Headbandz: 5th Grade Style

This blogging challenge has been a good motivation for me to keep up with the loads of things that have been going on that I want to tell you about. And yes, you may have noticed that I am taking a few liberties with how I define it. But hey, rules were meant to be broken, right? (Uh oh…kids, cover your ears…:) ). But so far, I have (including this one) the same number of posts as the days of the month. That equals a win for me.

We’re still doing many great things together to build our 5th grade community. In my mind, community building is really a year-long thing, not just a beginning-of-the-year thing, but for sure we hit it hard right now. So the other day, we played a game that my team had put on our original plan: Headbandz (which was an idea shared by Ms. Turken–she is full of so many amazing things to do!). If you have ever played this game, then you know it’s a ton of fun. We actually have a Disney version of the game here (not surprised, I’m sure!) where you have to guess which Disney character you are. And the headbands are shaped like Mickey ears, which is really cute. 🙂

Ok, but back to our 5th grade version: each kiddo had the name of another student in our class taped to their forehead and the goal was to figure out who it was. The basic rules are that you can only ask yes/no questions, and those questions should be related to the person, not their name (so asking about the way it’s spelled or how long it is, etc., is not allowed).

Once everyone had their name, we got started. And I know I keep relating this game to Headbanz, but Ke’Von reminded us as we got started that it’s really just a real-life version of Guess Who–I totally hadn’t thought of that, and it was perfect!

And yes, in case you were wondering, I played, too. So did Mr. Shelton, but somehow I didn’t get a good picture of him.

I loved how much fun they had with this. They asked to play again, and many mentioned that it was one for their favorite things from the week! We did something really cool related to this next, but I’ll have to tell you about it in another post because I don’t have good pictures of it on my computer yet. What a great reason to come back and visit soon!

3 Things and 3 Friends

I have to start this post by fully disclosing that neither of the ideas I’m sharing today are mine. 🙂 Remember my FABULOUS teammates Genie and Rachael? These ideas are theirs and I tried them in my room and they went really well. Thank you for sharing, friends!

As I am sure you have figured out by now, building a strong community of learners is very important to me–as it is to many teachers. So we spend the beginning weeks of school getting to know each other, both as learners and as people. We laugh together, create together and hopefully start to build a trusting relationship that will help us as we learn together throughout the year.

One way I help foster these bonds is by going through an exercise called 3 Things (or at least it was called 3 Things this year–I have too many students to do it the original way of 5 Things as Mrs. Hong taught me!). It’s pretty basic, but has been very much worth our time. The conversations we’ve had around everyone’s 3 Things have been great and the inferring that happens during the exercise is great, too.

It’s pretty basic: each person brings in 3 things that tell us something about them and we have to guess (or infer) what those items mean. I started by sharing my 3 things: a picture of Mickey Mouse, measuring cups and a Kirkwood School District pencil. Everyone then has 3 minutes to talk in their 3 Friends groups (which I’ll explain in a minute 🙂 ) and decide what the items mean. Every group shares their ideas with the class, I chart them, and then we hear the “real” answers from the spotlight person. Easy peasy. Here’s what my chart looked like:

Now, honestly, the first two of mine were pretty obvious: Mickey Mouse is to represent my family’s love of Disney World and the time we spend in the Happiest Place on Earth. I can’t really explain what it is about that place, it’s just that it’s become our home-away-from-home and has a special feeling. Just being there is amazing. But I digress…

My second item is measuring cups and represents my recent love of baking and creating things for my family, primarily my kids. If you dig a little deeper there’s a story about how we’ve been learning about eating locally harvested “real food” and are trying to cut out processed food from our diet–this was the spark for my new baking hobby–but that was obviously not a story that kiddos inferred from my picture.

That last one is a pencil. It represents a couple of different things. First of all, and most glaringly it is my love of writing. But I also picked this particular pencil (and a pencil instead of a pen) for two other reasons: it represents the annoying trouble there has been in my room for YEARS with never being able to keep pencils sharpened (EVERY pencil sharpener I have ever tried has broken. I think my room is cursed!), as well as the fact that Kirkwood is my home, and where I have always been a teacher.

Since I shared my 3 Things, we’ve randomly chosen two kiddos every day (a boy and a girl) to share their own 3 Things. Kiddos have taken this very seriously, and with each group that goes, they’re getting better at picking tricky things that get us really thinking. They’ve been really good!

Then the other simple but powerful thing we did was called 3 Friends (thanks for sharing, Ms. Turken!). Again, it’s not very complicated: you and two other people get in a group and do a couple of simple things–make sure you know each others’ names and find out 3 things you have in common. The groups then introduced their 3 new friends to us, and shared what they had in common. We took a quick poll to see who else had those common interests, too. Then we come back to these groups everyday in 3 Things, helping to solidify the connections we’re making. I’m thinking that as we go on, we’ll create new 3 Friends groups periodically that have different goals or functions in our room.

What would you choose for your 3 Things? Post your list here and we’ll see if we can figure you out! Play along with us! 🙂

Things Teachers Do in the Summer: TRAVEL

In addition to finding tons of great, new books to share with my new class, I also had some fabulous opportunities to travel with my family!

Ok, I’ll give you one guess as to where we went. Alright, you can have two or three guesses if you need them, but if you know me at all, or if you’ve spent any length of time here on this blog you already know the answer.:

This IS indeed, the Happiest Place on Earth!

We spent the first 10 days after school was out in our favorite place, which is the week we typically go because it’s not too hot yet, and the crowds aren’t as crazy as later on in the summer. This year’s weather was a little weird, though, because Tropical Storm Andrea decided to come for a visit at the same time as we did. It was rainier than normal (not the usual 3 o’clock shower that is over in 5 minutes) and cloudy most of the time we were there. But hey–we didn’t let that get us down! We’ve been to WDW many times, but we always find a way to make new memories. Two highlights from this trip were the Princess dinner we had at Akershus Royal Banquet hall–in Epcot’s Norway pavilion–for Allie (which we actually went to on Daddy’s birthday–HA!) as well as a Pirate cruise that Riley took with a small group around Crescent Lake near Epcot.

I was so surprised as how shy she was around the princesses. Those are pretty much the only two that she would talk to–when the others came around she was buried in my shoulder hiding her face! She did the same thing for Mickey and the others, too, which just surprised me because of how naturally outgoing she normally is! Our prince was not at all bothered by all the pretty ladies who came to our table, though, and he took pictures with them instead!

I don’t really have many good pics of Riley’s cruise, but that’s mostly because I wasn’t there! He took off in his pirate skipper with the tour guides and 5 or 6 other kiddos in search of Captain Stinkyfeet who had stolen the pirate treasure! I was so proud at his willingness to do that without us (he’s learning to let go 🙂 ) and he had a SUPER time. It was all he could talk about for days afterward!

The one other highlight of the trip was meeting up with some an old 5th grade friend and his family who happened to be there at the same time as we were:

What fun to run into Keelan, his sisters Macie and Amelia and his parents! Fun in the Florida sun! (Doesn’t Riley look like he could be related to all of them?)

Disney is usually our big excursion for the summer, but this summer we finally got around to going somewhere else in the world (which is honestly a BIG DEAL for our family!). So in July we packed up and headed east to Charlotte, NC to visit some friends who had moved there a few years ago. We spent a lovely weekend with their family (of which I have NO pictures–I realized this after we were home…) and then headed to Asheville for the next few days. We were excited to see the mountains, as well as enjoy Asheville’s food scene, which is focused on sustainable, local, fresh ingredients and is right up our alley!

Several days we went driving on the Blue Ridge parkway, which is the scenic route through the Blue Ridge mountains and afforded us some AMAZING views, along with tunnels and roadside overlook points to stop and check out. We went shopping, ate some fabulous food, and also visited the Western North Carolina Nature Center. While we’re definitely still lovers of all things Disney, this was a great time for our family and it’s the trip that Riley keeps going back to when he reminisces on his summer fun!

This one cracks me up! Just an example of the cool rocks we drove next to on the road–here we stopped to look at the water running down the walls. Obviously it was more interesting than smiling at me for the picture!

We also learned that Asheville is home to the highest point east of the Mississippi river–Mount Mitchell. So fun to trek to the top of it! Such beautiful views from way up there!

Doesn’t that picture just say it all? WE HAD FUN!!

What did you do this summer? What adventures did you go on? Where did you visit? Leave a comment and tell me all about it! Send me a picture, 5th grade friends, and I’ll add it to the blog! 🙂

Feast Week Part 7: THE FEAST!!

Ok, so I’m not at all sure how it got to almost the end of February and I didn’t tell you about the final part of Feast Week! I know…I’m sorry! But you’ve been reading blog all along, right? We’ve been busy!

But here’s perhaps the most important part of the whole thing we called Feast Week–the feast! (And just in case you haven’t read the first parts of Feast Week, you can find the first one here, and then the others are linked from there. It’s worth your time if you haven’t read them!)

The day had finally arrived, and we were excited. But no, we were not excited about the fact that Winter Break was just a day away, or because we’d be off for 14 days–we were excited because all of our hard work with fractions and recipes and cooking and baking and planning was about to pay off!

And it went even better than we’d hoped. Thanks to some fabulous parents who were willing to let us throw out this crazy idea of our Winter Party to them (and then just told them to run with it!), we ended up with a lovely, delicious meal that helped us all see the fruits (and hams and green beans and ice cream pies) of our labors. It was definitely a FABULOUS FIFTH GRADE FRACTION FEAST!!

Anticipating our fabulous feast as we wait outside the cafeteria!

Looks good, doesn’t it? Tablecloths and centerpieces and everything! So elegant!

Here’s our handiwork! Looks yummy!

That bowl is guacamole–I promise, it was pretty good!

Moving through the line–sausage snack wraps were a hit!

$A toast to food, fun and friends! (and fractions!)$

A toast to food, fun and friends! (and fractions!)

WE LOVE FEAST WEEK!

New Friends in New Jersey

Yes, we did it again. Third Skype in three weeks! This one was a little different from the first Mystery Skype and the second one we did last week. This time the location wasn’t a mystery; 4th graders from Lakehurst, NJ wanted to connect with students in the Midwest since their class was studying our region, so we just chatted. SO many thanks to Mr. Bedell (@jasontbedell) for setting it up and Ms. Lambusta for being game to try Skype for the first time with her class!

The structure was similar to what we’ve done before, but since we knew that our new “friends” were going to ask us a whole slew of questions, we decided to find a way to give everyone more “screen time” during our Skype session. I paired everyone up and they had two jobs: answer a question and ask a question. We went through the first round and they asked us, then we asked them some questions.

We were really interested to find out that one of the “specials” classes the 4th graders went to was Spanish. There were lots of ooohs and ahhhs when they shared that nugget; kids in our school district don’t have an option for a foreign language until middle school. We learned that Minecraft is a big deal both in NJ and MO, that they lived close to the ocean and were affected by Hurricane Sandy, and that their school is near a naval base. Pizza was a popular school lunch (as are chicken nuggets!), and kids from both classes like to play sports games on their game systems.

We had a great conversation with our new friends in New Jersey and then began thinking and talking. We talked about whether we liked Mystery Skype or this type of chat better. It was pretty much 50/50; many liked the “guessing” part of a Mystery Skype because it was a challenge to their brains, and many others liked the “regular” Skype because they liked the opportunity to ask and answer questions more related to them than geography.

That got us thinking about other ways we could use Skype. Ames suggested that there were probably lots of other things that could be a mystery when we Skype besides location. That comment made me think of a list I read from Krissy Venosdale (@ktvee) where she shared ideas for just that! We also thought we could combine them both and first figure out the location, then get to know them better like we did this time. Both great ideas!

I am so excited with how excited my students are during these types of activities. They thirst for new ideas and enjoy trying new things, especially when they involve technology. I LOVE that they trust me when I say, “Hey, I heard about this–how about we try it?!” They are game for ANYTHING!

Besides being excited to try this again, we’re excited to invite other classes to join us! One of our 5th grade neighbors is going to sit in on our next Mystery Skype so they can learn more about it. Maybe we could even start marking our Skypes on our map of connections and try to get every state! Wouldn’t that be cool?!

So…do YOU want to Skype with us? Comment here or contact me on Twitter (@jenbearden). We’d love to meet you!

Mystery Skype Take 2

Last week we participated in our first Mystery Skype. It was great fun, and we were looking forward to our next opportunity, which came this week! On Friday, we were able to connect with Ms. Copland’s 4th graders–a connection we made from some friends I have on Twitter.

We had some basic knowledge this time around, since we’d done it before, but we were determined to improve on some things. For one, we knew that we’d need to have more maps out, and to already have our computer ready–if we needed a map or some other resource that wasn’t in our atlas. And since I didn’t have pictures from our first try, I knew I wanted to have a photographer ready for this call. It was great to have some teachers comment on our blog in the meantime, too, offering great suggestions for how they do Mystery Skype. Thanks to Mrs. Kneller, Mrs. Venosdale (who was our Mystery Skype call last week!), Mrs. Bowman, and Ms. Ripp (who didn’t comment on our post, but who is definitely one of my go-to teachers on topics like this!) for sharing your Mystery Skype know-how with us!

This time the set up of our call was a little trickier (at least for me!) because there was a time difference to take into account. I cannot tell you how many times I checked and then double-checked if the times we were throwing out were for Central (where we are) or Eastern time. Finally we settled on a 9:40 EST phone call. This meant that I would have less of my class present for the beginning of the call (since we don’t really start school until 8:45 CST), but it worked out ok, I think. We were able to get started with 7 or so students and then the rest joined us as they trickled in.

So we were prepared with our first question to be related to time zone, because last time it gave us great info to start narrowing down where our Mystery Skype friends were located. But then, I had a smart cookie who saw this on the message board on my Skype page where I’d been talking to Ms. Copland prior to our call:

We didn’t need our time zone question anymore, because my friends had already figured out that our new friends were calling from somewhere east of us.

This time we had “stricter” rules that you had to get 10 clues before you could guess the other classes’ location, so we kept careful track of their answers to our questions.

I was pretty impressed by the questions that the kiddos thought of this time, but even more surprised by the initial prediction that Seamus made on the state they were in. Once he knew they were in the eastern US, he said, “I bet they’re in Massachusetts.” It was kind of a fluke, related to the fact that his dad is from Boston, but was indeed the place we were supposed to be guessing! So with Massachusetts knowledge in his head, he began to gear our questions toward MA facts that would help us decide if that was indeed the mystery state.

As the rest of the class starting arriving, more and more kiddos got involved in the work, using the big map on our wall, the computer and the atlas.

I was so impressed by how well this one went! Last time we were a little fuzzy on our own MO geography, and so we knew we needed to brush up on that before this call. This time we knew the answers to the questions they asked, used many resources at our disposal to figure out which questions to ask, and also paid attention to the details we saw in their room to help narrow down our guess on their location–like the fact that someone close to the camera was wearing a Boston Red Sox shirt! We asked them about that, but they quickly pointed out all the other teams represented in the room–including our very own St. Louis Cardinals!

What a great time we had! We’re definitely Mystery Skype missionaries now, and are helping connect other teachers in our school to this great activity! Another 5th grade class is going to visit during our Mystery Skype next week (yep, already have another one on the calendar!) so that they can learn how it works. So cool!

Yay for Mystery Skype!

One more resource I found was this list of other ways to use Mystery Skype, posted by Krissy Venosdale (@ktvee) on her blog, venspired.com. Excited to try some of these others in the future!

Mystery Skype!

What a great opportunity we had today–we did our first Mystery Skype!

Because of the connections I’ve made on Twitter, I’ve been exposed to many new things that seem right up our alley, and Mystery Skype was one of them. The basic idea is that you Skype with another class–somewhere in the world–only you don’t know where they are (ok, well I knew where they were, but the kiddos did not)! You ask each other yes or no questions that help you narrow in on the location of the other class.

We waited patiently until 10:35 when they called–Ms. Venosdale’s 6th grade class. We answered the call, with nervous but excited feelings in our stomachs. I had already set it up so that they would lead, since we’d never done it before, and so they asked the first question. They asked, “Are you near a major body of water?” Our answer, of course, was yes–the Mississippi river is just a hop, skip and a jump to our east. Our first question was (we hoped) a good one, too–“It’s 10:35 here, is it the same time where you are?” We had been having a conversation about time zones just before we answered the call, and so they thought this one would help narrow down (and so eliminate) much of the world if their answer was yes. And it was!

I wish I had grabbed the list of all the questions, because we kept one, and I wish that we had a picture to share–but we didn’t take one. We had coordinated “jobs” before we got started: some were charge of the map, some were in charge of writing down what we learned from our new friends, some were in charge of writing down the questions we each asked (so that we could look at them for ideas for the next time), someone was in charge of asking the questions and the rest of us worked to synthesize the clues and figure out what to ask next. It was really cool how a room full of about 20 people could all be involved in the same conversation in such different ways.

In the end, we found out that our new found friends were actually calling us from very close by in Missouri! Hillsboro, actually. That was surprising to them, too, because they’re used to chatting with people from much farther away!

All in all, we had a great time, met some new “friends” and figured out that we need to brush up on our Missouri geography a bit. 🙂 We already have our next Mystery Skype on the calendar for next Friday and are VERY EXCITED for it! I’m interested to see the way their questions change and improve each time, and for what it will be like when we talk to someone from a place where we’ve never been. It’ll be very cool to learn what life is like in that other next of the woods!

Until then–have you every been a part of Mystery Skype? Who did you “meet?” What suggestions do you have for us as we try again with another class? Tell us your story–we’d love to hear from you!

Edmodo Have-a-Go

Remember how I told you about Edmodo the other day? Today’s the day we’re going to try it out! You will need to use the link here to get to the login page. While you’re there, look around, and then I want you to consider these things:

1. Can you figure out what to do? Is it easy? What are some confusing parts that you have a question about?

2. What kinds of things do you think we could use this to do in our classroom? Why do you think that would be a good idea?

3. Would you use Edmodo at home? (if you know that at this point) Why or why not?

Ok, lastly, I want you to post something. It can be about anything right now, but I want you to think about adding a question so that people can respond. This will feel pretty much the same as writing on your blog, only WE will be the only ones who can see it. This will be a little assessment to let me see how much we figured out and then what I need to do next so we can get started.

GOOD LUCK and have fun learning about Edmodo today!

I am Loved (or Happy Birthday, Mrs. Bearden!)

I love how kids celebrate things, especially birthdays. 🙂 Remember the ice cream party from last year?

My birthday was last week, and this is what welcomed me that Thursday morning:

Wait–it gets better! I also got a new hat and some handmade jewelry:

Fiona wore some FABULOUS glasses with a sweet message:

And my parents even sent me flowers. Nice, right?

I somehow didn’t get pictures of the cookie treats I brought, nor did I get recordings of the compliments my 5th grade friends shared with me during my “party,” but let me assure you those were great, too! Thank you friends, for making me feel so special!

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20somethingkids and 1kookyteacher

Starting a 3rd Grade Journey

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