Skype-a-Thon 2016

Students at my school traveled 8,161 virtual miles during Skype-a-Thon 2016! We made nine connections with people in four different states!

I love Skype because it allows our students to have experiences they would not otherwise have. They love connecting with people who live in different parts of the world and learning about how their lives are the same, but different. Mystery Location Skype, Mystery Number Skype, and Mystery Animal Skype provide students with an opportunity to practice critical thinking skills. 

Here are the connections that we made!

1. A fourth grade gifted class played Mystery Number Skype with a third grade class from a nearby school.

2. A third grade class shared their favorite books with a first grade class from a nearby school.

3. A second grade class learned about dinosaurs in Denali National Park from one of their park rangers.

4. Our technology club Skyped with Microsoft Sales Director Damon Fitzgerald. The students played Mystery Skype to determine his location and he told students about some new Microsoft products.

5. A fourth grade gifted class played Mystery Number Skype with a third grade class from a nearby school.

6. A third grade class Skyped with Anthony Salcito, Vice President of Worldwide Education for Microsoft. The students told him about our school, how we use Microsoft products, and their favorite books. 

7. A kindergarten class played Mystery Animal Skype with a second grade class from a nearby school.

8. A second grade class played Mystery Animal Skype with a second grade class from a nearby school.

9. A third grade class played Mystery Number Skype with a third grade class from a nearby school.

Microsoft Store Field Trip

We recently took our fourth and fifth grade technology club students on a field trip to the Microsoft store at Perimeter Mall in Atlanta! During our visit, students participated in a program to learn about coding. This trip would not have been possible without my district's technology project specialist and my Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert Southeast Region lead, Sandi Adams, who connected me with the store. The store employees were very helpful in planning our trip. They designed the experience to teach students about coding and also various Microsoft products.

Before we disembarked the bus, Sandi gave all of our students purple OneNote Avenger capes! The students loved being Microsoft superheroes. This also made it easier to keep track of the kids in the mall! When we arrived in the store, Microsoft Community Development Specialist Katia greeted us and led the students to tables with Surface tablets. She told the students they would be learning how to code a video game using Touch Develop. Katia led the students through the first few exercises but after that let them work at their own pace. There were videos within the site for students to watch if they were confused. Katia and another Microsoft employee, Ronald, were available to help students also.

After students had successfully programmed the game, Katia and Ronald allowed students time to explore several Microsoft products, including Minecraft EDU, Xbox and Kinect, the Fresh Paint app, and Surface tablets.

Our field trip inspired many of our students to continue learning more about coding using Touch Develop. Several of our students even plan to use this site to create a game to enter into our district technology fair. We are so thankful to Microsoft for allowing us the opportunity to visit their Atlanta store!

Cassie Beasley Author Visit

I first met Cassie Beasley in September of 2015. I had just finished reading her debut novel, Circus Mirandus, a month before. And I knew that my students would love it as much as I did! So I asked Cassie to visit my school, and she agreed! Her visit was on October 17. She gave presentations to our fourth and fifth graders during the day and attended our annual Reading Night that evening.

Circus Mirandus is the story of fifth grader Micah Tuttle, who lives with his grandfather, Ephraim. For years, Ephraim has told Micah stories of the magical elusive Circus Mirandus. Stories about a beautiful flying bird woman, an invisible tiger who guards the gates, and a man who bends light and who owes Micah's grandfather a miracle. Now Ephraim is gravely ill, and Micah believes that finding the circus is his only hope of saving his grandfather.

To prepare for Ms. Beasley's visit to our school, all of our fourth and fifth graders read Circus Mirandus. I purchased two class sets of the book with Scholastic dollars raised at our last book fair.

Our teachers decorated each of the halls in our school as one of the book's settings (the circus entrance, the Amazonian Bird Woman's tent, the Lightbender's tent, Mr. Head's Menagerie, and Micah's tree house).

We also set up a circus-themed photo booth that doubled as a backdrop for the morning news. This was very popular during Reading Night!

In Circus Mirandus, Micah and Ephraim have a magical talent for tying knots. So several of my classes researched how to tie knots and we displayed their work in the media center.

During her presentations, Ms. Beasley talked about living on a pecan farm in south Georgia, what her days as a full-time writer are like, and the importance of editing her writing. She also had kids participate in an activity that taught them how to be specific with their writing.  I loved the question and answer part best. Since all of our students had read Circus Mirandus, their questions were very thoughtful. Our students were mesmerized by Ms. Beasley's presentation. They loved Circus Mirandus and were amazed that the author was actually at our school!

"Because it was a ridiculous, amazing thing to do, and once in a while, it's good to be ridiculous and amazing."

-Circus Mirandus

Orange you glad you read?

This new display just went up in my media center today! I pulled a variety of books (everybody, fiction, and nonfiction) with predominantly orange covers and displayed them with a sign that says "Orange you glad you read?" Click on the picture of the sign below to download it for your library!

 

 

Atlanta Maker Faire 2016

Today my son Caleb and I attended the Atlanta Maker Faire in beautiful downtown Decatur. A Maker Faire is a gathering of people who make things who share their creations with others. There is always a wide variety of projects that are shared, from arts and crafts to robotics. There were so many wonderful experiments to see and projects to tinker. I learned a lot that I hope to use in our school Makerspace!

Janke Glass Studios demonstrated how to blow glass.

This man from the Flint River Knife Club made a knife out of an old motorcycle chain.

 

The 3DP Workbench is a huge 3D printer! It made the red chair above.

 

 

Zane from Hack Berry Lab helped kids make their own paper lamps using a template cut on a cutting machine, an LED light, and a coin cell battery.

Nature's Appeal makes beautiful crocheted rugs and bags out of recycled plastic bags (plarn).

These guitars are made out of cigar boxes and they play beautiful music!

Kennesaw State University has a robotics team that designed an autonomous submarine.

A local school with an amazing robotics program brought some of their Vex robots for festival goers to drive.

I love this hot wire!  I have a little hand-held hot wire, but this one cuts much straighter!

These 3D selfies by My 3D Worlds are so realistic!

 

Organizing Book Club with OneNote

I love talking books with our school's most dedicated readers! Many of these students are in our Firebirds Book Club. Our book club students receive a new book each Monday and have one week to read it, although many students read and return their books by the end of the next day. All of the books we read are Georgia Children's Book Award nominees.

Book club students are organized into four groups. The students in each group read the same book each week. During book club meetings, students participate in four stations. At one station, students compete against each other to answer questions on the buzzers. We use the results of these mini-competitions to select the students who represent our school at the county Helen Ruffin Reading Bowl competition. At another station, students check out their new books and begin reading.  A third station involves students working collaboratively to complete a graphic organizer about the book.

And at the last station, students add content to our book club's OneNote notebook. In the notebook, each of the books we read has a separate page with two subpages (Book Response and Questions). On the Book Response page, students write a review of the book. On the Questions page, students write their own questions to practice for the Helen Ruffin Reading Bowl competition.

We have now had two meetings in which students worked in our OneNote notebook. The first time, it was a slight challenge for them to understand where to type their responses without overlapping someone else's. But by the second meeting, students were easily able to log in, find the page they needed, and get started with almost no assistance. They love seeing their group members' responses on the page as they work. In the past, we have maintained a blog, a wiki, and several shared documents with book club information. The OneNote notebook keeps everything in one place and makes it easier for students to access the information they need.