April Ideas

It is hard to believe that April is almost upon us and Spring Break is just a couple of weeks away. Upon returning from Spring Break, there is the push toward EOGs. Sometimes in that rush, we overlook a great opportunity to bring fun back into the classroom. Did you know that April is National Humor Month? It is also National Poetry Month. What a great excuse reason to combine the two and lighten up just a bit. I have found a few resources that you can use.

ReadWriteThink has several interactive tools to use to write your poetry as well as lesson plans for all grade levels.

Thinkfinity has combined resources on poetry and humor, again for all grade levels.

Museum of Humor provides educational articles, lesson plans, and printables for using humor in your classrooms. I like this site provides some humor related lessons for every subject.

Finally, Education World has a lesson plan on creating Funny Poetry Mobiles.

Pull the computer mic out of storage and incorporate some of these ideas with fluency practice. Allow the students lots of practice and then let them record in Audacity. Bring in background music and sounds that will enhance the reading and turn the recording into a MP3. Viola, you will have lots of material for a listening center.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dancingtuna/ 

Brain Friendly Learning

I am fascinated by our brains and love to apply the research to learning and life. A few days ago I attended a webinar on Brain Friendly Learning from Discovery Education. Ginny Washburne, the presenter, provided five instructional strategies based on brain research and tied those strategies to services from Discovery Streaming.

As an Instructional Technology Facilitator, I started thinking what technologies we have in addition to Discovery that educators can use in their classrooms. Here are my thoughts, please feel free to leave comments to add your ideas as well.

Strategy 1: Buy In (Start with Why) 
              We need to know the why before we know the how or what. According to Ms. Washburne, educators can get student buy in by using Hooks such as Stories, Enthusiasm, Mystery, Bigger Kid Challenge, and Meaning.
              Technology to use: Video clips, images, Mixbook, StoryJumper, Little Bird tales, and animation in SMART Notebook to slowly reveal hidden images or content.

Strategy 2: Emotions
              Google emotions and learning and you will get hits on many scholarly articles on how emotions trump reason. Providing student choice, goal setting, hope, and letting students know they matter play a huge role according to the brain research.
               Technology to use: Audio and video clips, Class Dojo.

http://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2011/10/brain-figureines.jpg

Strategy 3: Movement & Brain Breaks
              Research shows our brains can only take so much direct instruction before our minds begin to wander. The time varies from five to eight minutes for K-2 students to fifteen to eighteen minutes for adults.
John Medina, author of Brain Rules, talks about the ten minute rule. Basically, you start your lesson with something that captures the brain's attention and then ten minutes in, you need to do something else to capture the brain's attention again. A great idea would be to build that ten minute rule into a slide in your SMART Notebook lesson. Get students up and moving, even if it is just walking around the room for 30 seconds!
             Technology to use: Interactive WhiteBoard (remember all those times I have said students need to be interacting with the content on the board?).
             Use centers some with technology options and some with hand-ons learning. For example, have stations for MP3 player to listen to stories, flipcams to do digital recording, desktop computer for publishing or interactive learning games.

Strategy 4: Play (Can't help but think of Daniel Pink's Whole New Mind)
             Even at my age, I love games! I love to be doing things. Ginny Washburne recommends including interactive games, virtual labs, digital storytelling, project based learning, learning centers, and experiments. (Sounds suspiciously like what the ITFs in Gaston County Schools recommend.)

Strategy 5: Feedback during learning process
             Technology to use: Student Response Systems can be used throughout the lesson, not just at the end!

If you think of others, please add!

Graphic Organizers

The Instructional Technology Facilitators had an interesting conversation at our recent meeting, we were talking about how our district would no longer need to purchase graphic organizer software because there are so many good ones available online for free. This is so exciting because McRel conducted research to identify instructional strategies that provide the largest gains in student achievement. The ability to identify similarities and differences produces an average 25 percentile point gain and is something that all students can do regardless of their age. With that in mind, I thought I would share a couple of online options.

Spiderscribe.net is an online graphic organizer tool that allows you to organize ideas by connecting notes, files, images, etc. in a collaborative way.

ReadWriteThink has student interactives available for use. Most are tied to great lesson plans, but all can be used as a resource for your own lesson.

Bubbl.us is yet another online graphic organizer tool that allows you to create and print your results.

Do you have a favorite online mind map that you would like to share? Please add in the comments.

StoryJumper

I have just found another neat site that I have to share! It is called StoryJumper and it is a website that allows students to create their very own books. Once the story is complete, it can be shared online, printed, or parents can order hardback books starting at $25.00. But you can create more than just stories such as calendars, adventure maps, photo journals, book reports, and more.

The interface is pretty easy to use. Students can choose a book that is already started and finish the story, or they can start a story from scratch.. You can use StoryJumper's props and scenes or you can upload and use your own photos. Their work saves, so this could be a project that continues over time.

As a teacher, you set up your class. At this time, there is no limit to the number of students you can have. Your class is assigned a class ID and you provide a password. Students then use the class ID to log in, select their name on the screen, and type in the password. They are then ready to go.Of course, as the teacher, you can see all of your students books.

As a former fourth grade teacher, I wish I had had this in my classroom. There is a downloaded lesson plan that uses seven steps to help students put together their story. Each of the seven steps include guiding questions to get students really thinking about the story elements. Lots of prewriting takes place before you ever step in front of the computer and begin using the site beginning with a graphic organizer. I know some of the provided props are elementary, but I think this site could be easily used with high school students as well. Check it out and let me know what you think!