ING Unsung Heroes

My school was awesome enough to send me and some like-minded colleagues to a technology in education conference at St. Andrew's a few weeks back.  Some brief thoughts:


1.  STEM is truly the most important and groundbreaking movement to happen in education in many, many decades.  Dewey, Montessori, and Piaget would be proud.


2.  There is an incredible network of teachers who are completely psyched and ready to collaborate on STEM topics.


3.  The best early elementary teachers are pushing for relevant technology content and learning opportunities.  Technology is NOT just the companion of children 10 and older.  Our youngest learners can and should have opportunities to program, design, and explore the aligned worlds of technology and engineering.

ING annually awards 100 educators with $2,000 to spend on projects that they feel passionate about.  I entered with the idea of bringing real and tangible technology and engineering to our youngest minds at The Woods.  I am delighted, humbled, and shocked to announce that ING selected this project as an award recipient.  Thanks to their generosity, our Lower School will have a new rolling engineering cart stocked with re-usable learning materials.


I am psyched.  A tiny bit overwhelmed by the work that needs to be done.  More than anything, I feel blessed to be an educator and so humbled that companies like ING recognize the importance of infusing creative ideas and materials into education.


For more information on the scholarship, the link is below:

http://ing.us/about-ing/responsibility/childrens-education/ing-unsung-heroes/about-ing-unsung-heroes

Paper Tower Challenge

Reasons Why I Hate the End of the School Year:

1.  Letting go of an exceptional class.

2.  Letting go of these kids, scholars, honest friends.

3.  Having to clean up the big, giant mess that is my classroom.

Reasons Why I Love the End of the School Year:

1.  Getting to take risks.

2.  Getting to have more and more fun with our learning.

3.  How incredibly mature/advanced the kids are - they are practically whispering third grade at me.

End of Year means lots of quirky challenges.  The one presented yesterday?  Become a structural engineer.  Create a building using nothing more than printer paper and tape.  10 pieces of paper and 12 half inches of tape.  Each paper will cost you, the budding engineer, a cool $1,000.  Each piece of tape runs for $500.

The design that can withhold the most weight (while being the most economical) will be deemed the winner.  

And we begin.

We work in partnerships or in solitude.  We work on top of desks.  We do whatever we can to top our teacher's design.

Yes.  I made my own paper tower.  I thought that victory was secure.

Noticing my competitive nature, the kids start collaborating.  Teddy and James decide to barter:  one piece of tape for two pieces of paper.  I had not even thought to use this advantage.  Brilliant minds over here.

I thought that my tower would be the strongest.  Then I started to look around the room.  Pure tenacity.

Let's end the saga here:  my structure collapsed.  Teddy's structure, on the other hand....

withstood math journals...

withstood a hefty atlas...

withstood an actual textbook....

... withstood a dictionary!

What I want them to take away from this:

That it's good to brainstorm
It's good to dream big
It's good to think outside of the box
That it's possible (and awesome) to beat their teacher in a challenge

I'm slightly humbled, but more than that so astounded by these minds.

An Ode to Mystery Readers

Mystery Readers are literary superheroes.  They are heroes for donating their time, managing the questions and thoughts of a highly energetic and opinionated classroom, and for gifting us with new wisdom.  

Armed only with 5 obscure clues about their identity, we wait impatiently for the big reveal.  They could, of course, be anyone...

...They could be an older brother..

...An older sister..

...An honorary uncle..

...A very humorous dad..

...Or even a best friend from Texas who gave all of us the ultimate surprise by taking a sneaky plane trip to arrive in our classroom..

They are heroes.  This aforementioned group does not represent all of the fantastic people who have stopped by our room to share in their love of reading and learning.  We've also had aunts, mothers, godmothers, and even a teacher or two.  It's been a great year to have an open classroom.  

Biography Celebration and Wrapping School Up

....................FINALLY.  The grand celebration.  The great minds party.  The amazing send off that us second graders give to our newest historical friends.

There aren't too many places where you'll find Annie Oakley holding court with Albert Einstein.  Or an Egyptian pharaoh discoursing with a prima ballerina.

We had it all:  sports starts, courageous characters who broke the color barrier, inspiring artists, and even a queen or two.

Those parents could not stump us.  After months and months of reading, inquiring, planning, and practicing, we were ready for all questions - and also ready to pose some of our own.

The above photograph might be my favorite of the entire school year.  Does anything say "We're all ready for summer" like a shoeless Johnny Appleseed walking down an empty hallway with a dapper Louis Armstrong?  Even the parents didn't flinch!

The end of the school year is definitely a time for reflection, but more than that:  it's time to delve into high interest material.  Lessons and subjects that possibly didn't have a place in our packed-tight curriculum during the heart of the school year get special feature in the waning days.  Our first choice?  The ever popular Titanic:

One more chance to practice our research and sythesis skills.

One more time to collaborate at our desks and answer relevant questions that our peers ask without even picking our eyes or pencils up from the paper.

One more time to stand up while we're working because we just think better that way....

And one more time to feel hand cramps from all of the work, but intense pride in the ultimate result.

Biography Study

Annie Oakley was nicknamed Little Sure Shot by a famous Native American chief.  Albert Einstein hated the methodical, military-like atmosphere of his school.  Walt Disney was a practical jokester long before he conceived of that famous mouse.  Queen Elizabeth had savvy political strategies and a temper not to be reckoned with.  Pablo Picasso was a Casanova with the ladies of Europe (this fact possibly makes us roll our eyes).



We discovered these facts - and a vast trove more - while studying the biographies of these famous stars from history.  Each student selected the person whom he or she wished to learn about.  We utilize the Who Was? series for this unit.  These books are phenomenal:  challenging, sure, but full of such high-interest information.  These books don't shy away from the Alabama that Rosa Parks experienced, the annex that Anne Frank hid and dreamed of a better future in, the high drama of Ford's Theater on April 15, 1865.  And because the books are direct, the kids so respect and value the text.  They ask critical questions and speculate on what life must have been like for these heroes and heroines.  It is a phenomenal and moving experience with history.


As we read, we summarize and sequence.  When the groundwork has been laid, we move onto our favorite bit:  creating the posters.  Each child is tasked with mining the most interesting and relevant parts for public display.  Captions, photographs, and illustrations are a creative must.  It is laborious - a bonafide labor of love.  But oh, the pride:

Victory.  Amazing poster.

Surveyor, farmer, soldier, commander, president:  what did George Washington NOT do?  Ben displays another incredible poster.

Teddy is our resident historical whiz kid.  He selected a very appropriate choice in Thomas Alva Edison.

Next week, we'll don appropriate costumes as we celebrate our Biography Unit conclusion with some parents, teachers, and special guests.  We can't wait!

    

LOC Summer Teacher Institute

I am honored (and increasingly excited) to be a member of the Library of Congress' upcoming Summer Teacher Institute.  The program is a one week intensive course meant to further educate K-12 classroom teachers and learning specialists on primary source usage.  I am particularly fond of social studies / history curriculum.  With the ever increasing trend towards technology and project based learning in elementary classrooms, I truly feel that this is essential training.  Social studies lessons must be relevant in order to be effective.  Kids are so inspired when they are referred to as historians and detectives.  Primary sources are used as essential clues in their learning quests.  I'm psyched.  Many of the upcoming participants have connected via social media even as our schools are buzzing with end-of-year activities.  It is inspiring to know that educators are traveling from across the country to be a part of this collaborative, creative group.



At the Institute, my potential project will focus on utilizing primary sources to explore the way that goods and services were produced and sold in the past.  An early unit in our second grade social studies curriculum focuses on just that:  goods and services, what they are, what they mean to our economy, how they are distributed among our population.  I have never delved into the history component of this lesson before.  I'm so excited to work in the famous reading room at the LOC and meet with professionals who are equally eager to inspire children to love and truly comprehend our history.

Manhattan pretzel vendor, date unknown

Print of New York's Dry Goods District, 1886.  I'd like to focus on marketing in this image, and compare it with current marketing trends.

Bill of Fare in restaurant, Minnesota, 1937.  I can imagine the future discussions about the purpose of such advertisements.

A factory that makes rayon and cotton goods, 1940

New York Associated Transport Company, 1943

Woman purchasing cloth goods, 1943

Woods Academy STEM Fair

The second graders were very proud to host Woods Academy's first ever STEM Fair.  STEM is a handy acronym for Science Technology Engineering and Math.  It is a definite buzzword in professional development circles as it winds its way through our ever-changing curriculum.

The kids were tasked with creating - and presenting - their own projects.  No classroom help was offered other than the initial brainstorming of some cool potential projects.  The kids had to create a valid hypothesis, observe and analyze their experiment, and then plot any data.

The kids took this and positively ran with it.  Projects ran the gamut from chemistry, biology, physics, earth science, and engineering.  I was stunned by their mastery of the concepts that they learned about.  They did a phenomenal job of reporting their findings to friends, teachers, and real life scientists.

The real life scientists, by the way, were mighty impressed and perhaps a little intimidated by these budding scientists.  NIH and NASA, watch out.

Sophia demonstrates why wind power is a great and effective source of energy.  She even had a log book with all of her observations (she is gesturing with it)

Mariana's stage presence is phenomenal.  I can see her future as the co-host of Good Morning America

Charleston shows us that it's physically possible to walk on eggs without breaking them!

Julia created amazing crystals using Borax

James had an amazing project - and the coolest microscopes that the real scientists had ever seen

Jameson demonstrated the ever-cool tornado in a bottle

As ever, I am stunned by the hard work and creativity of these second graders.  They are phenomenal and tenacious with every new learning adventure.