Mrs. Sisul Brought Us a Snowman Challenge!

Remember when I wrote about Catch of the Days? I should have updated you LONG ago, but our class is ROCKING AND ROLLING with these and already have almost 50! Along the way, there have been rewards (for example, at 10 is an extra recess, 20 was pajama day and 30 was game board day) and we’ve enjoyed every one of them. Once we hit 40 it was an even BIGGER deal because the prize was “admin’s choice!”

We emailed Mrs. Sisul and Dr. Wilson and asked them to come visit us. Today was the day, and Mrs. Sisul came with two of our favorite things: a book and a design challenge!

We read lots of snow/snowflake books on Friday (which was early dismissal day for weather!), but she picked one we hadn’t read yet (and yes, that is a feat in itself–GREAT job, Mrs. Sisul!).

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She read the book to us (which we enjoyed!) and then she gave us our challenge: just like the mice the story, build the TALLEST snowman you can….with one piece of paper. 🙂

We went back and forth on how much info we’d give them about how to do this challenge, but eventually decided we would give them idea that they could make paper chains (which reminds me of the comment Kate left the other day about how creativity abounds within parameters–thanks for that reminder, friend!). Otherwise, they may have spent all of their time just figuring out what to do and not actually building anything.

As we set off to work, I could tell kiddos were thinking about our last challenge (when we read the book Going Places last week), and they quickly began to find groups to work with, both so they could share their resources and so they could share ideas.

At the 10 minute mark, we had kiddos stop and do a gallery walk to look for ideas being done by other engineers that might help them in their own work.

Kiddos got back to work and we noticed that instead of several groups of 3, we now only had 3 groups altogether! I decided to see what they were all up to…

Interesting, right? This was the part that really reminded me of the work that happened with our other challenge–kiddos making decisions that they thought would help them, even though they weren’t explicitly stated in the directions. “They didn’t say we couldn’t….” was their rationale. 🙂

We finished our work (about another 5 minutes or so, and then work time was up. We laid our snowmen out on the rug to see who had made the tallest snowman.

Now…of course when you do a design challenge, the process is as important as the final product, so Mrs. Sisul then led us in a reflection conversation.

I loved watching their faces as they thought about what had happened and worked to decide what they would take away for next time.

I also really liked their answers to the questions and also how honest they were when they thought things weren’t fair or didn’t make sense. We just might try this same challenge again soon and see what happens differently!

And lastly, just for the record, Elena wins for cutest snowman. 🙂 She’s very proud!

THANKS FOR COMING, MRS. SISUL!! We love how much you love books, learning and coming to work with us! 🙂

Do you have any stories about design challenges you’d like to share? We’d love to hear them!

The OLC is 20!

We are so lucky at our school to have some amazing outside spaces in which to play and learn. We have a dedicated group of parents (both past and present) who know the importance of kids being outside, and how being in nature helps them want to work to preserve that nature for the students that will follow them. Well, and of course, it’s just really fun. 🙂

One of our most-loved spaces is the Outdoor Learning Center, that sits just to the south of our building, out in the front where everyone can see it! Kids have classes out there, read with their friends, play and get dirty, as well as learn about and apply lessons about planting and nature. Well, recently, that OLC had a birthday–its 20th birthday!

Our very own 1st grade teacher-friend Mrs. Marks began work on a celebration (inspired on a 100 degree day this past summer), which included some pretty amazing things. Perhaps the best (well at least to me and my first graders!) was the idea of putting lots of little rock fish in the dry river bed that had been recently added.

It started as every class in our school read the book Only One You by Linda Kranz.

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Then, each kiddo chose a rock, designed and then painted their very own fish!

See all that mulch? Kiddos helped lay it!

The pond has been rebuilt and has a really cool turtle fountain!

We all found a rock!

First we drew our designs with permanent marker…

…then got to paint them to make the design last forever!

On the day of the celebration this week, we began the ceremony with every kiddo placing their fish in the river. Before that, we had only seen the riverbed dry and empty. Once we got there to the party, it looked much different!

(Someday I will consistently remember to turn my phone for videos. Sorry!!).

Here’s an even better view of the finished river. Besides being beautiful, it’s so amazing to think of how those fish will be there for future Robinson kiddos to see and enjoy. And for these kiddos to come back to visit with their own kiddos some day in the future!

After the rock-placing, there are many adult speakers who told the story of how the OLC first began, and the original set of parents who came up with the idea were there to wave at us. Even our own Mrs. Frierdich (in the office) was one of those people! Her own grown children were Robinson students when the dream began and she’s still here to enjoy it! Then each grade pledged to take care of a part of the OLC, so that the recent work that has been done to upgrade the space can continue to shine. First grade is in charge of Berm 1 and there will be much weeding, planting and care-taking in our future to share with you.

Lastly, ALL of Robinson committed to care for our space with a pledge written by the 5th grade:

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Way to go, Robinson kids and parents, for making the 20th birthday of the OLC super great, and helping us look excitedly to the next 20 years!!

#FDOFG2017–Nature Hunt!

During our first days together, we do many things that allow us to work together, get to know each other, learn and practice routines and procedures, and also just have fun. One thing we did that was a big hit was a nature scavenger hunt! We are lucky to have an amazing naturescape in our backyard (which was recently made over to allow us even more natural places to play and learn!), and so it was the perfect place to go!

Kiddos were put in small groups of 4, and then we gave them a job to do and a bag in which to collect their finds.

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We were blessed to have 4 adults with us during this time, and so we had lots of eyes on each group as we explored. It was pretty much up to each team where they went and they could fulfill the categories of the hunt in whatever way they chose. It was fun to see how many different leaves they found, how many “circles” there were in the woods and also what teams considered “treasures!”

Perhaps the best part of the hunt, though, was when we found something we weren’t even looking for:

IMG_0675-min Can you see it? There’s a friend in there….

Here, look again. With some help from some first grade fingers:

Yes! We found a turtle! He was walking right there across the path, and thanks to the eagle eyes of Jeremiah we got to see him! It was really hard not to touch and prod and want to pick him up (we didn’t–we left him in his home there), but we did the right thing and just watched as he walked and enjoyed the surprise visit! 🙂

What a fantastic morning outside!

The Planetarium Came to US!

I’ve posted before about the amazing things we’re able to do because of the many great people and resources we have in our district, and here’s another example of those resources at work. 🙂

Mr. Bartin brought the KSD Planetarium to our school! First grade classes each scheduled a time with him to visit and it was set up in our library! We walked in and really had a hard time containing ourselves (which is a little bad since it was a library. LOL).

We took a minute to chat with us and connect to what we’d already been learning about the sun, moon and stars, and then explained the guidelines for how to act inside the dome.

Then we headed inside. 🙂

While inside, Mr. Bartin was able to show us lots of things about sunrise, moonrise and set, how the stars seem to move, what constellations look like–and we even went back in time!! (Ask your kiddo about this one!!). It was dark in there, and so it was kind of a useless task, but I did try to capture something so you could see what we did. Here’s a picture and a video (which pretty much just looks like a black screen but you’ll get the idea–you can definitely HEAR the excitement. 🙂 ).

Pumpkin Jack and Rotten Lanterns

Remember when we made Literary Lanterns and Mrs. Meihaus let us display them in the library for all of Robinson to see? And then we had everyone vote on their favorite one??

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Well…the voting window has closed, and the winner is….

Yay! and Congrats to Aadish and Keira!

The vote was very close, so I feel like I should mention that 2nd place was a tie between I Yam a Donkey and Mustache Baby. Yippee for Allie, Penny and Tanner!

But, of course, the real winners were all of us because we have read LOADS of great books, got to use our creativity to create something amazing, and all of our school (plus our blog readers!) got to share in that fun!

Well, then what happened to all of those fabulous lanterns once we were finished with them (and they were starting to get a little soft and moldy)? We thought about taking them home, but wasn’t sure that kiddos (or parents!) would want to lug them all home again. I have to admit that a couple of them had to be tossed because they were wet inside–sorry, friends!–but we ended up with most of them that needed a new home.

So enter Mrs. Meihaus again (she seems to be the solver of all of our problems lately!) who had a SUPER suggestion that we put them somewhere outside. And she even had a book to help us with this idea: Pumpkin Jack.

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The story is about a boy who had a jack-o-lantern that was rotting and his mom made him put it out in the garden. He was able to watch it run the course of the cycle and see it return to the ground and then grow again as a new pumpkin! This then became his new Jack the next fall.

We decided we would do just that same thing. 🙂

First we travelled to the library to pick up our pumpkin babies. It was funny how sad kiddos were that we were finished with these. I didn’t realize Keira’s face on her Octicorn until I uploaded them. Super sweet! (Well and sad, too, I guess!).

Then we headed outside to the woods to find a place to “plant” our pumpkins.

We are excited to come back and visit over the next months of the school year to see what happens! Hope to share some good news and maybe even see some new pumpkins growing that we can turn into Literary Lanterns next year!!

Marshmallow Challenge 2016

In 2012, Mrs. Hong brought the Marshmallow Challenge to Robinson. Since then I’ve done it with almost every grade I’ve taught (5th then 2nd and now 1st graders!). It’s been interesting to see what each group of kiddos excels with and which parts of the challenge are hardest for each group.

Just as a reminder, the rules are as such:

We used these same guidelines, except that kiddos had 25 sticks of spaghetti and we only had 15 minutes. Otherwise, the challenge was the same.

We worked in our Crews, which are small groups we use throughout the year in different situations, but that stay the same all year long. It should be noted that we hadn’t worked with this group for a while….

Anyway, groups got started and were off to the races. For the record, I noticed that only 1 group decided to draw a plan before they got started.

Kids had a variety of ways to tackle the challenge, with many groups thinking about squares as the base of the tower, but not quite figuring out how to connect that idea to the final product. Many groups seemed to be working individually at the same table, rather than together on the final tower.

And at the end of the 15 minutes, we had these towers:

The only tower that was standing belonged to Crew 6. And as you can see, there are not squares to be found, but many towers with lots of legs sticking out of the bottom of the marshmallow.

The next morning we debriefed this experience, thinking about things we’d keep the same (plusses) and things that we would change (deltas). Perhaps it was because of how I asked them to think about the question (or perhaps just because we had a really hard time!), but there were not many plusses, just a team or two that said that Crew 6’s design was a good one. No one mentioned anything that kiddos had done or how we had worked together that worked to make us successful. We did, however, have many things to say about what we’d change. Many kiddos from all the crews gave ideas, but basically the class agreed that we didn’t do a very good job of telling our groups what we were doing. We didn’t share out ideas with our friends and pretty much were only concerned with our own ideas. And so as you can guess, it didn’t go so well.

BUT, because we know that FAIL means First Attempt In Learning and because–since we are Roadrunners– we have grit and a growth mindset, we knew we could try again, change somethings and see how what happened differently.

The second go-round I had kids start with a 3-minute talk about what they would specifically do differently. Most teams decided to draw a plan this time, too.

After 3 minutes, teams got busy building.

This try brought up a really interesting problem. About 5 minutes in, I started to hear rumblings of teams who were “copying.” Shortly I had heard from all the crews individually that someone from another team had “copied” their idea and stolen their plan for their tower.

We had to stop the clock and have a quick conference on the rug. I had kiddos voice their concerns about what was happening and why they were upset. Someone complained that another group was doing the same thing as they were. “So what?” was my response. I’m pretty sure they weren’t sure what to say, so I pressed harder. “Why does that bother you? Say more about why it’s a big deal that another team “stole” your idea.” We had to then get to an understanding of the challenge, and that everyone could “win,” based on the way the challenge was laid out. The idea was not for some team to be better than another one, but that it was possible for everyone to have an idea that was successful, resulting in a tower that stood up tall. We talked about the idea of that old adage: “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” and how when someone uses an idea you have, you should be proud (rather than mad) because it means they thought it was a good one. Ms. Mimlitz and I gave honest examples of how many of our best ideas were inspired by things others had done or said.

I wonder if the angst was really because of a mental-model they all have (even at 6 years old) that “copying” is “cheating” and this is inherently BAD. I would rather them learn that in many cases sharing so that others can be successful is a GREAT thing; when someone else succeeds, it doesn’t mean you have failed. It actually doesn’t say anything about you at all!

After this little pow-wow, we got back to work, with teams asking each other about what they were doing, and visiting others’ workspaces to see another crew’s plans. In the end, I believe that everyone had the same design (we’ll work on innovation and differences later, the big lesson this time was about sharing!), but I believe that most tables had a tower that was standing! For sure we all ended this challenge with smiles on our faces, new understandings about success and excitement about solving our next problem!

Crew 1 and their tower

Crew 2 (I promise it was standing just before this!)

Crew 3 and their marshmallow tower

Crew 4–all smiles about their tower!

Crew 5 is pretty proud!

Crew 6 with smiles and a standing tower!

Outdoor Adventures: PLTW Design Challenge!

Hopefully you’ve read about how we’re learning about light and sound and how great PLTW is going in our classroom. (If not, feel free to check it out before you go on with this post–LOL). On Friday we got to the point where we were ready for the design challenge.

We had learned about the design process earlier on in the unit, and also were then reminded of the problem from the story about Angelina, Mylo and Suzi.

Since we had learned and explored about light and sound already, we were ready to answer that question from the end of our book:

If you were Angelina, Mylo and Suzi, how would you help them communicate over a distance to get help?

Luckily for us, we have a fabulous woods and Naturescape in our backyard in which to actually try out this challenge! We will do that on Monday, but first we had to figure out how to answer the question. We got into groups and had a limited list of supplies (which we happened to be carrying in our backpack):

Kiddos had time to design and build their devices and then will test their creations in the woods on Monday.

Callahan and Lucas figured out how to make their device reach higher and shared their thinking:

We also had an unexpected problem-solving situation come up after I talked with my first grade teacher-friend, Ms. Turken. I asked her how the challenge went with her class, and she told me they had these issues:

It was day time, and bright outside, so the light part of the devices didn’t really work
It was during recess and so the “outside sounds” made it hard to hear the sound coming from the lost kiddos and their devices. Also, since our woods are right next to a neighborhood, lawnmowers also made it hard to hear.
There were too many groups–her class had 7 groups to “lose” and then “find”
Only 2 adults were available during the time of their challenge

We decided to take on this problem and see if we could figure out how to use this knowledge (and their struggles!) to make the challenge work the best for us when we took our turn to try it out. We headed out to the woods to have a chat, because I figured it might be easier to think about it in the actual setting.

We gathered on the stage (built by the amazing Riggs Construction!) and talked about our options. I was excited to hear how kiddos were thinking through the problems I presented, thinking about how we could address them with what we know. We had many great suggestions:

Allie thought that we should be sure to focus on the sound part of our devices instead of just the light parts. She said their group had made sure to put both light and sound on their device. 🙂
Many kiddos took the number of groups problem, and thought of ways we could fix it–split our class in half, send one group then another then another to find the “lost” ones, and so one.
We noticed that the time of day we were outside (which was later than when Ms. Turken’s class was outside) was not so loud. There were no kids at recess, no one was mowing and all we heard was the wind in the trees.
Aadish suggested that everyone’s groups all go out into the woods to get “lost” at the same time. We could then try to use our devices to communicate with others, and as we saw each other, groups would join together to look for others. He suggested that the person who knew the woods the best could be the leader of each group.
Keira asked, “But what if everyone wants to be the leader?”
Aadish and the class agreed that maybe we could do the challenge more than once, giving more than one kiddo a turn to be in charge.
We even thought that we could do our evaluation and redesign right there in the woods before our next try to see if we could make our devices communicate even better.

WHEW! WOW! I was tired after all that smart thinking and was super impressed with how they were considering ways to make our experience the best it could be. I know we’re ALL excited to see how it goes when we’re actually in the woods tomorrow! Stay tuned and we’ll tell you all about it!

PLTW: Light and Sound

We are super lucky to have loads of new resources for science this year from Project Lead the Way, courtesy of a grant from the Kirkwood School District Foundation. It means we are able to add in so much more hands-on learning, and focus more deeply on engineering, design and coding in STEM this year, which is GREAT!!

Our first STEM unit this year is light and sound and we have been doing some really fun things already.

Before we even got into the unit, we did some things to expose kiddos to the big ideas, and to get them interested. One of those was to invite a Kirkwood Scientist, Mr. Bartin, to our classroom. Ok, well really Ms. Turken invited him to Rm. 203 and we tagged along, but he was here to share some interesting ideas about sounds with first grade.

Then we had some time to explore in non-fiction books from the library that we explored with a partner. Kiddos were responsible to read a light book and a sound book (or one that had both topics together) and then create a representation of something they learned or something that was important from their reading out of play-doh (and somehow I don’t any pictures of their creations! Boo. Believe me–they were great. 🙂 ).

Then once the unit started, it was with a story to help set the stage. This one is about three friends who have a problem: they get lost in the woods while on a walk with their class. 😦

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As we work through the rest of the unit, we will learn and explore with light and sound and eventually be presented with a design challenge much like our friends in the story.

We began with some exploring with some everyday objects (that someone might have in their backpack on a hike!):

We are keeping track of our learning in a Launch Log and will be able to go back and review it throughout the unit. We’ve just begun light explorations and will even spend the whole morning tomorrow outside as scientists with common objects like flashlights, magnifying glasses, and more! Can’t wait to share what we learn!

Outside Adventures!

On Tuesday we spent the morning outside. Shortly after our morning announcements, the pledge, Morning Meeting, and a quick Pinkalicious story shared by Rachel and read by Ms. Mimlitz , we headed across the street with our iPads in hand with some important work to do.

Once we get settled under a grove of really big, shady trees, we read a couple of books together (which is part of our regular routine, especially now that we’re keeping track of our books with #classroombookaday), and played a rousing game of Simon Says.

Next, I gave some directions for collecting some important information. Kids had been a bit distracted by all the nature around them anyway, so their next job was to “collect” the most interesting things as pictures on their iPads. After walking a big circle around the area to show kids their limits, I set them loose. They were given about 15 minutes to check out all they could find and WOW was there a lot to look at! There were even some kind horticulturalists working nearby that pointed out some things for us to see!

During this time we had an emergency drill (which was handy since we were in our emergency drill spot anyway), and since it was probably already 90 degrees and we were HOT, we headed back inside shortly thereafter.

But we weren’t finished! The next step was for kiddos to crop their pictures, zooming in on the MOST INTERESTING part of the photo. I wanted them to really think about why they had taken the picture, as well as what the story was about that image.

These were the next directions. And let me tell you (and I’ll elaborate about this later on, too) that it is a little UNBELIEVABLE that kiddos know how to do this already at this point in first grade!

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Kiddos did some great work, and we will build on this as we work together this year.

Check out our Outside Adventure WRITING!! Like I said (and I’m sure I’ll continue saying it!), what these kiddos can do with their devices already is nothing short of amazing!

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#FDOFG–What Do You Do With a Box?

I wrote about my goals for the first days of 1st grade last time I did this, mainly because I needed to refocus after having first days with 5th grade for so many years. Yeah, obviously with 6YOs I was going to need to do something different. What’s interesting to me, too, is that my first day this time was even different from just two years ago.

I had some pretty honest goals from my first time around, and this time it is still important to me that we learn each others’ names and learn the routines/procedures of the classroom, understand our school’s universals and know where things are…these are all big deals. But this time around, I have some other ideas first. (Wow…this post has a lot of the word first in it…sorry!)

As I went into this year, I had been reading a lot about making sure that the first days of school are exciting and engaging for your students; showing them what is important to you as a teacher and how your classroom will be this year is the focus rather than just the “rules.” So that got me thinking about what those first messages might be to my new friends, and those messages helped me plan our beginning moves together.

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I decided I wanted to try something a little crazy. It was based on this book:

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I had read it over the summer with my own kids, and it gave me all sorts of great ideas of what might happen if I asked my kiddos the question “What do you do with a box?” (As a side note, I actually kept reading the title as a question instead of what it actually was. I didn’t realize until just the other day that it wasn’t right. I must have REALLY wanted to ask that question!). I knew when I read it that this was going to be our first big activity together. BEFORE we learned about the supplies, BEFORE we practiced how to use our classroom library, BEFORE we learned the Robinson Mindset, BEFORE we did just about anything else. I wanted to send a strong message, and I also planned that problems would arise that we could use to teach many of those earlier things–like for example, how much tape to use, where the scissors are, how you have to put your things away before you move on, what to do when the time is up and you’re not finished, etc.

So…we read the book and go to work. I told them the basic idea: they would pick a box, decide what they wanted to make with it and draw a design and materials list, then build it. Unlike a typical design challenge, we weren’t really solving a problem and we weren’t planning a redesign/rebuild, but it gave them the feel for doing something BIG early in the year. It matched up to many of the messages I wanted to send my new friends.

Before lunch, kiddos chose their box (I wish I had taken a picture–there were loads of different sizes) and then got busy with their designs. As a side note, I also didn’t stress that they had to have a drawing, had to have a materials list, had to have a solid plan…but most kiddos did. Those AMAZING kindergarten teachers did a super job of leading kiddos down this design road and they knew just what to do.

We talked as a team about what we would/could use, and set the time limit of 25 minutes. We set the timer and we got busy!! Check out what it looked like as we worked:

It was SO FUN to see what kiddos did with their boxes. Some kids planned and made something that you could put things into, and some made it into something else besides a container. Yes, there were some kids who said “This is HARD!”, but were able to work through their struggles and move on. Kids helped kids, I asked questions and made suggestions, and was able to get to know kiddos a little bit as we worked and talked, as well as by what they decided to make from their box. I didn’t get to the part where we could explain and share with our class about what we made, and I don’t have pictures of each one separately, but I do have a pic of them all piled on the rug. It looked pretty cool and kids were pretty proud:

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One thing we did have time for was to debrief on what they thought about how it went. I had planned to introduce the protocol of Plusses and Deltas, and they did a great job. Check out what they noticed:

I was SO IMPRESSED with how well they worked, and I was happily surprised and pleased by what they were able to put on the “plusses” side. And look–the deltas will be SUPER EASY to fix. The “not helping” part really was when a friend asked someone for help and they were busy working on their own creation and didn’t want to be interrupted. We worked through what words they could use instead of just saying “no, I can’t help you.” The chairs and cleaning up was simply because of the directions I gave at the end of our work time, not that they didn’t know how or that they should do it. Impressive, Rm. 202 friends.

Looking back, I am so glad I took the leap to do something crazy, not knowing what would actually happen with first graders on the first day after we’d been together for just a few hours. They did great, I sent some positive messages and we started our year off with a BANG!!

Students: What did you like about our box challenge? What did you learn? What would you do differently next time? Did you have fun??

Parents: What did your kiddo tell you about their box creation? What did they tell you about the book, or what they thought of the activity?

Teachers: What are your goals for a new year? First days? What is your usual “first” activity?

20somethingkids and 1kookyteacher

Starting a 3rd Grade Journey

Tag Archives: STEM