Read Alouds

Mrs. Jankowski's class is reading the Tale of Despereaux and getting to know the fearless and love sick character that is Despereaux--a mouse never meant to live and named for despair!

Mrs. Haggerty's class just finished Pigs Might Fly getting to know one of our all time favorite characters, Daggie Dogfoot, who can, in fact, fly!

Desperaux and Daggie have quite a bit in common.  They were both the runts of their litters never meant to live, but built lives of triumph and success.  

Yet Another Kindergarten Digital Story--Literacy Project

So excited it hurts!

Sharing documents or photos got you down?  Wish you could share a folder but don't want people having access to your entire Dropbox account?  Well you can!
Just make a new folder, input files, right click and select the share with selection.  Once you enter the person's email address (as long as they also have a Dropbox account), you can both access the file and its contents.  Brilliant!

Fictional Stories in all Their Glories!

We've recently transitioned our writing from Personal Narratives to Fictional Stories containing a beginning, middle and end.  The transition has proven a bit difficult as the Kinders love to continue to write about what is near and dear...moms, flowers, and butterflies!

This little guy took to the transition well and worked very hard on his story!  We've chosen to do the story in three parts as it supports the way we have been visualizing and completing these stories in class.  If I can figure out how to put them together into one file, I will!

My Digital Story--Take 1

Here's a draft of my digital story.  I started it in Movie Maker on Windows Live, which had some features I really enjoyed (like the ability to include video clips), but ran into a lot of trouble with the narration.  So I redid it on Photostory, which was much more user friendly.  This is set to private on YouTube, so I'm sorry if you can't view it.  I'll have to look at how to add people to share with!

Web 2.0

I was able to make this tagxedo by linking it to my blog.  This tool randomly took words from my blog and I was able to manipulate the layout, shape, and color theme to create this apple.  I was thinking that this would be such a fun way for students to make an all about me poem/collage since you can also insert text you desire.  With the amount of shapes available, this creative writing possibility could be personalized to represent student's personalities.  It could also be used as a culminating character study project!

Does vimeo count as 2.0?

Our first digital story!

We have recently moved to fictional stories including a beginning, middle and end.  Check back to see the progress of our fictional stories.  We have a few close to completion!

Will they always be THE Teachers College?

Although I am sometimes nauseated by hearing about THE Teachers College I couldn't pass up this resource that came across my virtual desk.  Click here to see videos of teachers launching a text based debate, students assessing the endings of their persuasive endings, and much, much more!

Peer Conferring: Students Teach Each Other to Revise in Order to Orient their Readers (3-5) from TC Reading and Writing Project on Vimeo.

Hangouts

Apparently these educators gather monthly to discuss their use of voicethread in the classroom.  There are some great ideas.

Digital Storytelling Wiki

Since we have our class Digital Storytelling project due in the near future I wanted to share my Wiki page.  There are many resources that might be of use to some of you ladies and although I'm still adding, annotating, and organizing it may help. Check it out!

Little, sweet, Eliot...or a Behavior Problem in the Making?

A couple of weeks ago I took my 2 year old daughter out to dinner because the thought of cooking was just too much on that particular Friday evening.  Not to mention my sink was full of dishes and in order to cook I had at least an hours worth of work and preparation ahead of me.  Anyway, the waitress sat us down and my back was to a couple that continually spoke of their son, Eliot.  The way they were speaking, it seemed as if Eliot wasn't there except that I kept hearing the waitress refer to him.
So our dinner progressed as any does with a two year old, spilled milk, whining, shushing, reminders to sit and not poke the woman sitting behind her, answering the question why? until I might actually go crazy, and clearly, not one bite of my dinner taken while it was hot.  However, among all the on-goings  I couldn't help being totally distracted about the way the couple behind me spoke of their son, as a third party that wasn't involved in their dinner.  To my relief, the bill came and it was time to go home.
When I stood up, I was speaking to my daughter about going home and going to bed, who at this point was becoming tired and a bit unruly and Eliot's mother said endearingly, "You speak to your daughter the way I speak to little Eliot."  I smiled and nodded not really making eye contact because I was trying to wrangle a bull, I mean put her coat and hat on.  However, when I did finally stand up straight to continue the conversation I was stopped dead in my tracks noticing "little" Eliot.  A very big boy, at least three in a high chair with an Ipad propped in front of him, movie playing, head phones on and candy cane in hand.  I tried not to look shocked and disgusted, which is difficult since my facial expressions always give away my thoughts.  I quickly composed myself and managed a friendly giggle and smile.  My little one also noticed the movie and tried to look at what little Eliot was watching when he let out a scream and covered his Ipad with both hands, and shot my little one a dirty look.  I had no words as my daughter looked at me for an answer for this behavior.
The Ipad, an acceptable pacifier for toddlers and school aged kids??  I mean when is enough, enough?  How much is Eliot missing from engaging in dialogue with his parents and his surroundings?  How much do parents use technology to entertain their kids so they don't have to put up with them?  Technology needs to be used with ground rules and responsibility on the parts of parents and teachers alike.
Good thing the Common Core has so much focused on speaking and listening!

Kindergarten Digital Story

Students Using Digital Storytelling

While the uses of Digital Storytelling in the Kindergarten classroom came quickly to mind, it was another tool that seemed to stay in the theory part of my brain and not into the practice.  This tool could be invaluable to Kindergarten students as so many of them have so much more to say than they are able to write at this point in their learning.  To be able to give a five year old a microphone and allow them to dictate their stories instead of struggle with writing, it would open a world creativity and ease for them!
But I am/was still struggling with the down and dirty: how it worked, how students could make it work in the computer lab, etc.  However, while I was researching more about it, I found this site that brought this pretty close to practice for me with links to teacher resources, graphic sources, music sources, sound effect sources, as well as examples of completed storyboards.  Once I saw the completed storyboards it all became more clear.  Now I am hunting for the right programs that Kindergarten students would be able to use to create their own stories.
Here's the site.  Keep scrolling down, it gets better and better!

Diigo

I like the idea behind Diigo in that all of my bookmarked sites are web based instead of computer based; however, beyond that I feel like I'm missing the potential since I'm not networking or sharing with other educators.  It does seem like if I were able to employ this feature that it would be more useful and efficient.  Especially if it would help search similar topics of interest based on key words or tags.  That would thrill me!  Anyway, here's my library if anyone is interested!

NETS

After reading up on NETS standards for teachers, students, administrators, and coaches, I was still left wondering what exactly are the standards?  I understand the foundation of the standards and why they have been developed  however I was left wondering about the down and dirty.  What exactly do students need to be able to do at specific grade levels?  I stumbled upon this site that clears up some of the unknown. However, only some of the unknown.  The use of "age appropriate" technology litters the grade level performance indicators.  This link http://blog.iste.org/ might be more helpful, although I have not yet been able to sift through all the contributors, I'm hoping at least a few are actually classroom teachers!

Digital Storytelling

The Impending Snow Day video reminded me of this gem.  These kids are brilliant and have brought digital storytelling to a new and argumentative level.

RSS

So I figured RSS would be some complicated tool that would take me forever to wrap my head around and implement; however, it couldn't be easier.  Google Reader has got to be the easiest tool to use and now all I have to do is keep subscribing and try to keep up with the information that is delivered.  I found this clip very useful, although not visually stimulating.

3D --Animoto Project

We just started a unit focusing on building with and identifying three dimensional shapes and their properties.  I find that the most difficult part for the kids is the language used during this unit. Not only is the vocabulary brand new, it is not regularly used in life or at school.  Yes during this unit, but not again until the math benchmark testing or until next year!  Let's face it, it isn't every day that you hear Kindergarten students walking around using words like rectangular prism, sphere, and cylinder.  Students are introduced to the solids by sorting and classifying classroom objects into the following three categories.

"This look like a box."

"This look like a ball."

"This looks like a can."

I made the video below as a fun way to reinforce the language used during this unit of study.

One focus of the unit is which solids are easy to build with, and which are challenging.  This student told me that triangular prisms are hard to build with because of the "points" and because they have "slides" on the sides.  However, take a close look at the  fourth layer up from the bottom.  He managed to balance two triangular prisms on their vertices   When I asked him how he did it, he said, "It's easy...I mean it is just balance Mrs. Haggerty."  

I also found this great idea at A Place Called Kindergarten.

Blogs--teacher tools too

I've viewed blogs and wikis as learning tools for students.  But after searching and reading through a plethora of blogs created by Kindergarten teachers, I've clearly missed a very important point--they are tools for teachers as well.  Although this is probably obvious to most, perhaps being a novice is why I missed this blinking neon sign...or maybe it is because I'm approaching my ninth month of pregnancy.  Either way, the bus finally pulled up and I'm on it!
I've started archiving blogs that are created by Kindergarten teachers and it is easy to see that this is a way to revolutionize ideas, as well as begin a business as was the choice of some educators.  Why not make a few extra bucks for your work?
At any rate, I particularly love this one.

What is Really Important for Kinders?

I wonder what the diagnosis rate of ADHD is here?