Literary March Madness

For the second year in a row, March brings one of our most exciting activities "Literary March Madness"! All year we have been tracking our picture books and are now reading to begin debating our favourites!

The fun thing about looping with your class is the ability to create traditions. After the success of last years event, I was excited to hear the students cheer when this years bracket was posted! Now that they are more comfortable with the activity, students  who usually shy away from talking in front of the class are giving eloquent arguments as to why their book should win.

Last year, when they were in Grade 2, many students gave arguments like 'it was funny' and 'I liked the pictures'. This year, I am blown away by their arguments. "I think 'I Have a Dream' should win over 'One' because it is a very important true story. If Matin Luther King had not given his speech 'I have a dream' speech then 3/4 of our friends would not be able to vote in our Literary March Madness. That is why I am voting for 'I have a Dream". (And that was an argument for the second place book!)

Wow. To say I am a proud teacher today is an understatement! (and we have just started fractions, so I loved that connection!)

What I Learned Today!

“So what should we say when children complete a task—say, math problems—quickly and perfectly? Should we deny them the praise they have earned? Yes. When this happens, I say, “Whoops. I guess that was too easy. I apologize for wasting your time. Let’s do something you can really learn from!”
― Carol S. Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success 


Everyday I ask my students to challenge themselves. To go outside of their comfort zones, try something new, and grow their brains. I ask them to share their thinking with me, and with their peers, if if they do not (yet) understand themselves. They take their work, and each day do something to make their work better.

And what has all of this done for my students?? They have shown major improvements in all areas of their education, especially in Math! They finish their work and they ask me for a challenge question. They are starting to find new ways of figuring things out, new ways of explaining their work, and new ways to think and respond to their work! They exclaim “Ms. Morris - my synapses are firing! I understood how to do that today!” and “Ms. Morris, that was too easy for me today - can I get a harder math question??” It is everything a teacher hopes to hear from her students. My students are excited to learn, which makes me excited to teach!

And what about me? Well, today I learned that it is easy to ask someone else to challenge themselves, but it is another thing entirely to accept a challenge for yourself. I challenged myself to write this blog post, and then spent a week fretting, and trying to come up with an excuse to back out! Then it hit me - How can I ask my students to try new things, to challenge themselves, if I, their teacher, am not willing to do the same??

How I will challenge myself:
I will write in my own personal blog a few days per week (and maybe even share it with people!) 
I will tweet more, and respond to others tweets @mspjmorris
Rather than think “wow, I blogged to others, and look at all the grammar mistakes!” I will think “Wow - I finally blogged to others today, and my brain didn’t explode - yay!”

How will you challenge yourself today??

Game Design and Coding in the Classroom!

Playing a self-created game!

After penning an email to a fellow teacher about the game design and coding apps I use in the classroom, I thought that there may be others out there who are interested in bringing these 21st C tech ideas into their classrooms as well!

(please note that I am in no way sponsered by these sites or apps. They are just ones that my students and I have found and love!)

First Test

Game Design:

The number one app for this right now is PIXEL PRESS FLOORS.
http://www.projectpixelpress.com/floors/

Problem Solving and Teamwork

It is a free app (available only for ipad at the moment) that allows students to design, create, test and publish a 3-level old-school Mario type game.

I LOVE THIS APP! My student immediately could start drawing and seeing his work come to life. He knows what he likes in a game, and can test and problem solve his game until he thinks it is perfect.

Students have a choice of drawing write in the app, starting from a template, or using their graph paper (available for free on their website) to draw it by hand at home, and then take a photo of it in the app to upload it.

I have printed a bunch of paper for the classroom so that all of my students can work on it! (We only have 4 iPads in the room).

Then when EVERYTHING is done, you can publish it to allows people across the world to play it. After the first week he had 57 people play his game. He was so excited that he began to cry!!


Coding Online:

Coding is so important for students to learn, as it forms the basis of all online, tech and gaming content.

Using the Hour of Code website students can play and design their own versions of fun games (flappy bird, angry birds, frozen). It starts simple enough that our kindergarten students were trying it, but has enough levels that our grade 5’s are still challenged by it.

http://code.org/learn

Practicing Coding

Coding Apps:

There are a number of free apps available but the following are the ones that we have found to be the most fun and educational!

The Foos  http://thefoos.com/
Kodable (site and app) https://www.kodable.com/register
Scratch Jr http://www.scratchjr.org/

Not Bored with Cardboard!

Cardboard buttons for our participants!

Today I had a fantastic time presenting at the Peel Science and Technology Symposium with my amazing teaching partner! Our topic 'Not Bored with Cardboard' introduced a room full of teachers to our term 1 inquiry project based on Caine's Arcade (http://cainesarcade.com).

After taking them through everything we did to make this project cross-curricular (which I will talk about in depth in another blogpost) we let them loose and had them create hovercrafts using simple household materials. 

Tape, CD, pen lid, elastics, dime roller, sticky tack and scissors, and a balloon!
Yes - this was my desk. Note the purple scissors and funky tape!

I love when teachers get a chance to play! There is nothing like a little hands-on inquiry that gets adults releasing their inner child (well that, and the chance to make balloons fly around the room!). 

Here is the completed hovercraft! I can't wait to do this in my class next week. This project allows students to explore written directions (procedure), and figure out what makes the hovercraft move (forces) all in a hands-on inquiry based project.

For me, today was the first time I have presented, as a teacher, in front of my peers. As someone who grew up with extreme stage fright, this was a personal challenge for me. Luckily, an amazing teaching partner, and an awesome group of participants made this a really fun day! I am looking forward to getting up and sharing my ideas again!

Finally, nothing says cardboard workshop like a hair bow made of cardboard (and a duct tape owl - love that tape!). 

Inspired by Peter H. Reynolds

For national read-aloud week, we decided to explore the works of Peter H. Reynolds. If you have not read his books, go, right now, and find them! Seriously. Stop reading this blog post and go! (And then please come back - I'm a new blogger, I need my readers!)

We first introduced Peter H. Reynolds to the Grade 3's with "The Dot". Inspired by International Dot Day (http://www.thedotclub.org/dotday/), we read the story about a young girl who felt she just could draw, until her teacher inspired her to 'Sign it!'. We then had students create their own dots and create an art piece inspired by them! This story inspired our students to 'make their mark' on the world.

Our next story was "Sky Color", about a young girl named Marisol (who we later determined grew up to be the art teacher from "The Dot" - how cool is that!) Marisol loves art, but was faced with a challenge when asked to help create a school mural - how can she paint the sky if she doesn't have any blue paint? 'Sky Color' inspired our students to be creative and proud of their own thinking.

After we finished our story, my students were given an art challenge "Sky and sun". Their art could be anything they wanted, but had to include a sky and sun. As you can see, they all created unique and colourful pictures! One student was inspired to draw what they sky and sun look like from underwater, while another drew what the sun and sky look like at night. One of my favourite pieces was the student who drew a Nintendo DS and included the sun and sky in the game screen! He even cut it out and created the fold for the two screens! (Top right corner of the picture).


Our final book of the week was "Ish", the story of a young artist named Ramon who is enjoying drawing a picture of a vase of flowers until his older brother laughs at him and claims the art 'doesn't look right'. Ramon crumples up his art and keeps trying until he gets his art to look 'right' but never seems to be satisfied. When his little sister (Marisol - yup - she's back! Students minds are blown!) is caught stealing his crumpled art, he realizes that she has create a gallery of all of his attempts, because they are all beautiful. They may not be a perfect vase and flowers, but they are vase and flowers-ish, and that's what makes them beautiful!

After our story, my 3's were inspired to created their own 'Ish' art, once again inspired by the book! Their only rule, include a vase and flowers. They continued to be peppered with questions "Can I include...?" "Can I use ...?" "Should I ..." to which every answer was yes - it was their art, so they should create what ever they see in their brains.

Our amazing art included a pastel drawing of flowers, a poster asking up to "Be Yourself", a drawing of a living room (including a hole for a mouse) and comic story of a vase of flowers that falls from space, chases a student, and then they become friends! I am always amazed at what my students can create!

So why do we do this? Create. Inspire. Grow your brain. The three simple rules for my class.