Bannockburn Tweet-Along Week 8

This week you are challenged to post a #shelfie.  A #shelfie is a cross between a shelf, as in a bookshelf, and a selfie, which is a self portrait. You don't actually have to use a bookshelf, but some people do.

The directions are easy- pick up the book you are reading and snap a selfie holding the book. You could also use your child and his/her book, or some other creative book picture.

Post the picture to Twitter using two hashtags- #shelfie and #106tweetalong. That will let us find your #shelfie.

Bannockburn School Tweet-along Week 7

I read this great article from the Huffington Post about abbreviations you should know. I had to read it to my husband because some of the abbreviations were just silly, others clever, and others I have been reading in tweets and posts and didn't know exactly what they were. I thought you might enjoy catching up on a few abbreviations you might see on Twitter. There are many more, and the education field has hundreds of acronyms and abbreviations to make everything more confusing. One of my favorite new acronyms is ICYMI or In Case You Missed It. Basically, it means a fun story went around and here it is again, ICYMI.

Here is the full article from the Huffington Post.

Hopefully this will keep you in the loop on what your kids are saying when they text, tweet, post and share.

Just for fun, here is a cute video called Teaching My Grandparents Acronyms. It's more texting than tweeting, but it's so cute.

Your task for this week is to try out an abbreviation or acronym in a tweet. Be sure to use the hashtag #106tweetalong so we can share in your hip genius.

Bannockburn Tweet-along Week 5

This week we will look at other ways to share on Twitter.

Many apps have a share box (a box with an arrow pointing out of the top) that allow you to send items to other places. You might send to Facebook, or email, or Twitter. This is one of the great features of our mobile devices- sending things to each other. 

What might you want to send? Well, this week we practiced sharing pictures, please, keep sharing pictures, everyone loves to see them. You can also share a link from your browser app. I like to read my news using the AP News app. I can share news stories with the sharing box. 

Have you tried making a Vine video? With the Vine app you make short 7 second videos by pressing on the screen. You can stop pressing and move the device and start again. It's pretty fun. Then you synch your Vine app to your Twitter app by following the prompts and share it on Twitter. 

If you are working at your computer you can easily share as well. Many, many web pages have a feature to share to Twitter. Look around for the share feature when you're on the web.

This week your assignment is to share! Share things you see, or read or make. It can be pictures, or video, or articles or web pages. Be sure to adds the hashtag #106tweetalong! 

And please, keep sharing pictures! I love it!

Bannockburn Tweet-along Week 6

Congratulations, we are now into Week 6 of the summer tweet-along. I hope you are learning something new, making connections and having some fun with twitter.

If you have not been following, remember, this is just for fun- no judgement! You can pick up wherever you are comfortable and join in.

This week we are going to ask a question.

Here is what you need to do:

 1. Choose a person or organization and think of a question you might want to ask.

 For example, I want to ask The Bookworm Gardens in Sheboygan, WI what will be featured in the area of the garden currently under construction.

2. Compose a new Tweet and ask your question.

This is how my tweet would look:

3. Use the @ handle of the person or organization so they are notified of the contact.  I used @bookwormgardens.

4. Add the #106tweetalong hashtag so we can follow along.

5. Send your tweet and share the response!

Mrs. Barnett has had great success with her students asking questions of experts all over the world. They tweet questions to zoos and museums and duck masters. I have found authors very responsive to tweets, too.

Have fun learning!

Bannockburn Tweet-along Week 4

This week we are all about having some fun with Twitter. I would like you to post a picture each day of something you are doing. What projects have you taken on this summer? Where are you going? What are you reading? What is blooming in your yard? What did you make for dinner? Whatever it is, no matter how small, tweet a picture and the hashtag #106tweetalong so we can all follow along.

How do you tweet a picture?

From your Photos select the picture you would like to share. From the share box choose the blue Twitter bird. You may have to set up your account to connect Twitter and your photos, just follow the prompts and enter your account information. Add a description and the hashtag and you are all set.

Be sure to search on the #106tweetalong to see what everyone is tweeting!

Bannockburn Tweet-along Week 3

We now have almost 50 people following along in our summer Tweet-along. I hope you are learning something new.

This week we are learning about HASHTAGS. What are those #hashtags all about? 

Here is a great website to learn more about hashtags and how to use them.

http://smallbiztrends.com/2013/08/what-is-a-hashtag.html

Hashtags are a way of indexing tweets so they are searchable. When writing a tweet 1-3 hashtags is usually a good number to use.

You can search a hashtag by clicking on it in a tweet, or by typing it into the search box in your twitter app.

For example, if you search for #bsd106 you will see all the tweets that teachers have created this year that might be of interest to the school community. Many teachers use their own classroom hashtag as well. Mrs. Barnett uses #1B106. Search that hashtag and you will find all of Mrs. Barnett's classroom tweets.

You can search our #106tweetalong hashtag to see who is tweeting.

Anyone can create a hashtag, but it is polite to search it first to make sure it's not in use by someone else if you plan to use it regularly for your own tweets.

Hashtags can also be used as a comment when saying something funny or clever, sort of an aside comment. For example @digiornopizza recently tweeted: pizza, wrestling, and pizza again #makesmehappy.

If you search #makesmehappy it is a collection of very random tweets about things that make people happy- it's not really a hashtag with a specific following. It is meant to be more of a comment.

On the other hand, #WorldCup2014 is a great way to follow posts from all over the world about the World Cup. You will see thousands of tweets with that hashtag. It's fun to follow one hashtag during an event to see what people are saying. That's the power of Twitter!

Your beginner task this week: explore hashtags. Go through your Twitter feed and click on a few hashtags to see what happens. Try the #bsd106 hashtag to see what we have been up to at school this year. 

Your advanced task this week: Save a search for your favorite hashtags so you can quickly return to the search and view the discussion. 

Power user task this week: Hashtags are used in real time for a group of people to "chat" about a topic. If you haven't already tried it, find a "chat" and follow the hashtags to see what is happening in the discussion. You can Google Twitter Chats and a topic you are interested in, i.e. running, politics, education, technology, and so on.Try using the Tweetchat.com web site to quickly and easily follow and participate in a chat.

Use those hashtags! 

 #106tweetalong

Bannockburn Tweet-along Week 2

Welcome to week 2, we now have over 40 people on the Tweet-along! 

This week we are going to work on adding people to follow. 

If you are using Twitter from a computer you will see a box on your Twitter home page that says "Who to follow." Twitter will offer you suggestions based on your profile and other people you follow.

You can refresh this box and get new choices, or you can choose Find Friends and let Twitter have access to your address book to look for people you know with Twitter accounts. 

On your phone you want to go to your Twitter home page by opening the app and tapping the Me icon in the corner. At the top of your page you will see a head with a plus sign, tap this for suggestions and to find people. 

When you are reading your Twitter feed you can click/tap on the profile picture or name of a user and you will be taken to a Profile Summary. Here you can choose to Follow that user.

Your goal this week is to follow people! This is how you build your network. You can follow local friends, teachers, schools, stores, the Deerfield Review, plus famous people, sports teams- the list goes on and on. You can always use the search box to find someone or something you are looking for. We will get into searches more a little later.

If you are a little more advanced and you are following lots of users already, you might want to think about cleaning up your Following list and to Unfollow some that are no longer needed. Just click/tap on your Following list and then tap Unfollow.

If you are a Power User- consider making Lists of the users you Follow. You can read through the lists to see just what those users are sharing. For example, you can make a list of Bannockburn users and you will see only their tweets. It's a nice way to organize your tweets so you see like-minded tweets together.

To find lists while using the Twitter app on your phone go to the Me icon and then scroll down to the bottom. Go to Lists and you can use the + sign to create lists and organize the users you follow.

Let me know if you need help with anything!

Bannockburn Tweet-along Week 1

If you are a beginner, you need to set up a Twitter account. Included in this task is adding a photo of yourself (have your child take one of you outside), and filling out your profile with a description of who you are.

Here is a video to help you set up an account from the beginning with lots of explanation and detail. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDXinxB7Mlk

Here is a shorter one that moves a little faster but is still from the beginning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBeN3OOK6pE

When you are finished- send a tweet to let me know you are out there! Include #106tweetalong in your tweet. A hashtag is a way of indexing your tweets so they are searchable. We will explore it more later.

That is a lot to do for a beginner- probably the longest task you will receive. You can do it, and I'm here to help. 

If you are more advanced, your job this week is to watch for the #106tweetalong tweets and give our new users encouragement for their accomplishment! 

Recycled Book Projects

Recently I attended a recycled book project event at a public library near me. Using pages from old books we made envelopes, beads, pencil covers, bookmarks, pennants, and collages. Since the first grade students at my school were busy studying recycling I thought it would be an excellent project to share with them. I prepped the paper from the old books by slicing through the pages at the binding with a sharp blade cutter. Then I used a paper cutter to chop the paper to the sizes I needed. The students came in for an hour and worked at "stations" around the room to create their projects. I think the triangle banners were my favorite. I kept one for my hedgehog, Hedgie.

Writing Great Captions

This week I used Nearpod to share an activity with students on how to write a good caption for a photo. We looked at some National Geographic photos and read the captions and talked about what made them interesting and what we learned from the picture.

Then I shared photos from the National Geographic Photo of the Day and asked the students to write their own captions. They did a great job and some of the students took creative license with the titles, which is just what I was hoping they would do.

Try it yourself- go the Rice Terrace Picture -- China Photo -- National Geographic Photo of the Day and look at this exquisite photo. How would you title this picture? What does the caption teach us? What are you still wondering?

I think I would call it Field of Dreams. I learned that this rice growing area has been farmed for generations. I wonder if it is all done by hand still or if there are any mechanical tools used.

Using the Visual Poetry App

This is one of my new favorite activities, the possibilities are endless. The examples below are from Kindergarten. They had so much fun taking pictures of Beanie Babies and writing with descriptive words. They even used the drawing tool to mask out their text area.

Notability to Make Observations

I used the app Notability recently to work with the 5th graders on Observation, Inferences and Predictions. We used the National Geographic Picture of the Day as our inspiration. That day the picture was of a fox running across a field. The students had to open Notability then open a PDF I saved for them in DropBox. The students then filled out the form using the Notability app. The document was then saved back into the Dropbox location and where I had access to all of them. Here is a picture of one of the documents. Notability is a great app to replace writing on individual sheets of paper with pen or pencil and turning them in. I simply had to create on document and save it to DropBox- the students filled it in and saved it back. The only thing I might change is to ask the students to rename it so I can tell the difference between files.

What Are You Reading Monday?

I am very much looking forward to reading Kevin Henkes' chapter book The Year of Billy Miller. I have been a fan of Kevin Henkes since the early 90s when I first saw him at a Peggy Sharp class called Meet the Author (love Peggy Sharp!). Kevin and I are around the same age, so he was a youngster then, and I was in my first or second year of teaching. Even though we have only crossed paths as strangers at book signings, I feel as though in some ways we have grown up together as professionals. I have been able to watch his career grow and become a huge success. I have always enjoyed his chapter books, so I was delighted to hear he won a Newbery Honor for The Year of Billy Miller. I have been looking forward to it like a deep dish Chicago style pizza! Chomp!

iPads in the Elementary Library

This year I have been lucky enough to have my own set of iPad minis in the library. I wanted minis because I lend them out to students and staff to use as eBook readers as well as using them with classes in the library. I presented at an ISLMA mini-conference in early March to share some of the ways I have used the iPads this year. Here is one of my favorites, and the one the students keep begging to do more: Nearpod.

I use the NearPod app so students can interact 1:1 with the material I am sharing with them. It replaces the questions I ask that only one or two students answer and instead lets everyone answer first, then one or two share their responses.  I have also used it in staff meetings to ask for feedback. It's easy to use, here's how.

From the NearPod.com web page (yes, start on the web) create an account. This is where you start your NearPod session that you share to students on the iPads. 

Here are a few of the presentations I have created to share lovely picture books with students up through grade 5. My questions remain the same but the answers the students will give me change quite a bit. I ask for predictions, character traits, quick drawings, why explanations, and so on. I ask them to cite evidence in their answers and to use the word because.  We have some great discussions! 

When I am all finished I get a results table that I can look over and use as a formative assessment. Some students give consistently weak answers because they don't really know what to do. I know to focus on them next time and ask them to share out so I can coax out a stronger answer with more to it than one or two words. 

Here is an example of a question I might ask. I mark the spot in the book with a sticky note so I know to stop there and share this page with the students.

For this question I immediately follow up with, "How do you know?"

I can also add links to web pages, so at the end of this NearPod presentation when I finished the story I let the students tap the link at their leisure to listen to Peter Brown talk about his story. At this point the students are free to get up and move around with their iPad to listen without all of the iPads blasting the video at once.  

Here is the video:

Now go forth and make your own NearPod presentations!

What Are You Reading Monday?

I am just starting Will In Scarlet by Matthew Cody. I am looking forward to this story featuring a famous band of Merry Men in Sherwood Forest.

World Read Aloud Day Blog Challenge

I didn't see this earlier so I am catching up. I am posting my World Read Aloud Day Week 1 response.

Week 1: February 10 - 16

What is your earliest or fondest memory in which someone read aloud to you?

When I was learning to read my younger sister was a baby so my mom didn't have a lot of time to read to me. I had a fabulous record collection of recorded books and I remember listening to my Mother Goose record and reading along with it, as well as Heidi. My first memory of a teacher reading aloud to the class was in 6th grade. The teacher read Where the Red Fern Grows and when his voice cracked at the end of the story I was hooked forever on the power of the read aloud. We shared that experience together.

What Are You Reading Monday?

I started reading Rump last night. So far it is a delightful story about the young Rumplestiltskin figuring out his magic and how every action has a consequence. I am looking forward to seeing where this story goes.

Throw Back Thursday

1952 Caldecott Winner

It doesn't circulate much anymore, but I can't "bear" to part with it.

Genius Hour

This week Mrs. Kramer's second grade class had their first Genius Hour. Two weeks ago before the Genius Hour the students chose a country to study. This let us try the Genius Hour with a little structure, but still giving a lot of choice to the students. The students did research to find out where the country was located, a tradition, food, how people live, an interesting fact, a drawing of a house, and a description of traditional clothes. Both print and non-print resources were used, but other than looking just for an image, we found the primary non-fiction books to be the best resource for information. Many of the on-line sites were just too much information. The students used a planner that looked like this:



 The research took quite a bit of time because searching for specific facts is a lot of work. They used to use the index and the table of contents to quickly jump to what was needed. While the students did their research Mrs. Kramer and I met with each student to discuss what he/she might want to do for their project. They had an introduction to what Genius Hour was at the beginning of the project so we asked them to keep it in mind during the research process. Here is the form we used to plan the Genius Hour Project:

 

 The student and teacher together went over this form. We discussed what their talents are and what type of project might be a good fit. If a choice was too elaborate we discussed whether or not it could be done in one hour. Each student had to plan what it was going to look like when finished, what to do if finished early, and what to do if not finished when time ran out. This form also helped the teachers determine what supplies would be needed- what could be supplied by us and what needed to come from home. Once the research seemed finished we scheduled the Genius Hour. Letters went home to the parents of students who needed to bring supplies from home. Most of the supplies consisted of Lego, so no one really had to purchase extra supplies. I helped by making some home made play dough and gathered poster board, markers, glue, scissors and so forth. Supply letters went home on Friday and Genius Hour was the next Thursday. A teacher let us "borrow" her small math class of 6th graders to assist the students working on PowerPoint because 2nd graders all feel like they know how to use PowerPoint but really, they don't. The 6th graders were a great help and I don't think we could have done it all without them. Here are pictures of our Genius Hour in progress:

We were amazed by the concentration and productivity of our first Genius Hour. The students did an amazing job. One student went above and beyond our expectations. Which, if you think about it, is one of the purposes of Genius Hour. We clearly tapped into one of his talents and he clearly thought through and really planned to make a Lego animation.



On Friday the students presented their Genius Hour projects to the whole class, plus the 6th grade helpers. Here are some pictures of the 2nd Grade presenting their projects.

Finally, we had a rubric for the students that looked at their research, their effort, and their final project. The students also did a self reflection. Hopefully we can make some small improvements to have an even better experience next time.

Edward Tulane Door Decorating Contest

Audio Files

Mrs. Garneau here, I keep fixing the audio files and a little while later they don't load again. I'll try again tomorrow! Keep checking back. Audio files are fixed! Enjoy!!

One Book, One School

One Book, One School Kick-Off Assembly

One Book, One School Kick-Off Assembly