Grinch Day!!

Today was obviously Grinch day! For morning work they got to create Grinch masks that we taped to popsicle sticks! They loved it and were very creative in saying that whenever I read the word Grinch in the book they would hold their masks up over their faces! I loved the idea!

The next project we did was to come up with Grinchy Adjectives- in other words words that described what the grinch is like!

We also listed adjectives that described the Grinch's heart.  My students did a great job at listing adjectives about his heart at the beginning and at the end of the movie knowing his heart grew throughout the book and movie! What smart students I have.

Next, we did a writing prompt inside the Grinch's mouth that said, "I would make a Grinch grin by..." and they had to fill in the blanks.  They did an amazing job at the things they would do to make him smile. Another activity we did was creating similes to describe the Grinch's heart or the Grinch altogether.  The example I gave them was that the Grinch's heart was as small as a mouse, and they came up with more creative ones than I did!! I love how well they did at creating their Grinch's faces! I can't wait to do this day again next year and even do it better!

Jim the Gingerbread Man Has a close encounter!

Last night Jim went to Mrs. Fuller's house to visit and check out her Christmas decorations. While he was looking at her beautiful Christmas tree, he met her boxer Gable. Gable thought Jim was a toy so he was constantly sniffing him out in the Fuller household.  There was one time where Mrs. Fuller turned her back for a split second and Gable ran off with Jim, the Gingerbread Man. Mrs. Fuller quickly hunted down her puppy and rescued Jim from the mouth of the boxer.  Gable thought he had found a new friend to play with for the night, little did Gable know that Gingerbread men don't play with dogs!

Reader's Workshop

This week we have been integrating the gingerbread man into our curriculum.  Our lesson today involved the gingerbread baby into our reader's workshop.  We are getting ready for Assessment 6 and mastering the standard of writing brief narratives.  This reader's workshop was all online which allowed it to be more interactive for my students.By creating a gingerbread person and taking them on an adventure.  When they write their story about the adventure it will force them to tell me a narrative based upon experiences that happened in a specific order and that describe the setting, characters, objects, and events in detail which is Standard 2.5.1.  I recorded myself reading Gingerbread Friends by Jan Brett and posted it to this blog.  Their job was to create a gingerbread friend, name it, and take it with them to somewhere they went throughout the day.  They needed to take a picture of it there and post the picture along with their adventure story online to my blog! This sounded like a lot of fun to me.. so I got the adventure started.

My own classroom!!

So this year has been a BIG test for me!  All in all I think I feel like I am excelling in everything that I do! There is definately a lot for me to still learn, but I think I am going to love doing this for many years to come.  I have a great first class, and excited about doing a lot of fun things with them and letting them get on some really cool websites on a daily basis.

Here are a list of the websites:
funbrain.com
educationcity.com
storybird.com
wordle.net
xtranormal.com

Introduction

My name is Kristin Fuller, I am a second grade teacher at Elmwood Elementary in the Peru Community School Corporation. I like to coach volleyball , hang out with my friends, and watch movies! I recently used storybird.com in my classroom and my students loved it.  I had a couple go home and create stories on their own that they shared with the class! I also did a scarecrow where my students had to use basic addition facts to color.  They then wrote a story about their scarecrow to post outside of the class that shows the math facts they've mastered and how much their writing skills have improved.  I also use wordle.net a lot in my classroom and my students really enjoy that website.

Module 4-2 Digital Literacy

I read a blog titled Techniques for Teaching Vocabulary by Gaetan Pappalando, that discussed the best way to go about teaching vocabulary in the classroom.  The big thing that Pappalando talks about is that you do not force vocabulary, but you use it in every day conversations.  He talks about several different ways to improve vocabulary such as by reading aloud daily, creating their own individualized vocabulary lists, and by using it in fun ways throughout the school day. 

A great way to increase student’s vocabulary is to read to your student’s daily.  By reading to your students as much as possible the students get to hear how words are used in everyday life.  After reading sentences with vocabulary words in it, stop and talk about why that word was chosen for that sentence and if the sentence would mean the same thing or be as descriptive if you used a different word in its place. 

Another way to teach vocabulary is to form reading groups based on abilities and allow them to meet with you, the teacher, and create their own vocabulary list to work on for the week.  By creating their own lists, they each are challenging their vocabulary levels.  This eliminates your students from getting bored because they know what some words mean while others have never heard them. 

The last thing that Pappalando discussed was different things you can do with the curriculum that can engage the student’s to participate in the classroom.  He talks about how poetry is a great way to teach elementary students vocabulary, because it isn’t really long, introduces rhyming words, and allows them to use context clues to figure out word meaning.  Using poetry is also fun to young students to read! Morning message can also be used to work on phonics skills and improve sentence comprehension.  First, read the question or statement to the students and then allow them to repeat it with you showing them the proper way to say words and how to sound them out properly based on their spelling. You can then end the morning message by talking about what is meant by the message and how to best answer it. 

The big statement that really stood out to me from this blog was, “You learn vocabulary by listening, learning books, and having conversations!” This statement is so powerful and so true in the fact that their background knowledge influences their vocabulary dramatically.  If they’ve never heard the word, than how are they supposed to know what it means or how to use it in a sentence correctly. 

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/teaching-vocabulary-elementary-gaetan-pappalardo 

Kids and Adults Design New Tech Tools

 http://www.edutopia.org/digital-generation-kidsteam-dana-video

I watched a video about allowing students to help create new technologies in the classroom based off of a single idea or goal. In the video they are giving a bag of stuff which resembles the few items little technology other places around the world would have, and they create a new piece of technology that could be used.  As a group they can better their technology by talking about what they created and listening to suggestions. 

In my classroom next year I want to be able to give them a bag of items and tell them to create something that would be beneficial in today's world.  In the video the students were very structured and knew exactly what to do with the things.  I wonder how long it took for them to be able to sit down and get started that quickly. These students in the video have experience doing this, therefore it comes naturally to them.  How many times did the teachers have to go through step- by- step instructions? Does it matter what level abilities you have in your classroom?

I know I do want to try this concept of allowing them to create something new that I might tell them to create something they might see used in the future! I could also link this concept with other subjects such as science where they could create a new breed of animal.  Just this idea of allowing my students to be the creators of the room without having any limits of what they can or cannot do would be great.  Let their inner creativity and imagination come out no matter how silly or unrealistic their idea might be.  Don't tell them it's not possible, maybe give them a little guidance of how to make it even better based on their ideas.  Help them brainstorm things they might not have thought of.Once they've created their new breed of animal we could talk about what traits that it has and what those traits mean. In doing this my students would feel a little bit of freedom and enjoy the learning process!  

Emerging Technology 2: Storybird.com

Emerging Technology 2: Storybird.com  storybird.com 

Storybird is a website where you can use the sites pictures to create your own story that you can publish and print out once you’ve finished your work.  If you don’t have a lot of time all at once it allows you to save it and add to it later as many times as you want until it is finished.  It allows you to create your own stories using their picture bank or write your own story using their pictures to go along with your story. 

I began creating a storybird book, but have not totally finished it yet.  I am creating an alphabet book that I could use with my kindergarteners as we are learning our alphabet.  I titled the story the Alphabet of a Kindergartener since my students would be creating the book.  I attached the pages that I have started.

In the classroom I want to utilize this website as much as possible, instead of using paper and pencil to color mix it up every once in a while and allow them to create their own book on the computer! This website uses very basic skills that kindergarteners can handle, and doesn't have anything inappropriate on their site for them to see. To introduce this site/resource to my students I will take them to the computer lab and pull my computer up so they can see what I am doing, and they will pick the pictures we use and come up with the story line as we go.  I will show them how to drag and drop the pictures into the story, and give them a tutorial as we create our first story together as a class.

Emerging Technology 1: Wordle.net

Emerging Technology 1: Wordle

Wordle is something I had a little experience with, but I have recently learned a lot more about. It is a great resource to use in the classroom allowing you to type in text and it will create a visual for you.  I recently found out I could be teaching Kindergarten next year and began getting creative with wordle to prepare for next year.  They say it's better to be safe than sorry; therefore, I am posting two that I have created recently. 

The first one I wanted to show them and post on my wall to show some of the skills we will be learning throughout the year.

The next one I am showing you I will use when introducing the letter A and how it sound and what it looks like.  I could create a new one with my class as we together come up with a list of A words, and I could place it up on the wall underneath the letter A.  Another thing I could do is create a wordle to use on our word wall. 



I love using wordle, and have now seen many, many uses for using this website.  Wordle only takes seconds so it keeps students engaged and they have fun, because they are on the computer which they think is fun!  Wordle is something that you can easily use for every subject throughout the day, and is user friendly.  I feel like it is okay for Kindergarteners to use in a computer class or to enhance their typing skills. 

Delicious Links

http://delicious.com/kmfuller 

Technologies Available

At my school we have access to many things that are beneficial to the students.  We have computers in every classroom, smartboards, projectors mounted on our ceilings, and have hover cams.  On our computers we can use wordle, cartoon creating websites, take AR Quizes, and get permission to use certain sites that are blocked if we have a good reason to connect it to our curriculum. 

Smartboards allow teachers to pull up things on the computer and then write on them as we do lessons/projects with our students.  For example I can pull up a math worksheet on my computer and together we can work it out as I walk around the classroom.  I also use it to pull up maps and as a class we will label different maps of the United States as they look through their textbooks to find the answer or work in groups to figure it out. 

Projectors can be used to show different clips or movies related to concepts being taught.  You can also pull up powerpoints that your students have created or their wordle or cartoon strips they've created.  Similar is the hover cam that some call an Elmo or Docu- Cam that can connect to your computer to show different things.  A project I have used it for is when they create different diaramas of book settings or scenes during different reading activities.  When they use the Hover Cam they get the opportunity to be the teacher which they fully enjoy!!