I wrote posts about my first adventure into project-based learning.  In case you missed them- Part 1, click here;  Part 2, click here.

Just a reminder of the project’s driving question:

As architects, what is the cheapest house we can build to protect the three little pigs from the Big, Bad Wolf?

The next part of the project involved designing a house for the three little pigs from the material list.  Before we designed houses, we needed to feel the force of the “Big, Bad Wolf.”  We tested out different materials with the hair dryer.  Most materials struggled with the hair dryer.  The students began discussing they needed a combination of materials to build a strong house.  We also went outside to see how a leaf blower affected the materials. (side note:  We will not be using the leaf blower until the closing event of the unit because the class feels most houses might crush under its force. )

I wanted each student to have time to think individually so they all spread out in the room to design individual plans. I asked them to label the designs with the materials needed for each part of the house.  I knew that coming together for one house design would be difficult as 2nd graders but it is a necessary life skill. COMPROMISE is a social skill that takes practice.  One of the benefits of project-based learning is learning to work as a group.

Here are some pictures of individual house designs:

    

 

After finishing individual plans, each student met in their group to share their plans.  They talked about what strength each plan had and worked to create one group plan.

Here are the group plans:

The next day, the students had to estimate the cost of building the house. They had to figure out the cost of each item on a calculation sheet and then find the total estimated cost BEFORE they started building.   The sums grew large FAST!  Here is one example:

A group needed 24 craft sticks.  The craft sticks are $12 each. That’s a HUGE problem for 2nd graders.  Here’s how they solved it:  “We know that 1o twelves equal 120. We need to add 24 because we need two more 12’s which is 144.  Now we can double that answer to get 24 twelves.   144 + 144 = 288

How amazing! 🙂 Some groups need a little guidance for the larger sums but they were determined to find the total cost. They didn’t mind that it was hard to solve.

Here is one example of a completed estimated house cost.

 

The next post, part 4, will be about building the houses and the Big, Bad Wolf test (hair dryer).

I am writing several posts about my first adventure into project-based learning.  If you missed Part 1, click here.

Just a reminder of the project’s driving question:

As architects, what is the cheapest house we can build to protect the three little pigs from the Big, Bad Wolf?

Before I started the project, I sent an email to my classroom parents to see if anyone was an architect or if they knew an architect.  I was pleased that one student had a relative who was one.  He lived in another state so we sent him a list of questions about architects and designing a building to protect against the wind.  He was AMAZING! He wrote us back and talked about the role of architect and how one would become an architect. Then he describes “wind loading” and how architects use angles and different roofs to help with wind.  He said  flat, hipped, and domed roofs were best.  On a side note, I learned a lot too. I did not know two terms: wind loading and hipped roof. I love learning new things! My students enjoyed that I was learning with them.

I did not want to tell the students what each roof looked like so during centers, one center was a research center. The students wrote down the terms: flat roof, domed roof, hipped roof and angled edges. They looked for images for each term and drew examples on their notes.  Here are pictures of a few students researching these new terms.  As the saying goes, “A picture is worth a thousand words.”  It helped them so much to see examples. I knew this would help them later in their house designs.

 

 

After research, students were introduced to the building material menu and costs.  They were very interested in the materials and started discussing possible building plans right away. Here are a few pictures. Can you tell that they are discussing which materials would be best?

 

  

 

They were beyond excited.  After viewing the material menu, we reread the driving question and then each student worked on designing a house to share with their group the new day.  They were asked to include labels describing which materials they used for each part.  I will share house plans and the group designs along with the math work to show the estimated cost of building the house in the next post.

Click here for Part 3!

I know that little blue bird looks cute and all but don’t let its size fool you. That twitter bird is powerful! Let me tell you what happened after I sent out a simple tweet!

I teach in one of the schools that ended up spending the night after the sudden snow/ice storm January 28th. We realized that we were going to be stranded so I sent out this tweet:

“Very exciting day. Some of us are still stranded at school. The kids are being real troopers. 🙂 I think they think it’s an adventure.”

Somehow CNN found our classroom twitter page. They quoted our tweet in their article.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/28/us/winter-weather/

BUT wait! That tweet was not finished yet!  I get called to the office the morning after our “surprise” sleepover and it is an assistant for Greta Van Susteren. She said the FOX news office has been following our tweets and wanted to interview me that night about the event. THIS STARTED FROM ONE TWEET!  

Tweets are powerful. Twitter is the most powerful and classroom-changing tool I know of. I know, I know, I was just like  you. When will I find time to use it? I don’t even understand it. How can it help me? I promise if you give it a chance, you won’t regret it. Here’s my story.

My twitter journey: 

I joined twitter several years ago. The first few months, twitter was mainly a resource to find new ideas and educational resources. That was amazing by itself. I was hooked and knew I found a place where I could grow as an educator. I knew my classroom and teaching practices would change and they have!

Then I slowly started interacting with a few of those I followed. I started sharing my classroom with the world. I watched a few chats. Yes, just watched or “lurked” as it is called.  I will be honest, I had no idea how anyone understood what was being said it was going so fast. HOWEVER, I saw retweets from chats and knew it was changing classrooms and teachers, so I kept trying.  All these years later, I cannot imagine teaching without my  PLN on twitter. I am now a moderator on #2ndchat (bi-weekly, Wed. @7pm central http://2ndchat.wikispaces.com). Imagine that! I was the one shaking my head at the speed of a chat and now I help moderate one!

Through the power of twitter, I see past limits I may have placed on myself and my students. Those walls are gone! I know if I have an idea, I will find someone on twitter that will not only support me but might join me in trying it!

In the past few years, I have collaborated with many amazing educators. Twitter is powerful and life changing for any educator who is willing to keep trying it.  My class joined global projects for all ages and global projects just for 2nd graders. We wrote and shared stories, compared science experiments, created and shared math problems,and we are currently working on a project-based learning unit with another class.

Could I have used these activities with just my individual class? Yes. Would the students have been interested and engaged? Yes. Did they benefit and learn more because it was a collaborative project? ABSOLUTELY!  My students learned more with other classrooms than they would have just within our four walls. We learned that other students can experience the exact same lesson but ask different questions, arrive at other solutions and in turn we learn them all.

How to start with twitter:

1. Just start.

• It’s as simple as that. Create an account and write a short profile.
• If you have a friend on twitter, ask them to help you find people to follow.
• Search for your interests or grade level. @cybraryman1 has tons of resources about twitter. He has a list of educators that you can begin with. You will quickly add more. Here is his twitter PLN (Professional Learning Network) page: http://www.cybraryman.com/gradelevelpln.html

2. READ!

Sign on and read tweets of those you have followed. They will share resources, blog posts, lesson ideas and conversations with others you will want to follow. I just read for the first few weeks. I found many new ideas in one place and you will too!

3. Start a conversation!

If you have a question about a tweet or a shared idea, ASK!  Make sure you have their twitter name in the tweet or they will not know you are talking to them. You will notice the “reply arrow” under the tweet, just like in email.  It will automatically place their names in the tweet.

4. Share!

Did you do something cool in your room? Have you learned something new? Do you have a favorite website or app that helps your students learn? SHARE! We can learn from you!

WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR????

 

You know how resolutions go. You make grand proclamations to lose 30 pounds by summer and by week 2, you are eating cupcakes and feeling like that goal is even further away.  Fitness experts would tell you to let go of the past and just start again. If you ate junk at lunch, don’t wait until tomorrow, just make better choices for dinner.  Rarely are goals met without failures but you will never succeed if you let failure stop the process.

The same happens in our classrooms.  I know I have all these amazing dreams for what I want my classroom to be. I think I will come in like “superteacher” and all the kids will be engaged and gaining by leaps and bounds ALL the time.  But that is just not realistic. So, should I give up and eat the educational cupcake since it can’t be like my perfect dream in my head? Of course not, but we all do it.  We have dreams that start at the beginning of school and then by January, we realize all those dreams probably won’t be fulfilled.  I am sure you are so uplifted by this point in the blog but I am wanting to encourage us to start dreaming again.  Maybe they won’t be fulfilled the way you envisioned at first but the dream can still be pursued.

Let past disappointments and failures to be that…in the past.  Try that idea again. Your students are are a few months older.  You are a few months wiser. BE WISER, not more cynical.  As teachers, we are hard on ourselves. We need to show our kids that we learn from mistakes. We use the mistakes to know what NOT to do again.

I am imploring all of us to look through your favorites on twitter, bookmarked sites, pins of pinterest and try again! All those ideas that you hope to use one day. Let this be the year for your ONE DAY. It’s here! Try something new. If you fail, okay learn from it, make it better and try again. Contact that encouraging person on twitter. Collaborate on a project.  New ideas inspire me to be better. Enthusiasm and passion are contagious. Be the spark that not only lights a fire for you but for those around you. Let’s do this! We haven’t lost half the year already. That’s looking at the glass half-empty. We still have half of the year left to do amazing things with ourselves and our students.  Make it count!

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
― Thomas A. Edison

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
― Winston Churchill

 

I seem to always be making resolutions. They last about as long as it takes me to say them.  Last year was a first for me. Last December, I had enough. I knew I needed help with my exercise routine so I hired a personal trainer 2 days a week.  I have only lost 25 pounds since last January but I feel so much better and I am stronger. I will continue my exercise plan,  but this is not the focus of my #nerdlution.  I have always loved writing,  cannot tell you the last time I wrote for fun. As a child, I loved writing stories and journaling.  I need to start that again.  So I pledge to write something every day. Even if it’s just a paragraph or story idea.  It could be a short note about something that happened in my classroom or in my life outside of school.  Another personal goal I have is to carve out more time for my faith.  I am a Christian and I have fallen out of the habit of setting aside time to read God’s Word. It seems to be something I do right before I go to sleep or  as I get ready in the morning. I can tell you, it’s not enough time to read much. 🙂 This is what grounds me and keeps me sane when the rest of the world is falling around me.  So I pledge to spend at least 15 minutes reading my Bible, praying or resting in His presence- knowing He is God. 🙂 I know when I do this, everything else falls into perspective for me.

Here’s my plan to help myself.  I will put my writing notebook on my computer where I spend lots of time on twitter. 🙂 It will remind me to complete my obligations first and then I can play. 🙂 Good luck everyone!

I love college football, specifically SEC football. Well, let me be even more specific Alabama football. (ROLL TIDE!) However, one team, our biggest rival,  has been amazing to watch this season. Last year, they had  a horrible season. I mean really horrible.  I even felt bad for them. This year, they are winning- a lot!  It is essentially the same team, same talent and same opponents.  The one change is a new coach.

Here are some things I noticed about the coach and the team:

1. They now have hope that things could be better than last year.

2. The new coach focuses on teamwork but also allows individual talents to shine.

3. There is mutual respect between the coach, the players and the fans (supporters).

4. The enthusiasm builds each week even on tough games.

As I stopped to think about how a good coach can impact the success of a team, it of course bled its way into education.

Over my 23 years of teaching, I have seen students (in my room and other teachers’ rooms)  that were so inquisitive and excited about learning to look so deflated years later.  A student who read every book I had on a particular subject, shows very little interest in reading anything at all.  Now, I know that teachers have different personalities and talents but so do kids.  While we can’t be everything to everyone, we can offer different learning opportunities so every type of learner feels valued.

How can we use the coach’s strengths at the top in a classroom:

1. We need to create an environment where students feel that this can be a different and better year.  Students need hope and assurance that when they arrive at school that learning can be engaging.

2. I love teamwork in the classroom. Students need to learn to work together but they are also individuals. Their individual strengths need to be built upon.  Our students need to know we “see them.” So let’s focus on being a team and a community but allow time for students to grow in areas of interest. These strengths can then be translated into group tasks.  You would think that students know what they excel at, but many times they do not see their own strengths.

3. Once students walk through the door, it is “our” classroom, not “my” classroom. Respect is a vague term we throw around a lot with kids, but I’m not sure they always get it, especially in the lower grades.  They have to have grace to  fail in this area so we can model the respectful response we expect them to show.  I think we assume many times that they understand what we mean by respect each other but they have had few opportunities to practice this skill in a safe place.

4.  If a safe community is established full of hope and respect, students will have hope even when they face tough problems or tasks.  They have hope that they will have time to succeed because the classroom is a safe place to fail and try again.

This turn around team has made me think about my role as “coach” in my classroom.  I want to be the coach that takes discouraged students into an environment that makes them feels like they can stand back up and try again.  I teach 2nd grade and sadly, I have had many students who arrive with a belief that they poor reading or math students.  This may be from a previous classroom, a negative home environment, or an inner dialogue in the mind of the child.  Regardless, my mission is to take this same student and fill them with hope again. Then we both win. 🙂

As I was driving to the store today, I saw a small protest beside the highway.  It was a political protest and those in it were holding signs with slander and derogatory name-calling.  I have no idea what they politically stand for but I know what they hate!

This made me remember something my pastor once said.  He said, “We should be known more for what we  STAND FOR, rather than what we STAND AGAINST.”

This is also true as educators.  We can be so passionate about our educational philosophies and ideas that we have to be careful not to come off like these protestors.  I have been doing some self-reflection since this morning and know I have been guilty of stating my viewpoints the wrong way.  For example, I am VERY passionate that math should be taught differently than the way I learned.  I was an “A” student because I could spit out math through algorithms but I didn’t understand the math behind them or why the they worked.  Sometimes I find myself saying, “We need to teach students differently than how we learned. It’s not good enough.”  Well, if you only teach that way, I probably just made a mental protest sign stating that you aren’t teaching math well.

Instead, I should be a cheerleader for teaching math with understanding.  I should say, “Here’s an activity I did yesterday with my students and I was amazed at the mathematical understanding happening in class.” Now, I’ve offered a possibility or an idea with no judgement about how they teach the same skill. Hey, they might even try it!

I am a very positive person and I really hope that I am known more for what I stand for rather than what I am against.  However, I am sure I have failed at this many times.  To help with this I have made these goals for education discussions:

• Focus on and share what I stand for without instantly comparing it to the opposite view.
• Be excited for what I stand for- passion is contagious!
• Let the little things go- everything is not a “us” against “them”
• Really listen to an opposing viewpoint without thinking of my rationale against it or how it won’t work. I might learn something or change my mind! 🙂

Something to ask yourself:                                                                                                        Am I known more for what I stand for or for what I am against?

I am sure you have heard the idiom: “More than meets the eye”

It means: A hidden significance, greater than is first apparent  

I’m a big fan of books and movies. In particular, I find myself drawn to books with characters that are more than what they seem, especially to themselves. One of my favorites is Harry Potter. He has to be told his incredible life story at the age of 11.  Tris from Divergent knows she wants more but has no idea that she already is more than she thought.

I started wondering why I was drawn to these characters. I think it’s because I always dream to be more than I am.  How cool would it be to find out you have super powers or that you are the only one who can save your world?  I think that makes the characters so endearing because they have no clue how special they are.

As a teacher, I want to be more than I am now.  It’s why I follow amazing teachers on twitter.  It’s the reason I participate in chats.  I hope to learn something that will make me better than I thought I could be.

About a month ago, I read a post by Michelle Baldwin titled No More Rock Stars. I agree with everything she says but I have to admit that I did see some on twitter as rock stars.  Here’s the thing, they were just like us. They started somewhere.  They had to join that first chat. They had to write their first post. They have doubts anyone will read their posts (just like I am now).

I have come to realize that there’s more to me than meets the eye.  I have a tendency to be hard on myself.  I can learn from others but I need to realize that others can learn from me. I can be greater than I first appear because I am wanting to be better than I am now!

The same thing can be said for my students this upcoming school year.  I teach 2nd grade and it is sad to say that even at this early grade, I always have one or two students who believe they aren’t smart or are full of self-doubt. I spend lots of time getting to know my students so I can shine a light on gifts they may not realize they have.  It’s one of the favorite parts of my job. 🙂  So, l am going to make extra effort to look for the hidden (and not so hidden) significance in each student. I want to help them see they are greater than what their mind’s eye may see.

The good news is that YOU are more than meets the eye. You  have a “hidden significance” even if you don’t realize it. You have talents that others do not. Inside of you, is the only thing that will reach that one student no one has reached yet.  You are greater than is first apparent because you haven’t finished learning yet. You aren’t done!

Happy New (School) Year!

 

We always celebrate the 100th day of school.  Sadly, I really did not enjoy the activities we have used. They just seemed too easy. I began searching for a math investigation activity.  I found this site in my quest.  Debbie of Debbie’s Dabblings gave me permission to share her site and 100th day post. Please click below to read more about her amazing classroom.

http://debbiesdabblings.blogspot.com/

Here is the link to the 100th Day post.

http://debbiesdabblings.blogspot.com/2012/01/yes-virginia-100th-day-of-school-is-for.html?showComment=1326838780056#c3455524979982854742

Even though I teach 2nd graders, I felt they could successfully complete the booklet with a little guidance.  They did very well. I was proud BUT I was floored when we tried this one section of the booklet.

Here’s the question:

 How many centimeters tall would a stack of 100 pennies be?

So I have to admit that when we started this exploration, I thought I might need to swoop in and help a lot. When I posed the first question, the first words out of their mouths were “The stack will fall over!”  I reminded them that most problems can be solved if they just make it a simpler problem. One student said, “We could make 10 stacks of 10 and measure one to solve it.” They marched off happily in small groups to try it out.

Once they found out that 10 pennies equals 1 1/2 centimeters, the real thinking began because they had to solve for all 100 pennies. Second graders normally learn to recognize fractions and sets but rarely do they do a lot of work beyond that objective.

Below are 2 videos of different ways they figured out how many centimeters tall 100 pennies would be.  They speak very softly and others are still talking and working in various stages in the background. You will have to turn your volume all the way up. 🙂

Explanation 1

In case you could not hear: They knew all 10 stacks would have 10 centimeters all together. Then they added the halves. They knew 2 halves made 1 and they had 5 of those sets  so 10 + 5 = 15.

Explanation 2

In case you could not hear it: They put 2 stacks together since that made 3 centimeters. Then they counted by 3’s to make 15.

I was a happy (even happier than normal, which is saying a lot) teacher that day but even better, they were proud and excited about their thinking.