Breakout with Ms. Greco's Class

Students in Ms. Greco's class worked diligently to collaborate and communicate with each other in order to unlock Mr. Hoe's secret cookie recipe lock box.

Setting up a G1 Makerspace

First grade students are starting to make and it is a very exciting endeavour for both them and us as teachers!

The G1 Makerspace is a shared open concept space where students can collaborate on ideas and use the materials for making, creating, and building. The space is organized into various making strands such as: artists, builders, cardboard makers, designers, fillmmakers, and gamers.  

There are basic supplies available already in the room and then students are bringing recycled materials from home.  

The first lesson to introduce the space had students walking around and wondering "What could I do in this space?"  Then, we establish the agreements to how the space should be used since it is shared by so many people.

1. Work with Purpose
2. Clean Up after Yourself
3. Always Show Respect 

After that, students begin to imagine what they would like to create on their next visit to the makerspace.  Students' ideas range from cardboard rocketships to programming robots to making a film about gymnastics to designing beaded bracelets.

Their excitement is contagious and I can't wait to see all of the wonderful creations that come out of this space!

Learning how to Take Great Photos

In my kindergarten and first grade classes, students have been investigating what makes a good photo. Students identified 3 qualities of a very good photo:

1. Fill the screen with what is important
2. Make sure it is clear
3. Photo should be right-side up

Here a few examples of photos that some students took during this lesson.

Creation Stations - Surpassing my Expectations

I was prepping stations for my first kindergarten class at The LOFT - Creation Stations and a colleague saw me pull out the Popsicle Airplane engineering station.  He asked if I was sure I wanted to use that station with 5 year olds.  I did agree that it seemed ambitious and could end in a total flop, but decided I was more interested to see what they could build by simply looking at an image of a bi-plane.  I could only use the image as most of these students can't even read yet.  

Needless to say, I was flabbergasted at how quickly the three boys took to this station, investigating the materials and seeing how they could be attached together to design a bi-plane.  After all three students were able to use a clothespin as the body of the plane and a popsicle stick as the front wings, two of the boys felt they had accomplished their goal and engaged in dramatic play with their newly created bi-plane.  That is, until the other student continued to study the image and went on to add a paperclip for the horizontal stabilizer.  After that, he broke a popsicle stick into half and used one half of it for the vertical rudder.  Of course, his classmates who were originally content with their planes began looking at his and thinking, "I want to add that to mine too!", which meant they went back to designing as well. The other student was still so engrossed with his bi-plane, that he added broken bamboo skewers as struts and as a way to attach buttons to the plane for the wheels.  Lastly, he glued another button as the rear wheel directly to the body of the plane and finished his design off with a pipe cleaner propeller.

I was absolutely impressed at how this 5 year old student had shown character and critical thinking skills to create his very own bi-plane model with only certain materials available based on a simple diagram.  I will never underestimate our youngest learners at school again!

Rules for my School iPad

This year, for both my initial kindergarten and first grade ipad lessons I took a different approach to our digital citizenship agreement.  Instead of just sharing with students what the school rules for ipads were, I engaged the students in a discussion on what kind of rules they have with devices at home.  I was super impressed at how quickly children shared rules about time limits, only using ipads on Saturdays, not being able to download apps, not knowing their parents' passwords, having to ask permission to use the device, certain apps (YouTube and "war games") were off limits, etc...  We then agreed upon which of those rules should pertain to school.  Below is an example of the school ipad agreements for one class.