You could hear the kids screaming with glee from Mars! Students ask me everytime I see them in the halls, "are we going to do that Hour of Code every week?" Teachers are begging for more coding apps. (I push scratch jr k-5 and hopscotch 3-5) Anyway you look at it, the people at code.org created a quality product with a varied group of activites that all my classes from Kinder to 5th gr had an amazing time. Kinder through 2nd girls squealed when they saw Elsa and Anna and the boys jumped on Angry Birds without hesitation. Here are some photos. CCE second graders complete a unit on oceans and marine life to finish out the year, and this year we decided to try something new! Shannon Foley, CCE librarian, learned about the gallery method of research at a conference she previously attended. This method of research involves setting up stations or individual tasks for students to go through with guiding questions and activities. Stations can be completed in any order. We collaborated with Mrs. Foley and Gifted and Talented teacher Cara Beth McLeod to brainstorm activities and ideas aligned with 2nd grade TEKS from all subject areas. Then, we created stations covering various ocean topics and aligned with grade level TEKS such as using frequency charts, making scientific observations, and making inferences. Our goal was to give students a variety of learning experiences, including hands-on experiments, videos, and books. Students came to the Learning Lounge every day for 5 days, and stayed for 45 minutes. The Learning Lounge was the best place to conduct this particular activity, since it has a variety of furniture that can be rearranged to accommodate different activities, and plenty of space for students to move in between stations. Each student received a paper copy of the "Ocean Field Guide" below. It contains the directions for each station, QR codes to accompanying websites, and questions for students to answer. We checked students' work after completing each station, and students kept track of their progress on the last page.
Here's an example of a student's acrostic poem about sharks (and his super cute fish face photo!) from station #3: And here are some photos of students working on various ocean research stations: On Thursday and Friday, CCE students became engineers! First, we introduced the engineering design process to students. Then, 1st and 2nd graders experimented with building hoop glider airplanes to create a design that would make their hoop gilder go the greatest distance. 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders were challenged to build a water balloon launcher that would send a water balloon flying the farthest. They were given a limited amount of time and could only use the materials given to them: masking tape, wire, rubber bands, paper plates, paper clips, string, and wooden sticks. To introduce the engineering design process to students, we used this presentation:
You can find more information on hoop gliders and how to make them here.
We had so much fun doing this, and are looking forward to more engineering activities next year! CCE 4th graders have been learning about Texas explorers in social studies. To show what they learned, we created a menu of activities for them to choose from. Here are some of the choices students had:
Once students had completed one activity for each of the five explorers they learned about, they put their work on their Weebly blogs. If asked for a password, it is cce2cce2. Then, students created Thinglinks. They used a map of Texas as the background image, and put spots on the map to show where different explorers went. The spots link to the activity the student completed on that particular explorer. Here is an example of a Thinglink a student created: Weebly is an app that we have used to create student blogs. We have used blogs for various projects, including writing blog posts from the perspective of someone who lived in the past, blogging reading responses, and publishing projects on explorers. To learn more, see the App Snapshot below:
CCE 5th graders invented their own instruments and are showcasing them in an instrument invention fair! Instruments had to make two or more pitches, and belong to one of the instrument families- brass, woodwind, percussion, or string. We worked with Mrs. Milburn, the music teacher, to create this commercial for the instrument invention fair. Enjoy! We always get the best ideas from our friends at Bridge Point Elementary (you can find them at bobcatblog.org), like this idea for a novel study. Third grade students at Cedar Creek recently read Chocolate Fever, a novel about a boy who eats so much chocolate that he gets chocolate spots! After each chapter, students completed a chapter summary in the Popplet app. Here's an example: After finishing the novel, students were assigned a partner and one chapter to turn into a graphic novel. They used the Popplet chapter summary and the Strip Designer app to create their graphic novel chapter. Here's an example of one chapter from the graphic novel version: To guide students, we created a rubric and made an example for the first chapter of the book. To see the finished graphic novels for each class, go here. Happy reading!
Cedar Creek is currently redesigning its former computer lab into a flexible learning space now known as the Learning Lounge. You can read more about the transformation here. The room has been painted a very relaxing shade of blue, and we are now looking at furniture to put in the Learning Lounge. Our criteria for furniture is: - it has to be comfortable for kindergarteners, adults, and every size in between - it has to be moveable - it has to encourage flexible grouping As we have researched and sampled various types of furniture, we realized that our furniture choices can fit into the SAMR model. The SAMR model was developed by Dr. Ruben Puentadura to explain how teachers use technology in a classroom setting. You can read more about it here. Substitution
We could buy new chairs with seats and four legs just like the chairs we had. This would be a substitution because it's the same chair, only a different color. Augmentation A chair with wheels is still a chair, it just has something added to it. The wheels make it easier to move around the room, but it is essentially still just a chair. Modification The Node provides a chair with wheels and an attached desk. Students can easily come together in groups and break apart for independent work. The chair swivels so students can remain moving while sitting. The desk can move in a variety of positions and has a tablet holder at the edge. The bottom provides a storage space under the chair. Redefinition The Panto Move Chair has wheels, plus it has a special seat that allows for pelvic and core movement. Although a student could move around in a regular chair, it was noisy and distracting to others. This chair lets students move silently in their chairs without disturbing others. Since movement increases brain activity and focus, this chair can actually help a student learn more effectively. We'll keep you posted on the progress of the Learning Lounge! Check the blog for updates! In celebration of Valentine's Day, we invited classes to come check out our freshly painted Learning Lounge and join us for a quick poetry lesson. Kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd grade students used their five senses to write about things they love to touch, smell, taste, hear, and see. First they traced their hands to use their five fingers as reminders of their five sense. They wrote what they loved on hearts, then glued it all together. Here's an example: 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade learned about concrete nouns (nouns that you can sense with your five senses) and abstract nouns (like loneliness or fear), and how they can be used to write poems. We discussed that abstract nouns are often symbolized by concrete nouns. Here is the presentation we used to teach students about concrete and abstract nouns:
Since it was Valentine's Day, we chose to use the abstract noun "love" as the topic of our poem, and students wrote 10 concrete examples of love. We used this website, http://www.festisite.com/text-layout/, to make the poems into a heart shape. Here are some examples of a finished product: Students had the option to email their poem to their parents. Some super creative students even put their poems into the Pic Collage app and made special Valentines for their parents or teachers. Parents and teachers loved receiving these special Valentines!
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