Today at our first Harambee, Mrs. Joseph and Mrs. Lim read us the story of Ron's Big Mission. This is a fictionalized story of something that happened to Ron McNair when he was a young man. You can read more about Ron McNair, one of the first African-Americans to go into space, at Britannica. Click on the book to the right to hear it read to you! |
Some of our wonder questions:
Next week we'll talk about open- versus closed-ended questions (we call them THICK questions) and also learn strategies for searching online using kid-friendly search engines such as Kidtopia and Kid Rex. I love using and introducing new technology with students. Their enthusiasm and willingness to try hard things goes way up when technology is involved. It's especially exciting to see things you have made appear on the big screen - wow! This month we're learning a new classroom portfolio tool designed just for young students. Almost all of the buttons and instructions are symbols rather than words, to make it accessible to new readers and English language learners. Students use QR codes to log in, instead of using a typed code. This speeds up the process greatly and also increases security. When I showed our K-2 students Seesaw at the beginning of November, I gave them some very basic guidelines: take pictures of books, and only say nice things. After a period of time for guided practice, we expanded these guidelines in a student discussion to come up with these five rules:
By giving our students an opportunity to try out digital sharing in an authentic setting, we can allow students a lot of ownership over their own learning process. It is my hope they will apply these rules to future social networking and digital environments as they get older.
Students used fifteen minutes of independent work time to read about one of three animals (bees, bats and owls) and begin their own KWL charts. They worked diligently to record their own knowledge and ask questions first. A great start to developing our inquiry process!
The first two groups of kids came today for the inaugural meeting of the Bryant Coding Club! Group 1 and Group 2 (I think we need better team names) played some coding games to learn the basics of the programming language called Blockly. Created by Google, this block-based programming language is similar to others like Scratch, and is used to program the Wonder Workshop robots, Dot and Dash. Next week we will take turns telling the robots to do things using the Blockly app on the iPad.
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Mrs. RohdeI've been a media specialist for over 15 years, with a little classroom teaching mixed in. Before that, I was a public librarian, a web designer, a microbiologist and an opera singer. Archives
February 2021
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February 2021
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