March 2012 Blog Posts (32)

Gulliver's Travels was…

Over the last year I have engaged many educators on the topic of using “Cellphones” as learning tools in the classroom. I would say that in most of these discussions, the leading reason given not to have “Cellphones” in a classroom is that they are a distraction.

For the purpose of this post, I am placing some Webster definitions here:

Telephone: an instrument for reproducing sounds at a distance; specifically: one in which sound is…

My post on our class KidBlog site this morning-

"I woke up this morning with a smile on my face, a dance in my step, and a song in my heart. Now this is quite different than most mornings, as I am not a morning person when I have to get up at 5:50am. My children wondered what in the world happened to me, because I had not drunk even one cup of coffee yet, and I was singing and dancing! I even did…the RUNNING MAN! Do you know what I think it is? I think it is SPRING BREAK FEVER! Oh…

Here are some resources for educators interested in broadening their learning opportunities.

P2PU :  Learn anything, with your peers.

The Public School :Propose a class or take one.  

Instructables :  Learn from videos and…

One of the great things about word processors is the ability to manipulate documents in any way you see fit. Whichever program you use, you should be aware of the importance of blank space. Emptiness is not the same thing as "nothing". If you're purposeful about the way you use emptiness, it will work to promote learning in…

I watched this video, and cracked up! I was trying to find articles about rigor and bumped into this video. It's a bit long in making its point, but I get it. This poor teacher is being hounded by her principal, to "perform" , so that her students can learn the parts of speech.

Personally, I don't have a problem with rigor in the classroom, I embrace it. I…

Tablets are taking the academic world by storm. They're light, compact and extremely multifunctional. They also do things differently than a laptop. One of the really interesting areas tablets are being used is as a notebook.…

Over the next few days my blog will be a snapshot album of words describing what it is like to attend a premiere education conference, ASCD12. This is an experience that most educators rarely experience over the course of their careers. It is not an inexpensive proposition to send educators to national conferences. For some reason many districts use that as a reason to send the same administrators year after year to these conferences. I think administrators have the idea that their district…

People get sick by doing one of the following things:

1) A lot of interaction with the public.…

At my Middle School I am fortunate to have a time every other week that each teacher meets with about 18 students in an advisory role.  The time that we meet with students is somewhat planned for those teachers who need a lesson plan and yet open-ended enough for someone like me who likes to work from the "hip."  Today, after discussing the events of Spring Break I posed the following to my group of 7th and 8th graders:

I held up a variety of educational journals. “So in each of these…

In order for educators to teach kids, they need something to teach. Exactly what it is that educators should teach has often been discussed and continues to be the focus of ongoing discussions for over many generations. The delivery of that content, in regard to what to teach, has never been of great concern, because the bulk of it came in the form of text, delivered in a book called the textbook. In the 50’s the education pioneers introduced film strips, 16mm films, and recordings to…

Fourth Grade AIG students created this collage using words they associated with AIG class. They practiced using Wordle before creating individual projects with words used to describe the story elements in the novel Dovey Coe by Frances O"Roark Dowell. We will post student work later this week. I look forward to seeing their creations. Fun!…

I hate standardized testing.  I hate what standardized testing has done to teaching. SMH :(      This is what it has driven me to!

1.  A guy goes in for a job as a bubble filler.

He lets the boss know how he meets the requirements for the job.

"I can fill in bubbles really well. "

" I've been taking standardized tests since I was in kindergarten."

"I make sure the circle is filled in, no…

I finally had the chance to use a classroom set of i-pads as a reinforcement to all of the math concepts my first graders have learned so far (see photo above). Instant feedback to children is of vital importance when it comes to reinforcing a newly-learned skill. When there is only one teacher in the room, instant feedback doesn't happen often enough. Today, I had seventeen…

One of my students came in with a link to an interesting website this morning.  This fun trivia site lets students take trivia quizzes and play games to earn badges.  Scores are posted by user name so students can compare their scores and progress to that of others. The administrator (you) can create a group for students to join, and your group can compete against other groups around the world. Great for critical and strategical thinking, and loads of interesting tidbits of information for…

Treasures Just Waiting To Be Discovered…

Groote Schuur is our new sister school in Cape Town.  Enjoyed meeting administrators, faculty and more importantly the students of the Interact Club.  We are now working on our first exchange which will take place in November 2012.

I spent my Saturday morning learning how to use a new tool  for my language classes and I'm pretty happy with the results! We are currently studying sentence diagramming…