What Color Was Your Day?

Writing for an authentic purpose motivates students to truly think about their work. Today students were given their first Hutch assignment, creating a submission for the magazine. The theme of the next issue is moods, which can often be challenging and personal for any of us to write about. When thinking about how to best support students with their task I met with our art teacher. Collaborating with the art teacher helped me clarify my thinking and model to students that working together can help with idea generation.

I happened to pull out the Dr. Seuss book Many Colored Days. 

Together the art teacher and I discussed how we could have students think about what color or colors identify their moods and express ideas around that. I sat down with students and explained the purpose of our writing project, discussing how we are integrating reading, art, and writing. Students were thrilled to learn their work would be considered for publication in an international creativity magazine, inspiring them to think BIG! We read through the Dr. Seuss story and began discussing what moods could be represented by colors. Students had insightful ideas! One shared we could be green. Students added green could represent peace, envy, or liking the outdoors. We repeated this exercise with other colors.

Our conversation extended to understanding that when we hear a color different words come to mind. I shared the word red and asked students what word came to mind. None of us had the same word! Anger, frustration, embarrassment, and anxiety were shared. Then I said I thought of love. A student mentioned he thought pink was for love, which prompted me to ask if we all look at colors the same way. So what color describes you? Are you one color? Many colors?

I encourage parents to share their colors and moods with students. What kind of color day did you have today? I know mine is yellow. I feel great about the work we are doing in our classroom. Students are growing every day like flowers in a garden with me as the sun, shining down on them all and facilitating their growth.

Teach Like Google Exists

Do I know all the answers? NO! I do not even pretend I do. When someone asks me a question that I know I can answer using Google I immediately say, “Hold on. Let me Google that.” I model this for students every day. Last week Charles came to see me. Every time he logged onto a Chromebook his screen was magnified. I had him try a computer and it was fine, so we deduced it was just on the Chromebook. After testing several Chromebooks we drew a conclusion that something was wrong with his settings.

I told him I had to Google how to fix it because I had no clue. We sat together and looked into it. I choose key words carefully. I had already power washed the chromebook and reset his account. Nothing changed. Then we went to a Google support page. This gave us some new options, which he tried.  Zoom out: Press Ctrl + Alt + Brightness down was our solution. Now he knows how to make his screen readable, and we both learned more about his problem together.

This ten-minute exchange showed my student the power to look things up. It taught him about the importance of key words. He also discovered a solution to his problem that worked. It is so important to teach like Google exists! Students need to start learning early how to use Google to run effective searches to get the results they are looking for. Children also need to know adults do not have all the answers. I encourage you to talk to your child about how you use Google in your daily life!

I wish parents of today knew

When I was in the 3^rd grade I won the Continental Math League bronze medal. My father proudly videotaped the ceremony, and the VHS tape is sitting in a file cabinet. My mom may have taken a photo with a Polaroid camera and it is sitting in a dusty album on a shelf. I am sharing this with you not because my achievement is sitting in a drawer or a shelf but rather I know my parents were proud of me for earning that medal. Then I think about if I won that medal today what could have happened. My father could have tweeted to the Continental Math League thanking them for giving me a medal. My mother could have used her IPhone, with location services turned on, to take a photo, sharing my big smile on Facebook and Instagram. Now the whole world knows where I am. If I had a certificate along with my medal she would include that in the photo, the world seeing my first and last name. My achievement celebrated with family in today’s world is now broadcasted to the world, adding to my digital footprint that probably started when I was in the womb.

I wish parents of today knew that they could be proud of their child’s achievement and share this with the world through various outlets, thinking about a few things before they post. Please cover your child’s last name in a certificate. If the certificate has the name of the school edit that out. We are thrilled your child is student of the month or in an honor society, but keep your child safe by not sharing who or where they are. I wish parents remembered to check privacy settings once in a while and make sure their location services are turned off. If parents do this, they are modeling for their child what he or she should do. Then we will have students who already think about their digital footprint in a positive way and can still show off their accomplishments to the world.

Engaging Students in the Innovation Station

Engagement in learning is one of the most powerful outcomes of any lesson. Having vision as an educator to meet the needs of each individual learner to engage them every day can be exhausting, but the students reap the benefits. Isn’t that why I got into this profession? It has never been about what I want. My day is not my own, rather it is guided by 23 bright lights and I never know the direction we will go in when I walk into the classroom in the morning. I am sure many of you parents understand this mentality because you give up your life to nurture another, each day focused on someone else’s needs.

I know my students do not benefit from the 19^th century schooling model where they sit in rows with the teacher up in front of the classroom. We learn to work in groups, navigate the word of academic choice, and strive to meet new challenges. I was thrilled to be able to bring them to our schools new Innovation Station STEM lab to test it out. Thanks our amazing principal and his vision, students now have a place to go to learn, explore, play, discover, and collaborate. Students chose a station to go attend for an hour. We had students working on coding robots to go the perimeter of a square or rectangle. Another group was challenged to create an animation of a pivotal scene in Pax. I saw students making scenery and characters for when Peter left Pax. A third group was exploring Makey Makey’s, figuring out how to make a controller for their laptop. I saw students work on turning a LED light on, playing a drum, and excitedly beating a video game with the Makey Makey.

Students loved their hour in the Innovation Station and cannot wait to go back. They worked well together and were engaged the entire time. As an educator this is what I live for! Students empowered to learn and challenge themselves! I look forward to using the robots, the 3D doodler, the snap circuits, and other amazing tools we have in our own classroom. The classroom of today sure looks a lot different than when I was in school! 

Embracing Picture Books No Matter How Old You Are

I remember sitting curled up in my bed reading Riding the Tiger, a picture book by Eve Bunting. I put the book down after my first read, pondering what this book was all about. There is a boy and a tiger, and the span of the story made me feel like there was some sort of power struggle. I read it a second time and began to notice the illustrations. The tiger grew bigger, and the boy became smaller. The eyes of the tiger were piercing. What was this book really about? After a fourth read I realized the story was about gang violence. I began thinking about West Side Story with the Jets vs. the Sharks and Romeo and Juliet with their two families. A picture book really made me think deeply, and there is extreme value in that. This story will be used during a lesson on feeling powerless and what we can do to change that.

Picture books sometimes get lost as children grow up. I often hear picture books are for babies or why do I need to read this? I think picture books are full of hidden gems. Life lessons crawl out from the pages, prompting discussions about sharing, kindness, empathy, respect, etc. Students can think about theme, plot, and characterization through picture books. Illustrations can be used as evidence to support higher-level thinking. They also help students practice fluency skills. So I encourage you all to curl up with a great picture book. This year the Newbery medal went to LastStop of Market Street. It was shocking to many that a writing award went to a picture book. It takes an ordinary day and makes it extraordinary for readers. It also asks us with being rich really means? TheTable Where Rich People Sit is another great read to help kids understand how we are all rich. We get to see the sunset, the moon shine, and laugh with our family. Model that it is okay to read these no matter how old you are. According to a NewYork Times article Alexandra Kennedy (2014) states, “Our role, as parents, teachers and librarians, is to select the right book at the right time — to carefully walk that delicate line between protecting a child’s innocence and providing a greater awareness of our increasingly complicated world and the values we hold most dear.”