Education, Stading Style

When surveyed about possible after-school clubs, our students came back with ideas like a book club or writing club.  (Interesting that they ask for more school, don’t you think?)  Writing club?  I could do that.

Right now seven students and I sit in the computer lab, working on scripts for the now defunct “Script Frenzy” that the NaNoWriMo folks.  Some have page goals and ideas flowing while others are making muse posters to grace the walls of the lab.

Fun it is to hang out with students in this role.  I hope to start this up next year in the Fall so we can do NaNoWriMo together.  I will work with writing for a few years but then the mom in me thinks MathCounts might be the next thing to work with students on once my daughter gets to Middle School.  She (and hence, all my students) needs these things to compete in her future.

A student just told me, you probably shouldn’t have hooked the Apple TV up. He and another student are dueling over the AirPlay feed. It is humorous to watch, and also quite necessary. Friday they will use the iPads and Haiku Deck for a presentation related to Around the World in 80 Days. It’s the first iPad presentation in our school and even if it isn’t is the most polished, it has been a good process to get to that point.

Many teachers seem to fear technology for this very reason; the students will just mess around and not work. Well, of course they will mess around but at some point, and it doesn’t take very long, they shift to using the technology for learning. If the tech stays locked away and comes out only occasion then it might as well stay locked away. Teachers need to allow for ‘play time’ as time well spent upfront when using new technology in the classroom.

Happily having survived the end of the Mayan world, I welcome you to another year and another semester!  I need to post my progress on my personal paperwork goal…I need to look at the standards…I need to plan for the semester…I need to organize my teacher table.

I also need to be blogging more.  Maybe not for you, dear reader, but certainly for me.  Being a connected educator is one of my values and I need to express that more often.  This blog post expresses very good reasons why I should work at continuing to build and use online connections.  Check it out…and Happy New Year!

The school year moves quickly like a snake slithering through slime or a tiger tempted by the toes of tourists.  What have we been doing?  Each of the following deserved its own blog post but time doesn’t wait for the blogger and quickly these things are old news online.

• Skype:  My elementary group has so far skyped with two classrooms so far this year, one in British Columbia and the other in Alabama.  Feedback from the kids was that it was FUN.  We will work at doing it again.
• Penpals:  In looking for Skype classrooms, we found a classroom of pen pals in Spain.  We will be working together on a blog.  We’re a little disappointed that we can’t Skype with them, pesky time zones!
• Reading Scores:  Allow me a shameless brag that my elementary students did well on their quarterly comprehension test.  It is an anecdotal confirmation that the Daily 5 structure is working for the students in class.
• Write Tools:  Write Tools is mostly organizational strategies for expository writing.  While it seems a bit overdone to say it is magic, nevertheless, the tools have a great impact on all the writers I work with.  I attended an ‘advanced’ training last week and have more tools in my box and can’t wait to pull them out for multi-paragraph writing aka “The Essay.”
• Goals:  While no longer 100%, I’m still running at a ‘proficient’ level for both my paperwork goal and my Book Club goal.  My read-to-my-kids goal…well, that isn’t going as well.  My little kids at home are so busy!  They don’t stop long enough to read a book with Mom!
• Writing Contest:  Many writers in our school will enter a local writing contest, myself included.  Check back to see how we do!

We are starting Expository Writing.  Here is what we know so far about Expository v. Narrative writing:

Narrative

Wrote these stories 1st Quarter
Has characters
There’s problems in it (conflicts).
Narrative stories have solutions (resolutions).
They have setting.
Beginning (Characters, setting, conflict)
Middle (between the conflict and solution, rising action)
End (the solution and the falling actions)
They are fun to write.

Expository

Do they have settings, too?
What is it?
Does it have to do with anything of a narrative writing?
Can they have settings, problems and solutions but they are real?
Do they have a narrator?
Is it in 1st, 2nd or 3rd person?

We do know that…

Expository is non-fiction writing.  They are fun to write, sometimes.

We have our second 100 Word Challenge prompt posted over at Warrior Writers.  My students are very excited to see posts from their friends, other teachers and people from around the world.

We really like the 100 Word Challenge at http://100wc.net ... writing for a real audience is a great way to learn our craft!

After school my daughter asks, “Can I use your iPad?”

I’ve joined the ranks of iPad owners. Maybe it is a full circle thing…my college computer was a Mac Classic II. Since then it had been PCs (lots of them, so it seems) until an iPod nano for my birthday two years ago.

Something was missing, though, from my educational repertoire. I have a school district laptop as my teacher computer so that isn’t anything to scoff about (thank you, KPBSD) but with me getting more into Twitter and technology for students, and now the Daily 5, the laptop wasn’t doing everything I wanted it to.

Today I entered grades while walking around the room, took digital notes during reading conferences and and was relatively sneaky about pulling up the projected website in class to see what else it was about so I would better understand the assignment my co-teacher planned for the class.

I love technology. Teaching with a tablet is going to be fun.