Currently, I am working with the technology teacher at Van Meter Elementary school in Van Meter, Iowa to have our second grade students create a collaborative story using Storybird.com. Each week our classes add a page to the story and we have just finished our first one.
This has been a wonderful experience on many levels. First, the students were very excited to be able to create a story with this website. Second, they were even more interested in seeing what the other class wrote each week! They are also proud of what we accomplished. We had just finished a descriptive writing unit and tried to apply those same guidelines to our pages of the book. We can now share it with our parents and school.
Storybird.com has many applications in the classroom in addition to working with another school. You can use it in a reading center, having different students add pages to the story. The students can also do one with their parents. I even have two classes in our school doing one together. Storybird lets you set up a class and even create assignments for your students if you would want to use it on an indivdual basis. Whatever way you use it, your students will really enjoy the colorful, expressive pictures and story possibilities!
Showing posts with label Global. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Global. Show all posts
Our Pets
This morning I had the opportunity to help with another great Van Meter Merton connection! Our second grade teacher recognized the need for differentiation of her math unit. Three students who knew the material well and did not need to sit through the lesson again were instead assigned an alternative math project. These students created a survey about the pets students have both in their class here at Merton and their friend's class at Van Meter. Each class completed the survey and the three students used the information to create a game for their class to play.
Once the information was collected, the three students created a column graph showing their data results. Using this graph, they then created questions such as "How many more dogs does Van Meter have than Merton?" Each question also had an answer written on the bottom of the card. The rest of the class will be given a copy of the column graph and the questions to play a math game. I came in and helped the three students use Excel to create the column graph and then use Power Point to make question cards. All three students were very engaged and excited about this project! What a great way to make another connection between the two classes!
Beyond Skype
Previously I have written about the unique opportunity our school has to connect with another grade school in Iowa. So far we have paired up two kindergarten classes, two second grade classes and one third grade class, with additional pairings to come. Our students remain excited about the opportunity as do our teachers. We have gone beyond the initial Skype session to create pen pal Wikis, a book club Wiki and a Gingerbread "exchange". My post on our combined blog page details more about the benefits of being involved in this multi-school connection. (And is reprinted below.)
I can't say enough good things about this connection and the possibilities I see for increased student engagement and learning. If you ever have the opportunity to try this, even with just one class, I really encourage you to do so!
My original post from http://vanmetermerton.blogspot.com
How does this Skype benefit student learning? At first I was going to look at the core curriculum areas that will springboard off our Skype session; but as I started writing this, there is no way to do this without simultaneously discussing the 21st Century skills our students are gaining. The original Skype itself helped foster relationships in our global community as the students are seeing similar classroom situations and meeting new students, some with the same name as theirs! This reinforces the connection with the other class and thus reinforces all the learning that results from this connection. Our Wild Thing videos were a great way to introduce our personalities to each other and a great spin off from the award-winning book “Where the Wild Things Are.” These wild things can now be used to help the students work on developing word choice, by describing their picture through Voice Thread or some other applications.
Our second graders are already writing back and forth to each other as pen pals using a Wiki. This is a great reinforcement of language arts skills while learning to communicate with those outside our community. They are learning about students in other communities (social studies) and using map skills to locate the other school in relationship to ours.
This Wiki will springboard into collaborative projects in many areas. We are already talking about combined problem solving in math, surveying each other to create graphs, and creating a collaborative story where each class contributes alternating pieces of the story. We will start with whole class activities and eventually, the students can do these types of learning experiences on their own with their pen pal. The third grade is planning to create book clubs through their Wiki based on a chosen set of books. Our kindergarteners are exchanging gingerbread men through the mail and photographing their visit to the other school. This will extend off into literature and creative art projects as well.
As educators we know that the greatest learning occurs when there is a personal connection, a personal motivation, to our lessons. The relationships we are building between the two schools are a springboard to all the curricular activities we will do together and I look forward to each and every one of them!
I can't say enough good things about this connection and the possibilities I see for increased student engagement and learning. If you ever have the opportunity to try this, even with just one class, I really encourage you to do so!
My original post from http://vanmetermerton.blogspot.com
As I was helping one of our teachers get ready for her Skype session, she mentioned that someone asked her the value of our Skype. That made me stop and think, because the minute we started planning this connection, I could see the value of the relationship and I even had curricular ideas popping into my head! I also knew the collaborative effort of all our teachers would bring more ideas!
How does this Skype benefit student learning? At first I was going to look at the core curriculum areas that will springboard off our Skype session; but as I started writing this, there is no way to do this without simultaneously discussing the 21st Century skills our students are gaining. The original Skype itself helped foster relationships in our global community as the students are seeing similar classroom situations and meeting new students, some with the same name as theirs! This reinforces the connection with the other class and thus reinforces all the learning that results from this connection. Our Wild Thing videos were a great way to introduce our personalities to each other and a great spin off from the award-winning book “Where the Wild Things Are.” These wild things can now be used to help the students work on developing word choice, by describing their picture through Voice Thread or some other applications.
Our second graders are already writing back and forth to each other as pen pals using a Wiki. This is a great reinforcement of language arts skills while learning to communicate with those outside our community. They are learning about students in other communities (social studies) and using map skills to locate the other school in relationship to ours.
This Wiki will springboard into collaborative projects in many areas. We are already talking about combined problem solving in math, surveying each other to create graphs, and creating a collaborative story where each class contributes alternating pieces of the story. We will start with whole class activities and eventually, the students can do these types of learning experiences on their own with their pen pal. The third grade is planning to create book clubs through their Wiki based on a chosen set of books. Our kindergarteners are exchanging gingerbread men through the mail and photographing their visit to the other school. This will extend off into literature and creative art projects as well.
As educators we know that the greatest learning occurs when there is a personal connection, a personal motivation, to our lessons. The relationships we are building between the two schools are a springboard to all the curricular activities we will do together and I look forward to each and every one of them!
Skype Connections
This week I have had the amazing opportunity to connect our classes with a school in Van Meter, Iowa through Skype. We have a combined blog where all the teachers involved can post their reflections. (My original post there is copied below.)During the Skype call, we read the book "Where the Wild Things Are" to both classes and now we are going to create our own wild things using the website www.buildyourwildself.com. Once these are made, we will put them in a video that we will send to our partner class. This is our way of doing an introduction video without worrying about showing students faces since we want this video to be public for others to see and learn from.
Why do I feel this was a valuable experience for our students? The excitement on the student's faces when they not only saw the other class on the Smartboard, but actually talked to them is why I feel this was valuable. As our third grade students introduced themselves, the other third grade would wave and say "Hi ___!" What a powerful feeling for a third grader! This will be etched in their mind for a long time. This personal experience/memory helps the mind retain the information. When we created our wild things for the introductory video, I asked the class to record a verbal greeting for the beginning of the video. Their choice? "Look at the wild things we made!" They were proud of what they had made, and were conscious that it was being sent to another audience. Again, all of this creates an experience that helps the mind retain the information.
While the reading of our book was mostly done as an activity for the Skype call, we will continue to build off that activity. For example, the students can use their picture as a springboard for descriptive writing. We can put the pictures into a Voice Thread and have the students record themselves describing their wild thing, with the emphasis being on strong, descriptive words. They can then view the other students' picture/recording and see what words they used. This is learning from each other in an engaging way, two more paths for the mind to retain information.
Now, replace the book and pictures with curriculum material. When the material is presented, experienced and used in project extensions in the above ways, the ability for the student to internalize and remember the information is much greater than if we had used the traditional lecture, notes, test method; and I believe that is our ultimate goal.
My original post from http://vanmetermerton.blogspot.com/
As I look back on what I have done this week, the Skype sessions I have helped coordinate with Van Meter, Iowa classes and Merton, Wisconsin classes stand out above anything else I have done. Yes, I have really tried to create some engaging, thought provoking, 21st Century lessons for my classes this week, but what is more 21st Century then connecting with other people in our world!
I have made these connections on many levels. Working with Shannon Miller is an amazing experience. Her knowledge and enthusiasm are spurring me on to be a better teacher. Working more closely with the grade level teachers in my own school has been a great lesson for me. I get to see them relate to their students in a whole new way and learn by watching them. Listening to teachers at Van Meter, and their passion for their students, brings out my own enthusiasm. Most importantly, I get to see our students connect with students almost 400 miles away, and get really excited about it!
Our second grade students were so excited at the end of the Skype call to have met their new friends in Iowa! I knew they couldn’t wait to do it again. Our third graders were so involved in questions for their partner class they didn’t want to stop! Our Kindergarten class couldn’t stop looking at the class on the Smartboard. I don’t think they even looked at the book we read very much!
So what does this boil down to? The content we covered (reading “Where the Wild Things Are”) took second place to the relationships we were establishing. Building global relationships is a 21st Century skill. The students were engaged in their new friends and the ability to communicate with them. Human beings have a need to communicate. We now have the technology to communicate beyond the classroom and establish relationships that help us learn, grow and become global citizens in a way never possible before.
Yes, we will continue to incorporate the curriculum into our connections. But it is the connection that is making the curriculum more meaningful and engaging. I am really proud of all our teachers who are involved in the Van Meter – Merton Connection. I am even more proud of our students for their interest, enthusiasm and desire to continue our new relationships.
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