Friday Five

For the last four years I have been writing a weekly newsletter with Tech Tips and ideas for 21st Century learning.  In an effort to justify my time and effort and to find a way to house the newsletters I've decided to post them here each week.  Here is last week's Friday Five.

Elementary Friday Five              September 21, 2012

Ramdon Ramblings

Here are some reminders of tools that were once loved that have been updated. There are also a few new tools to try. 

**I have not tried these links at school.  Some may be blocked.

11.  Quizlet :  Quizlet is a vocabulary study site that allows students to play games that match terms to their definitions.  Students can study flash cards, quiz themselves, and play games that use a set of words and definitions.  You can use the website to create the sets.  You can also import the sets you need from others to your group.  Each set in your group has an unique link that can be embedded in your website, wiki, or blog.  Quizlet also has an app that you can use with the same sets you have already created.

1.  2. Symbaloo:  Symbaloo has been one of my favorite sites for years.  It is a great way to organize links.  In symbaloo you can visually organize links into like groups.  This makes it easy for young users to navigate the web and find the webpages that they need.  This is a great way to make individual links for those quizlet sets that you’ve created. Recently Symbaloo came out with and EDU version that offers some great premixes for you to use.  Symbaloo also has an app.
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   3.   Intervue.Me:  This site is a way for teachers to use a webcam.  It is an easy to use video response website.  Basically, with just a click, students can enable the webcam on the computer to record themselves. It works really well if you post a question and then have students respond to it by video, giving them valuable speaking practice, and you the opportunity to review their comments. This site has 21^st Century skills application written all over it!! Note that videos can be viewed by others. 
   
   
   4. Time Kiwi:  With timekiwi you can create a beautiful timeline of your twitter, blogs & photos.  It fetches activities from your favorite social networks and visualizes them in a timeline. With time kiwi you can1.   remember the moments from your year with your great group of kids.  What a fun way to link a classroom twitter and a class blog.  It will be amazing to see how much your students grow and learn through the year.
   
   
   5.   Swackett:  Swackett is a whole new way to look at the weather. They convert complex weather data to easily-understood, visual weather reports designed for people of every age. Their unique approach is to combine raw weather data (current conditions, radar, and detailed forecasts) with thoughtfully crafted people symbols (called “peeps”) who always appear appropriately dressed for the weather. These available as a web app, iphone, ipad, or android.
   
   
   Have a great weekend!!!
   
   

Epic Fail and Pinterest Creation

My goal this year was to post more than once a week in my new adventure in 2nd grade.  I just realized that it has been more than a month since I posted.  We are not six weeks into the new school year and already my blogging has been an EPIC FAIL!
I must say that so far I am thrilled with my move down to second grade.  I am loving the sweetness of my second graders.  They are working so hard and already I am seeing a lot of progress.
Our school is in our second year of our Leader in Me training.  We are embracing the 7 Habits of Happy Kids and trying to instill leadership traits in our students.  As part of this we are required to have the 7 habits displayed in our room.  It is strongly encouraged to have the habits displayed on a tree.  When I moved into my new room, there was a Palm tree with the 7 Habits displayed on the Palm Fronds.  I didn't like it but it served a purpose, so I left it on my wall....until this week.  I finally decided what I wanted my tree to look like.  This summer I saw trees on Pinterest with framed family photos on walls everywhere.  I'm not a painter and I refused to pay an arm and leg for a vinyl tree.  Several weeks ago, Zulily.com had vinyl trees on their site.  Of course, I had to order one.  When it arrived the rest of my plan began.  I made a trip to dollar tree for eight 5x7 frames, and to Wal-Mart for the brightest spray paint I could find.  I found the cutest 7 Habits posters from Rachel Lamb here.  I went to school early the next day to put it all together.  I LOVE it!!!!

Classroom Tour

This year my classroom theme is Owls.  It is the fourth year I have used owls.  I'm loving all of the new owl products that are readily available.  I've had a great time redoing my new classroom and finding ways to use all of the neat new owl products! I hope you enjoy the tour!

Cubbies with book luggage.

My Pinterest inspired objective board.

Computer Center

Main Reading Center  

Word Wall

Another book area.

More Books

Buddy Reading Booth

My gum ball machine treasure chest.

Vocabulary Tree waiting on new words.

Saxon Math Focus Wall.

My "Owl Stars" hall clipboard display.

Whole group teaching area ready for students on the carpet.

A close up of my door with my favorite Zig Ziglar quote.

My Entrance waiting on first day of school pictures.

Welcome to my room.

Close up of hall clip board and name plates.

The back side of my door.

Meet the Teacher Night

I'm always excited about a new year.  This year with the change from 3rd to 2nd I was also a little anxious.  All of the fears and anxiety went away tonight as I met my new class.  I'm in love.  They were so cute as they came in and explored our new room.  I can't wait until Monday as my new adventure in 2nd grade begins.

Below you'll find pictures of the gift my kids received at meet the the teacher night!

Welcome Back Owls

Owl close up

Note on the back.

He Keeps Me Young

Normally, this is a blog about school and my classroom happenings, but, today I just had to share my little munchkin's fun third birthday.  I always thought I would have just one child.  When I became pregnant after 40 and 17 years after my oldest son was born, I was thrilled.  Needless to say, he is spoiled by many.
His latest passion is firetrucks.  So when it came time to plan his party that is what he chose.  We decided to have a water party because July in Alabama is Hot.

This Birthday Boy is ready for his party!!!





Kids Table and Crate Seats







Dessert Table

Mini "Car Wash"









Ready to blow out the candle!

What is a party without a splash in a mud puddle?

Camden had a blast at his third birthday party.  Now to start planning for next year!



Happy Apps

Recently, I was able to present a workshop for the elementary teachers in my school system with two other teachers that love to integrate technology in their classroom. We presented a model lesson that showcased the apps Screenchomp, Brain Pop, and iCell. We also presented 30+ apps in 30 minutes. With each app we gave strategies to use these apps as something other than a game to kill time. Over the next few weeks I hope to share some of our ideas on how I plan to integrate these apps in my second grade classroom. Until then, this is a link to our Symbaloo that bookmarked all of the apps we shared.

Super Giveaway from Kleinspiration

Erin Klein the author of the great blog Kleinspiration has an awesome giveaway.  She is celebrating 1,000 followers! There are way to many prizes to mention them all here but I promise that you will want to enter.  You can click on the picture below to go to her post about the giveaway!!  Good Luck

http://www.kleinspiration.com/2012/07/biggest-give-away-yet-thank-you-readers.html

Wax Museum

Days like today make me proud to be a teacher.  After a trying week, I needed today.  I was so proud of the efforts my students made with their 7 Habits Wax Museum.  During the past few weeks students researched a person that represented one of the 7 Habits of Happy Kids.  After their research, they wrote and memorized a speech about their person and how they represented one of the habits.
As 1:30 approached I could feel the nerves of my students.  I was worried they would freeze when visitors and parents arrived.  I was ecstatic when my normally silly, rambunctious kids performed flawlessly.  They spoke clearly and not one forgot their speech.  This activity and idea came from a unit I purchased on Teacher Pay Teacher here.

Bear Bryant, John Heisman, and Shug Jordan

Anne Sullivan, Helen Keller, Maya Angelou, George Washington Carver

Maya Angelou, George Washington Carver, Clara BArton

Mae Jemison

John Heisman, Bear Bryant, Bill Gates

Helen Keller, Anne Sullivan

Clara Barton

Parents watching the performance!

Now we continue working on our PBL unit planning a field trip for a class from another school.

Have I told you lately....

I LOVE blog stalking.  I knew that that was thing I needed to do as I was preparing and planning for ARMT review.  Alabama's standardized test will be given soon and my students needed some fun, active way to review.  I found some great ideas here and here.  I took those ideas and created a Bootcamp activity for the entire third grade and a Surgery Center review for my class.  Both days were a lot of fun and gave meaningful practice to an otherwise boring review.
On Tuesday, camouflage was encouraged.  Dog tags were made and passed out to each student. Students marched into the lunchroom.  They were assigned a table and the fun began.  As any recruit would do the students responded to a chant to get them fired up.  They played a game of Scoot with twenty different objectives.  They had 4 minutes at each station to complete the activity.  Then they responded to the call of ARMT with Bootcamp as their signal to rotate.  They had fun reviewing and working in a group discussing the process and answers.  After the bootcamp, students reviewed the questions in their homeroom and a "Bootcamp Manual" full of testing tips was sent home.

Working Hard at Boot Camp

ARMT Review

 Today our classroom was turned into Broadhead's Surgical Center.  As students returned from PE, I yelled to them that we had an emergency and they needed to get to the room STAT.  They were hilarious running down the hall.  While they were gone I had changed into scrubs, so I was ready to be the supervising physician during surgery.  They were given a medical kit that included a mask and gloves to put on and then they were ready for surgery. They went into surgery to find a body on the table and ARMT open ended math practice problems.  They worked in groups and each time they were caught synergizing, they were given a band aid for their patient.  I loved seeing my students solving problems and working together.   After surgery, they gave their patient some body parts to give them life and we hung our "beautiful" creations in the hall.

I know my students are prepared for the ARMT.  They have been working hard all year.  I only hope their ability is reflected in their work next week.  Good luck!!!!

The Leader in Me

This is our first year implementing The Leader in Me program at our school.  Teachers were trained this summer and we have spent the year implementing the program in our lives and teaching practices.  We have also introduced one habit each month to the students.  I wanted to see if the habits had impacted the students and to see if they understood their meaning.  I had groups of students conference and as a group come up with a way to illustrate the habit in a photo.  After I took the photo, each group went to the "motivater" on big huge labs. They uploaded the photo, typed in the Habit and its meaning.  I think they did a great job showing the seven habits in the Leader in Me!!