Make believe stuff

We like to build stuff! It's our Honor to show you how we build our houses. We really like to build stuff Do you? By Estelle Sydney and Eva!

Linking Professional Development to Student Opportunities

This summer I spent two days attending some great professional development at a conference called E21.  A teaching colleague from another school invited me to attend with her so we could learn together. It was great! I was honored to be asked to collaborate, and I was excited to grow as a teacher.  A full description of the conference is contained here:  http://e21con.org/

A snippet of the program description was:
Putting tenets of the maker movement into practice – collaboration, experimentation, invention, and play – everyone will take part in hands-on project creation. Participants will also attend talks and discussion sessions on topics ranging from making a creative laboratory space in a small rural school or library, girls/women and emerging technology, project development, and market introduction of inventions.

Learning About Makey Makey Kits-A Playdough Piano! Summer PD 2014

During my many classes I did explore, create and learn.  I got to see the maker movement in practice as educators learned by creating.  I do not believe that all of education should be 'create first, seek content knowledge later', but I see the value in giving students opportunities to explore materials and to make things often-- and NOT always as the summation of a unit of study.  Classrooms should be 'maker spaces' that give students room to explore and create.  As educators we should be looking for ways to give students room to inquire and discover through exploration.  Problem solving and investigation skills need equal learning time with content knowledge.  Students natural curiosity and wonder should be celebrated!  When I selected the tenets of the RES Enrichment Program several years ago--Think, Create, Collaborate and Share--I knew that content creation and creativity were important.  It was great to see these ideas through a different lens as I learned about the tenets of the maker movement.

Creating a Solar Powered Creature-- Summer PD 2014

I left the conference energized to find ways to put these concepts into practice in my classroom.  I also left with some great new education connections--some with plans to work together and others that I signed up to follow on twitter. 

I am happy to report that this professional development has led to some great opportunities for students at RES.  Through my new connections on twitter I found a link to the Vermont State Science Fair and an opportunity to bring professional development and an Inventor's Workshop to our school. (Here is the link to my plans for our first RES Cougar Cub Inventor's Workshop:   http://resvt.blogspot.com/2014/10/res-cougar-cub-inventors-workshop-save.html )  My vision is that families will see the power of this type of learning and get to share it with educators at our school and engineers from our community.  I also created plans to collaborate with another school in our district on an inquiry science unit. We will build in more inquiry and creation and then give students an authentic audience through our collaboration as educators!

As a teacher, I value opportunities to learn and grow and I hope that by sharing my passion for learning new things with students and our school community that they will be energized to constantly learn too!

Geology Collaboration

For the month of October I am collaborating with the third grade teaching team, Mrs. Redford teacher librarian, and third graders on a geology project.  We are asking: What is the impact of water on the land around Richmond Elementary School and how can we record and share this information with others?  After brainstorming areas that we wanted to study, students explored these areas with their scientific observation skills --  measuring the impact of water as well as drawing and taking pictures of their findings.  Next we will be using this collected data too create a visual technology presentation using Movenote.  

Exploring outside presents awesome opportunities for students to use their natural curiosity about the world around them.  By collaborating with other teachers we have gotten the chance to explore in small groups, allowing us to make the most of our time together.  It has been great to view students really connecting with the land around us. They are developing a sense of place as they make  connections with our science curriculum.  These past few third grade enrichment blocks have been a great addition to our learning!

The Enrichment Room is OPEN for PLAY

Kindergarteners excitedly enter the enrichment room pointing out all of the centers that will be open for exploratory play this week.  After five weeks of introducing new centers each week....we are excited that everything is OPEN FOR PLAY!  Our process of the guided discovery of spaces in the enrichment room allows students to feel very comfortable as they explore and discover together.  I find that although this slow introduction is hard in some ways(why isn't the kitchen open yet???!!!), it is very beneficial to our learning for the rest of the year.  Students understand the expectations at each center and can play and learn with few adult reminders.  As the teacher this allows me to really focus on working with students to learn about them and their interests.  Play is such an important part of our learning and I welcome this chance to play as much as students! 

We are performing puppet shows, painting, creating art on the chalkboards, writing, drawing, building with Legos and No Ends, exploring the fairy house, cooking imaginary meals in the kitchen, playing house, creating a restaurant and a shop, exploring the classroom library, and creating stories in the Fairy House and Water Mill! We are learning together as we think, create, collaborate and share in this playful environment! Each week centers will be added or changed, and we will explore in directions based on student interests.

Enjoy some playful moments captured over the last few weeks! (Some first and third graders had to join in!)

Exploring the Writing Medium of Blogging

Students in second grade enrichment classes are learning about blogging. After viewing a few sample blogs  students set to work creating their own 'paper blog'. Here are some of the sample blogs that we explored on our internet journey (of course there are thousands of blogs out there, but these were a few that connected with interests that I knew many students would be excited about):

Mrs Mumford Kindergarten Blog (RES teacher and students)
http://mumfordkindergarten.blogspot.com/

RES PE Blog (RES Teacher)
http://resphyicaleducation.blogspot.com/
RES Blog (RES Staff)
http://resvt.blogspot.com/
Student blog about dot day (US):
http://kidblog.org/JHFIClassof2015/6ce733e4-be4b-406b-8dbb-7787a47018b0/dot-day/
Student blog about Minecraft (US):
http://kidblog.org/weblog14/author/df40390e-9d4c-4e83-9790-9208a4f368d6/ 

Student in UK made a blog about her school lunch because she was unhappy:
http://neverseconds.blogspot.com.es/ 

Second Grade blogger from Iowa

http://hagansworldofawesome.blogspot.com/
Seven Year Old blogger from Australia
http://ameliesanimals.edublogs.org/

Although the central idea of blogging is around using a technology medium to share with others, we are using a step by step process that begins by breaking blogging down into the key components-- many of which are not unique to the use of technology.

We began by first creating a blog title page. We are thinking about the following questions: what should our blog look like? What should it be called? How does the appearance encourage others to read it?  Students used color, pictures and interesting surveys to make the static part of their blog attractive to their reading audience. They mentioned many items that they noticed in the blogs we reviewed to make their decisions.  Classes loved Mr. Godfrey's survey, and pictures to connect with the blog topic were also popular.

Next students created their first blog post on paper. Students were free to write about any topic that was interesting to them. This choice in writing was engaging, and was a great way for both students and myself as the teacher to make connections with student interests.

This week we will use our paper blogs to practice commenting and responding to comments. Armed with all of these great skills we will have a group of second graders prepared to share and learn through blogging! I can't wait to see how these skills translate over time to the development of communication about RES learning with parents, our local community AND a global community!

My goal is to facilitate the creation of an authentic audience that can witness and celebrate the greatness of RES students! I believe that blogging is one avenue to accomplish this goal. Stay tuned for details about student blogging on this blog over the next few weeks!

Garden Visit and Plant Observation

Students in first grade enrichment will be actively studying plants throughout the year.  We will use a variety of activities to enrich our learning.  One of the objectives of this science study is to become observant, and then to use these observations to create scientific drawings that include details and labels.  I have teamed with. Mrs. Elliott, art teacher, to emphasize the closely connected skills of art and science, and first grade students have been practicing their observational drawings in art class. You can read about  this work here:

http://mrselliottart.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-shoe-game-res.html

This week in enrichment we spent our time in the RES community garden reinforcing these observational skills.  Students had ten plant pictures and had to match them to the correct plant.  Once students agreed as a group that they had a match, they took a picture to prove they had found the correct plant.  I heard great conversations as students debated about leaf shape and size, and discussed how they could be sure they found the right plant.  This was also a great opportunity for us to visit and explore the garden. I look forward to watching these great foundational skills lead to amazing scientific drawings as we continue our plant studies throughout the year! A special thanks to Mrs. Woodruff who went on our garden visits and helped students identify some tricky plants!

Our Place in This World

Third graders have spent the last few weeks of enrichment class thinking about their place in the world.  World geography is one of the social studies units which students will focus on in grade 3, and by starting with this project students had an opportunity to think about their geographical place on an introductory level.  This was also a great opportunity for us to get to know each other as a class of learners, and practice collaborative group work skills which we will use all year long! Students selected a place in this world they wished to share. Next they worked with a small group to design a three dimensional way to show that place.  Students used clay, popsicle sticks, maps, flags, cardboard, technology, and much more to create their place.  Once all of the creations were complete, we worked as a class to create an iMovie that shared our place in this world-- beginning with ourselves as a group of learners and then growing all the way up to our Planet Earth! Throughout this project students were engaged and enthusiastic, and they really worked as cohesive teams!

This work is a great foundation as we will spend time later in the year digging deeper into our understanding of world geography.
Third graders hope you will enjoy our iMovie Presentations!

Mrs. Ayer's Class:

Mrs. Ankerson's Class:

Ms. Darby's Class: