Camp Innovation - Huge Success!

4 Amazing Teachers + 4 STEAM Playgrounds + 140 kids + 2 weeks = Tons of Fun!

Summer camp sponsored by The San Marcos Promise.
http://thesanmarcospromise.org/leap

STEAM Playground:
Students worked on utilizing their natural curiosity to explore, learn, and create in the STEAM Playground. Students rotated through the 4 STEAM Play Areas that included coding, robotics, Makey Makey, LittleBits, circuitry, design challenges, and more!  After students  explored the different STEAM Play Areas rotations, they got to have flexibility and choice in which area they wanted to dive deeper in their learning.

Summer Camp Resources - Google Site

Setting Goals

Does your school use Accelerated Reader? Mine does. We use it to encourage kids to read more, and to focus on the content which they demonstrate by taking and passing quizzes. Students are recognized for earning various levels of points depending on grade level. It is not used for grades.

One feature that I found sometime last school year was the ability to set goals with the students and for the kids to earn certificates. To set the goals and certification levels, you sign in to your teacher account and go to Record Books and Goals. If you use the STAR reading assessment, you can have the program set a beginning goal based on their reading level and how many minutes you expect them to read per day.

Since our school awards a special medal to students earning 40 points by the end of the year I made this our goal. I broke up the points across the 3 trimesters as 10 points for the first, 15 for the second and 15 for the third trimester. When the kids log on and work on a quiz, they can see their progress towards their goal.

Many of my kids reached their goal before the end of the trimester. Now what? I asked them what each of them would like their goal to be next? We chatted about how much time they had and how many points they thought they could reach. The result? Students love to tell me that they reached their goal and ask me to set a new goal! Do I do it right then? Most often not. But we do find a time to set it for them. What happens if they don't reach this goal? Nothing. We talk about how far they've come by setting high goals. Here is an example of the goal info from the Home Connect login.

The certificates are in the same place as the goal setting. AR has certain criteria for the certificates. The goals and certificates they are working toward are visible on their page when they go to their account. Certification Criteria

Here are some of my kids with their current certificates.

If you have a supportive admin, see if you can send the kids down to the office to get the admin's signature on the certificate. The kids love it! This year several of my kids worked very hard to earn a certificate so our student teacher could sign it before her time with us was done.

So how do you use AR? What makes it fun and interesting for your class?
 

We Rocked Hour of Code!

Last month, our elementary school participated in the Hour of Code, a global event to introduce computer science to students around the world.

Every student, Kindergarten through fifth grade, was able to try coding through Code.org in the computer lab guided by Mrs. Rockett, our awesome computer lab teacher. All of the students can and are continuing to learn computer science through activities on the school website.

The coding activities include continuing the computer science course through Code.org, creating games and apps through Scratch, programming a virtual robot through Lightbot, and many more.

On Friday, January 16th, at our Friday Flag Salute assembly, we were able to share how we did with coding through the Hour of Code. Our students wrote 190,043 lines of code! And the ones that did the most were the first graders, with one class rocking it, having written 8811 lines of code! (This counts only the Code.org activities as those are the ones I could find and add up. We also did Made with Code by Google, and some Scratch and other activities.)

Revealing the total for the lines of code. This is just before the 1 joined us to reveal 190,043 lines of code!

We are excited to continue learning about coding and computer science. We have added an after school class and are finding ways to add it into our school day. Coding helps us develop excellent problem solving and critical thinking skills!

Using Class Dojo to Encourage Students to Go Beyond!

I've been a fan of Class Dojo since almost the very beginning. I think the program was released in August, 2011 and my friend and teaching buddy, Marla, got me started in November of that year. Since then, my students have enjoyed seeing their little monsters every day. Some years we have changed them to our own characters like princesses, pirates, and jungle animals. Other years we just see which are assigned randomly.

We've grown along with Dojo, by adding behaviors that are important to us and bringing this little window into our day to the parents through the parent sign up. Our class focuses mostly on the positives - I think this year we've issued one negative. It's nice to work on what we are doing right and try to make that happen more often.

One new behavior we've added this year is Challenge Accepted. When we have something beyond our daily lesson that would be interesting to research, learn, or do - then students can earn Challenge Accepted Class Dojo points. We have several levels of points based on what we think the challenge may be worth.

Over winter break, I asked students to write about their break activities to add to My Maps (something new I learned over break from Molly Schroeder). Their writing needed to be in complete sentences, checking punctuation and capitalization. As an optional task to keep them writing on their break, they earned +3 Challenge Accepted points.

Whenever we come across an interesting question, like "What does am or pm stand for?" Students who take the opportunity to look it up and report back earn a Challenge Accepted point.

A student decided to practice addition and subtraction 2 and 3 digit problems over break without being asked. She was so excited to show me. She didn't even think to ask about Challenge Accepted points but definitely deserved the points!

To encourage kids to try new genre in their independent reading, we currently have a Reading Bingo Challenge. When they read titles from different genre across the bingo row and pass AR tests on the books they earn a whopping +15 Challenge Accepted points!

Check out more about Class Dojo and their new app in this article by Richard Byrne.
ClassDojo Releases a Streamlined New App - Now You Can Send Pictures Too

Give it a try! Challenge Accepted!

The Hour of Code Rocks!

This month, our school participated in the Hour of Code! This is an amazing program envisioned by Hadi Partovi to encourage more kids to try programming and learning computer science. This is our second year trying Hour of Code and it was bigger and better!
Every class had the opportunity to work on one of two courses created by Code.org for students in K-5 classes. These courses are far more than one hour and are more like 20 hours each. Our goal was for each student to learn some basics and to challenge them to go farther. Most did! In addition to the Code.org courses, students had the opportunity to work on Google's Made with Code, Scratch and many other programs.
After all this, I can truly say, WE♥CODE!

Slides in Second Grade

Google Drive in Second Grade
Today was our first day to try Google Slides in class. We have been working on landforms and the kids have worked on Google Drawing and Docs for a few weeks. This was done by a team of 3 second graders today. It's not complete but I'm so excited about what they will be able to do this year! :)

Here's to the risk takers! This next presentation was made by another student who figured out (and taught the class) how to crop images into shapes! Hello! I did not know how to do this! I didn't know I wanted to do this. But now I really want to!