What a Day!!!

I think that I had the right idea when I didn't want to get out of bed this morning!  Technology was not my friend today.  What went wrong today:  1. My Voki account said that it was expired, so my Fifth Graders couldn't work on their projects. 2. The Ipod touch would not stay connected to the wireless connection 3.  I had computers that just lost their network printers, they were no longer connected.  


My one bright spot was my Third Grade class.  I taught six kids how to Blabberize their landform.  Then I brought the next nine kids in and the first six kids became the teachers.  I just got to sit back and facilitate, but stepping in if needed.  These kids really stepped up to the plate today and surprised me.  I'm going to try and hold onto that good feeling as I try to get through tomorrow.


I ordered a new book from Upstart Publications in the mail on Saturday.  It is called The Centered School Library.  I'm excited to read it over Thanksgiving break.  It's all about creating "centers" in the library.  I'll post about it after I finish reading it.


Happy Thanksgiving to you all.

Natural Disaster Projects

My Fifth Graders are working on their final projects.  They are are doing such a great job!!  I'm so impressed with the results.  I'll see if I can work on posting a project from www.voki.com, but if not I'll post my example. One of the other choices was to use www.blabberize.com to make their natural disaster talk.  The one that I've posted is great!  Make sure you have your volume turned up.  There were a few glitches with using Blabberize and having to shrink the sound file to upload it, but thanks to a wonderful fellow Media Specialist in my county, I was able to shrink the file.  Let me know what you think about the project. (If you are reading this in something like Google Reader, you will need to go to the  Library Gals website to see the project.)


Stacey

A Fouth Grade Funny

As I was teaching my first class on Friday, I realized that I would only see four of my classes only one more time in November!!  We use an A/B week schedule in my school system and these classes have Media always on Fridays.  When I was telling my Fourth Graders this, one said "Oh, yeah we have off next Friday for Veterinarian's Day."  I couldn't help myself but laugh out loud!  Then I corrected her.  I also checked out a few Veteran’s Day books for the teacher and told her the story as I gave them too her.

Stacey

A Tale of Two Classes

I tried my Kindergarten activity again with the book Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.  Well, this time it sank like a lead balloon.  When making the web, the student either just raised there hand and had no answer or gave the same answer that three students who had original answers gave.  My favorite by far today, which I had to chuckle at or I was going cry, was when asked "It was cloudy with a chance of ______?  The answer that I received was "water".  Thank goodness this was the last class of the day!  I get an opportunity to do the lesson again on Friday and next Tuesday.  So I will see if it was just the class having an off day, or if it was me! (I think this is the best part of my job, getting to reteach the lesson and tweak what doesn't work).

Stacey

Technology in Action (part two)

(I'm sorry if you have read this already. My computer was not cooporating yesterday so I just deleated the original post.  My technology issues followed me to school.  Hopefully today will be a better technology day.)


I didn't plan for my Kindergarten lesson to have a technology piece when I planned on Sunday. I knew that they had been talking about weather in science. So we made modified web using Pixie 2. I included pictures along with the text.

My modified web.

Then I gave them a sheet with three gray clouds on it and this sentence printed at the bottom, "It was cloudy with a chance of _______________." They had to fill in the blank with one of our words on the "web" or one of their own. After they tried to write the word they needed to draw many examples of it under the clouds. It was going alright, but the students had just had their fall celebration, so they really didn't want to work. So I pulled the few that had been really working hard to the back of the Media Center. Once I had them there, I used the ipod touch to record them "reading" their sentence. As soon as the others saw what we were doing, they got right to work. It turned out so cute!! I wish I could post some of the videos.

Stacey

Technology in Action (part one)

(I'm sorry if you have read this already. My computer was not cooporating last night so I just deleated the original post.)

After today, I can't wait for my 5th Graders to complete their final products from their natural disaster research!! They double cedked to make sure they had enough research, the students wrote the script for whichever choice they picked. (They had to pick between A. using the ipod touch to record a newscast, B. use www.voki.com to create an avatar, or C. use www.blabberize.com to make their natural disaster talk.) After reading some of their scripts, I can't wait to see them performed.

Technology in Action (part two) coming later today.

Stacey