Planning Passion

This week is our first week back after Spring Break and our fourth graders were ready to dive into creating their Passion Project display boards! After a brief introduction and a display of another class' book projects, we were ready to begin!

I'll be honest with you - it was a little bit of mayhem trying to figure out the best way to proceed.

We showed the students a blank display board and talked about the required elements. While this wasn't a science project, we still wanted to align the project display as close to the scientific method as possible to give our students a taste of the structure and organization they would discover in future projects.

Students then took some time to complete the planning pages in their Kindness Journals. Since students completed their acts of kindness before break, we needed to fill in the sections for results and reflection.

We discussed the best way to tackle the display: What looked best on the models we had seen? What grabbed our attention and made us want to read more? We agreed that our white display boards were boring and would need color and large text. This naturally led into the decision-making process for a crucial question for our display board design:

Do we write everything out by hand or use digital tools instead?

This is only the second year our school district has used G-Suite tools (e.g. Google Docs) and it's the first year we've jumped into Google Classroom. The learning curve for digital writing was a bit cumbersome at first with students having to create new passwords for first use of accounts, then remembering those complexities as they maneuvered through logging on to the computer, accessing ClassLink, then accessing Google Classroom. Then we had to actually compose writing digitally.

There was a moment when I wondered if students might choose the traditional tools of markers and colored pencils, but unanimously the class agreed that digital text was best. Within minutes, students had laptops out, were logging in and we were scrambling to catch up!

To keep the students organized, and allow us access to everyone's work, we created individual assignments for each of the display headings: Title (which included presenter name), Materials, Procedure, Results, and Reflection. From there, students selected the assignment, created a new Google Doc and voila! Their digital paper was ready for typing.

We brainstormed project titles and helped our classmates with creative suggestions. We played with perfect pentameters as alliteration shined through our work. We discussed the differences between bullet lists and numbered lists and figured out how to switch between the two.

Even though Mrs. Cross and I had mapped-out this entire year-long unit, some basic elements were left for student discovery and discussion. For example, one student asked, "Shouldn't we have all the headings the same font and size?" Another students asked if they could add more fonts to their selection box, noticing the "More Fonts" option at the bottom of the font pop-up box.

The room was noisy and busy with students asking questions, helping neighbors, and requesting to be checked. When students determined that their section was complete, they raised their hand and we put a check mark beside that section on their planning page once it had been reviewed and edited.

We quickly realized that the original 45 minutes we had planned for today's lesson was simply not enough time, so we extended our planning and preparation for another hour.

Today's lesson was important; engagement and productivity was priority.

Thankfully, I had planned for success! Prior to the lesson, I put student names on gallon-sized Ziploc bags to hold any display items students would create for their projects. This was a lifesaver as many students were printing their pages, ready to customize them for their boards!

Next week we will wrap up our digital writing and customize our boards with color, photos and any additional ways we choose. That will leave us one lesson for a dress rehearsal and then it will be showtime: our Kindness Fair is almost here! We can't wait to share with you all the ways we have blessed others with kindness through our Passion Projects!

A Week's Worth of Fun

This week was our first full week of classes following our unexpected snowstorm that resulted in more than a foot of snow in our district - a rare sight to see! We missed four and a half days of school, returning for a day and a half then back home again for the weekend. On Monday I braced myself for lesson cancellations, expecting emails from stressed teachers feeling the pressure to prepare for testing instead of providing opportunities for tech.

I was delightfully surprised - No cancellations!

In Ms. Candler's fifth grade art class, students used the Doodle Buddy app to create product logos. It was inspiring to see how the students layered the different colors and shapes to achieve their final products. 

Several fourth grade classes began researching the Coastal Plain region for a presentation project using Google Slides. Students were placed in collaborative groups of four to create ten slides filled with informational tidbits, vivid images, and fun facts galore. They started this week's session by collaboratively choosing a themed template. It was inspiring to listen to all the different ways they shared their opinions and compromised on one choice. When the projects are completed (in about two weeks), the students will exchange their presentations with students in Staunton City Schools, providing an authentic audience for writing and composing. They will also have an opportunity to leave comments on individual slides to enhance their learning and communication skills.

Ms. Heizer and Ms. Joyner's third graders created stories using Google Docs in writing rotations, while I completed brief writing conferences, capturing my notes through a Google Form. (If you want to see a copy of my Form, click here!) One gal composed three complete pages about her best friend while another student described her recent gymnastics meet. I love learning more about our students and helping them learn and grow as writers! 

Ms. Joyner's students also practiced mathematical problem solving skills using the EdPuzzle website. This site is awesome! You select instructional videos for students to watch, but overlay your own questions and answers for checkpoints (a great tool for flipped classrooms and any content area that can benefit from a spiral-back review!) I accessed student answers on my phone while they were completing the questions, which allowed me to reteach content right in the moment. Students already knew if they mastered the content by the green/red color coding and self-correcting answers. (If you want to use my videos, just create an Edpuzzle account for free and search "Tamara Letter" in the search bar to add my screencasts to your account!)

Mrs. Brockel's class continued working on their collaborative presentations for Pi Day in March. They made so much progress that we moved our group meetings up a week so they could have a quick face-to-face check-in to identify incomplete tasks and create an action plan for completion.

Ms. Miller's students began finalizing their cross-discipline art/social studies project this week as well. Students used construction paper and symmetry to simulate a food chain of one animal being eaten by another, then wrote haikus to describe their artwork. We took digital photos of their food chains, imported them into the ChatterPix Kids app, then students recorded themselves reading their haikus. Click here to see a sample finished project!

Teachers were also busy this week, recording chapters for our One School One Book program that will begin next week. Students will be able to listen to chapters at school and at home thanks to the sharing power of Google Drive!

In addition to a week filled with lessons, tech trainings, and collaboration, our team welcomed a new ITRT, Mrs. Elizabeth Verlander, and successfully completed all tasks on our weekly agenda - the third week in a row! This was a definite #flyhighfri for our team - ending the week with JOY!

Needless to say, it was a fun-filled, jam-packed week. I wouldn't have it any other way!

Looking forward to an awesome week ahead with new opportunities to inspire students and teachers alike. Make sure to check back soon to find out more about our Tech Take-Out PD sessions at our district's school board office on Monday!