Students Teaching Students

In one of our L.E.A.P. classes we recently read about and discussed, in our Scholastic News, whether or not students should have homework.  In my (Mr. Hendricks) L.E.A.P. class, we then wrote a short 12323234 paragraph stating which side we take, along with three additional details.  This took a neat turn when we fired up our netbooks.

In my L.E.A.P. class, half the students are from my homeroom, and the others are from various other fifth grade classrooms.  Because of time restraints, I asked my homeroom students to partner up with the other students to lead them through turning on the netbooks, signing into their school Google accounts, checking their emails from me (which included one shared example Doc and one shared template Doc), opening both, copying the template, and giving it a title.

If you did not realize it, above were several steps, which in a small time span, can make class stressful.  That said, my homeroom students taking the lead created a VERY low stress learning environment.  Rather than me running back and forth in my room helping one student and then another, my students did the work.  THEY LOVED IT and did a great job.

By my students taking the lead, we completed what I have experienced to take easily 45 minutes on my own, in 15 minutes.  With the remaining time, our class was able to spend time reviewing and learning how to write a 12323234 paragraph.  Students easily finished and created easy to read paragraphs in just a little over one class period...largely because of my student helpers!

Great job students!

Google Presentations Creates Collaboration

Today was the final day for our students to work on their debate presentations.  Students will be debating about the effects that various groups of people (waterman, farmers, recreational boaters, ordinary citizens, and land developers) place on an ecosystem.  In this case, our model ecosystem is the Chesapeake Bay.  Our students have been preparing to challenge each other on many topics.  Within their presentation, they must state how their group negatively effects the bay, three solutions to their problem, and the pros & cons of their solution.  Lastly, they must also initiate trade-offs with other groups.  For example, if we fish less, your group will pay more for our fish.  The trade-offs are what will build our day two debate.

To create our presentations, students have been using (and loving) Google Presentation.  Google Presentation is Google's take on Microsoft PowerPoint.  Perhaps the best and worst part of Presentation is the lack of bells and whistles.  Students want more, but quickly realize they don't need more.  What they have in front of them is perfect.  

Google Presentation also allows our students to work in the cloud.  They can work on their presentation at home, in a car (assuming the device they are using connects to the 3G/4G network), in our school, or while on a vacation.  Today, one student even entered the presentation from his couch at home (because he was too sick to come to school).  Google Presentation can offer one thing, that Microsoft PowerPoint cannot touch: Collaboration.  Our students are beginning, without knowing it, to reap the benefits of working in collaborative groups.  Check some of the images from our collaborative work time today, below:

Classroom Google Summit (Day 2) and Glenbrook Gobbler

Today we completed the second day of our 1st Annual Classroom Google Summit.  Today's focus was largely to do with using Google Docs and learning some new command keys, which simplify certain commands.  We tried to put a Thanksgiving twist on our activity, so write when students came today they had to log into their Google account, create a new document, and then begin producing a list of as many "things" they could think of, of which they are thankful for.  Many students surprised us with lists that were over a page long within just 10 minutes!  

After specials, we moved our class into our school's Library Media Center to use the mini laptops.  We did this, because the next activity involved printing.  Our students did not know that the end result would be a word cloud on Wordle, but were curious when we began asking them to copy (Ctrl+C) and paste (Ctrl+V) words that were most important to them.  We also taught our students how to undo (Ctrl+Z) mistakes, since they sometimes over copied or deleted when trying to paste.  We suggested that the most important items be copied and pasted 5 times, next 4 times, and so on.  Eventually, all of our 28 students created some great lists.  Another tip, we introduced our students to the tilde (~) key, which we renamed the "Squiggle Key," which is used in the place of a space bar when trying to keep two words together.  

Next, students selected all (Ctrl+A) of words, copied them, and then pasted them into a blank Wordle canvas: www.wordle.net/create.  We chose to go right to the create page, in order to avoid the gallery and other random clouds.  With the click of the Go button, students had a unique way to see what they were most thankful for.  Within a word cloud, the words that students typed in most often were very large.  The less times they typed in a word, the smaller it appeared. Students were able to print two copies, one for school and one for home.  Below a look at our hallway "Thankful" word clouds and the example I created for our students(to the left):

The starting line

This afternoon our phyiscal education teacher held our school's 1st Annual Glenbrook Gobbler.  It was a 1-mile run/walk, promoting health and wellness.  We had two waves.  The first wave consisted of 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders who qualified with a mile time under 9 minutes in gym class this fall.  The second wave was for all other 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders.  It was an excellent way to send our students off for their Thanksgiving break.  Check out some of the action below:

Runners giving it their all

Mr. Slempkes racing towards the finish!

Happy Thanksgiving!

~Mr. Hendricks and Mrs. Olson

Google Summit - Classroom Style!

Last week Monday and Tuesday, Mrs. Olson and I had the pleasure of traveling to Wisconsin Dells to the 2012 Midwest Google Summit.  The summit was a gathering of educators from all over the midwest, even one from India, who came together to grow professionally with Google Apps for Education.  While attending, we both had the opportunity to listen and learn from many fantastic educators on topics such as: Google Apps, Chrome extensions, sharing features (beyond typical Document sharing), using Sites for ePortfolios, and more!  The two days turned out to inspire the both of us to try something a bit different within our classroom.

On our road trip home, we planned and organized our first ever Classroom Google Summit.  We figured, two days of school (prior to Thanksgiving) and we still have some major Google "Things" that we wanted to get our students familiar with.  So, this morning, our summit began, with one student in particular very excited to get our "Geek Week" underway (to the left).

Our first order of business was discussing in detail our Gmail accounts.  We know our students enjoy using their email accounts, but to what extent we were unsure.  We would like them to use their accounts for communication purposes, as well as in an educational manner.  I found a great article from Education World which provided the "ABC's of Email Etiquette."  We discussed each of these.  Afterwards, each student received one of the letters, of which they then attempted to create a "Glogster" poster of their letter.  Later in the morning, students each selected another student in the class to email their letter and description to.  Their email had to include a descriptive subject, a salutation, a brief description/body, and a closing.  They then replied to their classmate who wrote to them.  Our simple email etiquette lesson went well.  Hopefully students will use some of the rules they learned.


After emailing, we took some time to set up personal blogs.  We used Blogger, which is one of Google's educational apps.  In setting up the blogs, we secured them from the outside world.  While students did not get any time to play with "design" features within Blogger, they did begin their first blog post.  They had to write a post describing similarities and differences between the City of Ember movie and book (which we recently finished).  Their post also had to include which they would prefer, if only one choice, the movie or book.  Not that surprised, because it is very good, many students opted for the book only.


So, our first day of our Classroom Google Summit has come to a close.  Tomorrow our agenda will include better Google search strategies (including finding images that can be used or modified), getting to know Drive, and using the research feature within Docs.  Should be fun!


  

We Made It!

Today we earned our all school reward for our new behavior program, PBIS. The whole school was invited to watch Chinese acrobats.  We were all very impressed with the talents of these acrobats.  We can't wait to show respectful, responsible, and safe behavior to earn another school reward!

(If you look close, some students even got to participate and try to work the lasso.)

LEAPing Our Way to Success

It is good to say, I am back (Mr. Hendricks).  My wife and I recently welcomed our newest member to the family, another little girl.  We feel so grateful to have such a wonderful, growing family.

That said, onto the school stuff...

This year our school adopting a program designed to meet EVERY students' needs in reading, according to their NWEA MAP scores from this year and years past.  With the scores, our students have been designated a fifth grade teacher to work with for 35 minutes per day on a specific skill using non-fiction text. Our block of time, which is called "L.E.A.P.", takes place from 10:50 to 11:25 each day, focusing on reading.  Specificially, we are currently working on improving the MAP strand of summarizing, so our groups are working on the skills: identifying main ideas and summarizing text.

Each teacher is designing lessons which meet his/her class where his/her class is at, according to their instructional level.  Along with focusing on a similar strand or focus, ALL of our fifth grade students are also using Scholastic News / Weekly Reader for their non-fiction text.  Recently, our students studied and learned more about the recent election and the various issues which the election focused on.  Now, groups are moving forward with new topics, but all are usually current events.  

For example, my small group is using the Scholastic News issue titled "Too Much Soda?"  In the issue students are learning about the effects of soda and will have to form their own opinion of whether or not this drink should be banned or at least used in moderation.

One feature we really like is the interactive website created by Scholastic News, which is currently free for ANYONE to use.  On this website, students, teachers, and families can access a digital copy of the current magazine we are reading, print off worksheets/extra practice sheets, or play games related to the topics in the article.  Definitely worth checking out: http://goo.gl/78Qbr.

We are excited to see our our L.E.A.P. time moves our students closer to their reading MAP goals and if this time makes our students feel more successful, one leap at a time.