm-ups–you know how you have those weeks where NOTHING happens and those where EVERYTHING happens at once? This was one of the latter. 🙂
Monday
This past weekend, so many people checked out our blog, and it got me thinking about how I could use the scenario in our warm-ups. The numbers were bigger than in the problem, but I knew I could tweak them to get my kids working with adding 2-digit numbers. The idea of adding 3 of them is beyond the benchmark for what they’re asked to do this quarter, but I was pretty sure most of them could do it anyway (and it would be a motivating challenge for those that weren’t quite there yet!). Most of them quickly saw the way they could break the numbers apart by place value and combine those parts back together to find the answer.
Tuesday
This warm-up is related to the day before, and planned so that kids might see the ability to use the counting on strategy to solve it. We’ve been practicing counting on by 10s, and many used that idea to help get to the solution of 219. We recently started looking at the pattern of how the numbers work when you go past 100, so this one asks them to do that.
Wednesday
Happy 100th Day! This one probably explains itself….
Friday
We actually didn’t get to talk about the warm-up from Wednesday until the next day because our 100th Day Blog Challenge kept us so busy! So Thursday had no new warm-up, but here’s the problem from Friday morning. The numbers are easier than the ones from earlier in the week, but the focus with this one was to get kids to think about HOW they were showing their thinking so others could understand.
Happy problem solving! Please let us know how it goes if you try some of these in your class! 🙂
Whew! Our 100th day of school was today! Boy am I tired! WE WERE BUSY!!
I’ve been thinking about how to spend that day (and mainly trying to figure out how to both “celebrate” and still be rigorous and meaningful in my choices), and had landed on several ideas I was pretty excited about. The good news? We were able to use my idea list today. The bad news (well, just the other news I guess…)? We just did one of those things. Let me explain. 🙂
If you were writing down a list of what we accomplished today, it would just say “blogging.” I even had a kiddo say, “All we did was blog today, Mrs. Bearden.” What? That’s ALL we did? In a word, yes, but MAN was there a TON of learning and thinking involved in that day of blogging! I am SUPER AMAZED at what we were able to do today.
I started the day by telling my friends that I had prepared several challenges for them to do and that we could spend the day with those things. We usually start our day with writing, so I shared the writing challenge first, with plans to share the rest of the challenges as we went on through the day. The first thing we planned to work on was a blogging challenge.
With it being the 100th day of school, and the fact that we just went live with our blogs yesterday, I knew they’d appreciate a challenge around the “bigness” of 100 things on their blog. I suggested we try to write 100 blog posts or comments. Or they could challenge themselves to write a post using 100 words (which would be a HUGE STRETCH from the 2-3 sentence posts we’ve written so far). As I had hoped and expected, they were SUPER excited to get started, and were totally up to the challenge!
Our next step was to figure out how we could make it happen. This was a great conversation filled with much mathematical knowledge of groups of 10, counting on by 10s (as I told them we had 17 posts right then and wondered how many there would be if we added 100 more today), and splitting 10s into 5s to figure out new groups (someone said they knew that if it took 10 10s to make 100, it would take 20 5s since 5+5=10). We divided (without knowing it) 100 by the 20 people in the room (including me!), and as we went through the challenge we did lots of adding and subtracting to figure how many more we needed and how many we had at any given point.
We got started, and you know what? I don’t have many pictures of the work we did. I was as busy as they were, answering questions, moderating posts and comments and helping everyone as needed. So with 20 people, 12 iPads and 5 MacBooks between us, we were able to complete 100 BLOG POSTS AND COMMENTS today!! YIPPEE!! It took us almost all day, but we did it! And when we were finished, we had this to say:
(Hopefully you can tell they’re saying, “I00 BLOGS ROCK!!”
Now, I go back to that part about “all we did was blog all day,” because even though I didn’t mean to, at one point I even questioned whether I had done enough with the day. We didn’t have a big long list of activities to show for our time together. No one took home anything different than a normal day. We didn’t have any thing to prove we worked hard and stretched our thinking today. We did, however, have this:
It’s a little hard to see, but these are the charts where we kept tally of all of the posts/comments we finished. We counted them by 10s, 1s, and 2s at several points during the day as we figured out what we’d done and how much we had to go. It hangs outside our room for others to see. I’m hoping it will elicit questions for my kids (and for me) about how we spend our100th day! We have a great story to tell!
(ok, we did have a few pictures of the day!)
We also have a Kidblog dashboard that looks like this:
Yesterday we had 17 posts and 0 comments! Check out those numbers as of tonight! We have only been on our blogs since yesterday morning–crazy, right? We’re rocking and rolling already!!
And perhaps even better, we have memories. We have encouragement that came from our friends–“We can do this!”–when we wanted to give up. We have full buckets from the words our friends wrote about our stories. We have new knowledge about how to work the iPads and laptops on our own. We have that feeling that comes with accomplishing a goal. We have successful problem solving that happens when we’re allowed to figure things out for ourselves or talk with our classmates. We have practice with creating meaningful writing for a REAL audience; we worked hard to make our words look right, sound right and make sense. We have practice with letters, sounds and words and we have momentum to go forward with our writing. AND we have a great list of things that we didn’t finish today that we’ll use to continue our learning tomorrow! hee hee
So as I reflected, I thought it would be a great visual (for me at least) to look at our district’s rubrics and match up how today’s work addressed the expectations therein. Check out how many ways this simple blogging challenge touched our 1st grade standards:
Reading
Writing
Speaking and Listening
Learning Behaviors and Study Skills
So needless to say I am tired tonight! I’m pretty sure my kids are, too! The amount of grit they had to use to make today happen and accomplish the HUGE goal set before them was great. And while I know that I am a little biased, I’d say that today was definitely a day we can say we worked to get a little closer to helping Rm. 202 kids meet this mission of Robinson School:
What did you do for your 100th day? What have you heard from Rm. 202 kids about their day? Please share your thoughts with us! We’re learning how blogging is all about the conversation, and we’d love to start a conversation with YOU! 🙂
20somethingkids and 1kookyteacher 