Group items tagged

"Last year my grade 1 students were uploading videos to their personal blogs and to youtube, tweeting from our classroom Twitter feed, face timing, skyping and participating in Google Hangouts with peers, soon to be teachers, teachers, experts in a certain field, and the class down the hall. We participated in global projects like the Global Read Aloud and created our own global projects. Why?"

"In the first installment of Rick Wormeli's homework advice, he made the case for take-home assignments that matter for learning and engage student interest. In Part 2, Rick offers some guiding principles that can help teachers create homework challenges that motivate kids and spark deeper learning in and out of school. These articles are adapted and updated from Rick's seminal book about teaching in the middle grades, Day One & Beyond: Practical Matters for New Middle Level Teachers. Rick continues to offer great advice about homework, differentiation, assessment and many other topics in workshops and presentations across North America. Check back in Part 1 for some additional homework resources."

"The maker movement was front and center at the 2015 ISTE conference-and that's a good thing for me. After following maker initiatives with great interest for some time now, I have the opportunity to design a maker space this year for 6th-12th grade students at my school, Worcester (MA) Academy. A search of this year's program at ISTE, held June 28 to July 1 in Philadelphia, using the term "constructivist learning/maker movement" resulted in 67 related sessions. The ISTE Librarians Network hosted a maker station at their Digital Age Playground and convened a panel on library maker spaces, featuring elementary and middle school librarians, a school administrator, and the coordinator of a public library maker initiative. Vendors and exhibitors demonstrated tools, lessons, and ideas for maker spaces. Meanwhile, a four-hour Maker Playground Wednesday morning drew a huge crowd of attendees. One of my goals at the conference was to gather ideas and tips to help me create my library's maker space. Here are some highlights of what I discovered at ISTE."

"As I gear up to present student work at ETFO's ICT Conference in Toronto, I'd like to share some ideas: 1. Coding allows for students to learn across math strands instead of in isolation. 2. Coding is a place for students to fail safely. 3. Coding allows students to take risks and solve problems. 4. Computational thinking is a form of problem solving not accomplished with textbook work. 5. "Making" is creative. Creativity is fun. Here is a student application coded to support our Grade 8 probability strand. We extended our projects with Makey Makeys so users had a physical interaction."

"The maker movement was front and center at the 2015 ISTE conference-and that's a good thing for me. After following maker initiatives with great interest for some time now, I have the opportunity to design a maker space this year for 6th-12th grade students at my school, Worcester (MA) Academy. A search of this year's program at ISTE, held June 28 to July 1 in Philadelphia, using the term "constructivist learning/maker movement" resulted in 67 related sessions. The ISTE Librarians Network hosted a maker station at their Digital Age Playground and convened a panel on library maker spaces, featuring elementary and middle school librarians, a school administrator, and the coordinator of a public library maker initiative. Vendors and exhibitors demonstrated tools, lessons, and ideas for maker spaces. Meanwhile, a four-hour Maker Playground Wednesday morning drew a huge crowd of attendees. One of my goals at the conference was to gather ideas and tips to help me create my library's maker space. Here are some highlights of what I discovered at ISTE."

This summer we've done a bunch of iPad training with students who will be tech leaders in their schools. We had students from 6th-10th grade in about 20 different schools (all with different setups!) It's been interesting to with so many different schools - because we've learned so much from them how many technical and philosophical choices there are when implementing iPads. Two things that are going to matter greatly are: 1) decisions about setting up the iPads and 2) what you expect the students to do with them.

Spelling game with levels for Grades 1 to 6.

"To Aviva Dunsiger, paint and playdough are as important as iPads and computers. The Grade 1 teacher at J. Edgar Davey Public School is a leader at incorporating technology into her classroom. Every day, in and among her lessons, Dunsiger tweets, blogs and shares her students' progress on several social media platform"

Please join us in making February 4, 2015, the first annual Global School Play Day for students in schools around the world, grades Pre-K to 6 or ages 1-12. In his TEDx lecture, Peter Gray clearly argues the case that today's kids do not grow up playing and this has negatively impacted them in many ways. It's time we return the gift of play to this generation.

"A day in the life of a teacher may rarely be the same two days in a row, but there are some common themes and occurrences. Take a look at the following two scenarios, and note which one seems more familiar to you. Scenario 1: Each school day, students have a lunch break built into their schedule. At the prescribed time, students put away their work and head outside, cafeteria, or other spot to hang out, play, eat, or relax. The teacher breathes a sigh of relief in the quiet classroom, and uses those moments to decompress, eat, and relax too. Scenario 2:  At the prescribed lunch time break, students head out of the classroom and the teacher rushes to complete all the things they haven't had time for yet: grading papers, last minute planning, offering extra help to students, meeting with administrators regarding student issues, replying to emails, checking all the personal emails, texts, and phone calls that they got earlier in the day, and if they're lucky and have time, eat something quickly before the next class period starts. WHY TEACHERS NEED RECESS Most teachers identify more closely with the second scenario."

"This course is targeted to middle school grades 6-8 (ages 11-14 years). It is also written for teachers who may not have a Computer Science background, or who may be teaching an "Intro to Computer Science" course for the first time. This course takes approximately 14 weeks to complete, spending about 1 week on each of the first 11 lessons, and 3 weeks for students to complete the final project at the end. Of course, teachers should feel free to customize the curriculum to meet individual school or district resources and timeframe."

"Benefits of Coding At the heart of computational thinking - and mathematics - is abstraction. When children write code, they come to… understand in a tangible way the abstractions that lie at the heart of  mathematics, dynamically model mathematics concepts and relationships, gain confidence in their own ability and agency as mathematics learners. Computer coding is creating a buzz in education. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently said, "We need to do a lot better job of getting young people to understand what coding is and how it's important, how to program, how to problem solve, how to create the most elegant algorithm possible."1 BC recently announced that computer coding will be added to all grades of the K-12 curriculum, and Nova Scotia has made a similar announcement. The trend of adding some form of computer coding to curriculum is an international phenomenon; in 2014, England mandated a coding curriculum for all K-12 students."

"Because parents everywhere need all the help we can get keeping our kids somewhat academically stimulated, TIME is the latest company to step up and offer to help-with a free digital library of TIME for Kids. Several digital editions of TIME for Kids (and the financial literacy magazine Your $) are now available through the end of the school year. The magazine's content is curated for four different grade groups: K-1; 2; 3-4; and 5-6."

"Laurie Santos wants to help teenagers, and the rest of the world, feel happier. Santos, the psychology professor behind Yale University's most popular course, recently launched a free six-week version of the class aimed at teenagers, called "The Science of Well-Being for Teens." It was developed to address rising rates of anxiety, depression and suicide rates for kids between ninth and 12th grade, Santos says. Lesson No. 1, she preaches in one of the course's pre-recorded lectures: Our brains lie to us about what makes us happy."

"With second quarter in full swing, and a new reading/language arts curriculum, I am excited to update my post from March on Guided Reading in a 1:1 classroom.  My enthusiasm and passion continues to grow knowing the students  I teach have limitless possibilities.  I am able to individualize and differentiate instruction for each child in my classroom. "

"At Cindrich elementary school in Surrey, B.C., 10-year-old boys are putting themselves to bed earlier, an enthusiastic girl in Grade 6 takes herself for a run when she's feeling hyper, and a diminutive boy who is still learning English tells his teacher he will do better work if he sits on a special cushion. It is all part of self-regulation, a philosophy of education that is moving into public schools in British Columbia."

WOW!! Lot's of resources here!!