We Are Bloggers!

We have been blogging! We started out learning about cyber safety and some of the "rules" of blogging. The presentation I shared with the class can be viewed here.

After learning about blogging, every student logged into his or her very own blog through kidblog.org and started writing. Kidblog.org is an amazing tool because it includes all the wonderful features of blogging sites like Blogger and Word Press, but makes teacher management and safety very easy. It is incredible that 1st and 2nd grade students are using the same tools as adult bloggers and getting this excellent writing experience, while still remaining safe online.

 Safety has been such a focus of this unit that some of the students decided to create a video about cyber safety. Click below to see their work!

Ice, Ice Baby!

This week we continued learning about states of matter and took a solid, watched it turn into a liquid (partially) and then turn back into a solid.

We tried to lift an ice cube using string. Students had little success. Then, we sprinkled salt on the string and waited about three minutes and tried again. 

Salt lowers the freezing point of water to below 32 degrees Fahrenheit. When we added salt to the ice cube, the salt lowered the melting point of the ice. The salt is in a thin layer, so it melts a thin layer on top of the ice cube. The water from the melty ice cube re-freezes itself around the string, almost as if the string were a part of the ice cube all along. Click below to watch this experiment in action!

September 11th

With such young students, 9-11 is one of those sensitive topics that is better discussed in depth at home. However, with such a globally aware, bright group of students, it is hard to let the day pass unnoticed.

We read the book shown above, which is the best book I have found to use as a discussion piece regarding 9-11 for primary students. When we finished, we had a nice class conversation about patriotism and then we created an American flag craft. Students used their best handwriting to write the Pledge of Allegiance on the back.

Career Interviews

We have been learning about communities and careers in Social Studies.

Each student had to choose someone to interview about his or her career and present the information to the class. We learned about doctors, lawyers, musicians, athletes, engineers and many other fascinating professions! Click the clip below for a peek into the student presentations.

Cisco TelePresence

The View From The Classroom

We have been doing some video-conferencing with Jeff Billings, IT Director for Paradise Valley Unified School District. My students always enjoy chatting with Mr. Billings and they learn a lot from him. Along with such a wonderful resource in Mr. Billings, we also feel very lucky to have this amazing Cisco TelePresence unit in the classroom!

The View From The Other Side

We can use this powerful device to teleconference with anyone else who has a Cisco unit and soon, anyone with a computer. A huge piece of 21st century learning is authentic assessment  with experts in the field, and the TelePresence unit has the potential to open up the walls of our classroom and bring in experts. If you know anyone with these capabilities, especially at Universities, please let me know! We want a rich, authentic academic environment! The clip below shows you a snippet of one of our conversations with Mr. Billings last week.

Curriculum Night

Thanks so much for attending Curriculum Night this evening. If you were unable to attend, or need to reference my presentation, it can be viewed here. 

Oobleck!

 We have been studying the states of matter in Science class, so this week we made Oobleck! We started this lesson by reading Bartholemew and the Oobleck by Dr. Suess.

Next, each small group added half a cup of cornstarch to half a cup of water. We also added a couple of drops of green food coloring so our Oobleck looked like real Oobleck! Once it was mixed, we quickly discovered that if we poked firmly on the Oobleck, it felt hard and solid. If we let it sit in our hands or touched it gently, it felt watery like a liquid. 

Is Oobleck a solid or a liquid? It is actually a Non-Newtonian Fluid, meaning the behavior of this fluid changes under stress. If you apply force the atoms in the fluid rearrange so it behaves like a solid. If you remove that force, or stress and it will return to its earlier state. Watch the video clip below to watch our Oobleck Investigation in action!