Ruth’s Ruckus2

I am just so excited!!  For the better part of two years I have been talking to my teachers about using the DE Streaming teacher tools.  I have explained - they are easy to set up, students will really be engaged, I promise you’ll like it – to no avail…until this week!

KUDOS to Mrs. Mitchell, Ms. Hammil, and Dr. Hunter-Lowe who all jumped in the deep end this week.  Mrs. Mitchell and Ms. Hammil have worked with me to create a DE Streaming assignment that requires research, note taking and videos to crete a Wordle on civil war leaders.  Dr. Hunter-Lowe used a DE Streaming writing prompt to help her students prepare for the writing test. 

The kids are all excited.  The teachers are pleased.  The level of technology implementation in  the building continues to rise.

The Electric Company is back and it’s better than ever…I just found out that WHRO will be airing the Electric Company at 5:00pm weekdays.  The show is perfect for 2nd grade and struggling third grade readers.  Far from the classic that I watched when I was a kid, the updated show has all the bells and whistles that attract the current generation.  I ran across an interview that the new producer did and she explained some of the changes…http://www.pbs.org/engage/live-chats/01-21-2009/karen-fowler .

In addition, the show has a really cute website that helps students to practice some basic second grade word study skills.  I would add this site to those that students use in the computer center: http://pbskids.org/electriccompany/

I got this link from Karen Bosch aka karlyb one of the folks in my PLN.  Karen is a technology teacher in Detroit and a DEN Star. 

Karen suggests that all elementary teachers keep up with the Kids Ed Websites blog.  Lots of good stuff on there.  Check it out for yourself.

Need something interactive for rhyming, letter-sound correspondance, one-to-one correspondance and colors?  Look no further…Sesame Street’s got you covered.  Cute interactives that you can use whole group to model the skill and then hae kids play independantly…Let me know if you want me to model it for you in the classroom…

Ok, So second grade borrowed my cameras last week for their field trip.  I had two teachers ask to make VoiceThreads from the pictures that the kids took.  Here is the thread Mrs. Mojica’s class completed.  Now if I can only get third grade to bite…

So second grade went to the farm.  I’m not quite sure which SOL they were focused on as I found a couple that they covered.  The great thing about it is that Ms. Kurrus planned ahead and reserved my Hamilton cameras to take with them.  We met the day before the trip to square away some details about the project.  I decided to use the three step integration process that I showed the teachers in January.  I took some time to teach the class about the cameras and was pleasantly surprised that most of their questions served to clarify their responsibilities.  The students took the cameras to the farm and took some really good pictures.  Not only did they document their activites while at the farm, they took great pictures of their process.  Don’t take my word for it take a look:

I couldn’t have done a better job of documenting their trip myself…those cameras are pretty amazing too…

Last week it seemed like everyone was working on plants.  One of my first grade teachers, Ms. Marks, asked me to add some plant interactives to the Victory Portaportal.  The second grade went to the farm and looked at plants and the fourth grade was charting the growth of some seds they planted a few weeks ago.  I thought Mrs. Petry’s use of the Promethean board for student graphing was cool and I wanted to share her kids’ work with you.

Good work Mrs. Petry!

Mrs. Taxson asked me to do a review activity with her class, so I decided to try out the VoiceThread application with them.  They had fun, I had fun, we all had fun!!  Wanna see what we did?  Check it out:

Thanks to Chrissy for the tutorial on embedding VoiceThreads. I would never have been able to figure it out on my own.

Thanks to all of the BES teachers who came to the inservice this evening.  The books that I featured templates from are available in the library and are featured in a previous blog post… http://ppsblogs.net/ruthokoye/2007/09/08/looking-for-ideas-we%e2%80%99ve-got-new-stuff/  

The powerpoint that I used is here: BES Jan 23 inservice