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Warm up today: "What does Christmas mean to you?" We all shared our thoughts and had a small discussion about how it's important to be with our families during the holidays!
5th grade had a fun and experimental day today with many of the new robots. We had a few issues with getting a robot and the the apps to work as we only have my personal phone, a older Samsung phone and my older IPad (that will not hook up with several items). We were still able to experiment with 7 different items. I have a few more items that will be delivered after our Break. Keeping all of the robots in an organized manner is a challenge as we all get excited and forget that the devices are fragile. If you have an old flat screen device that you would love to donate, please let me know. I have emails and calls out to many businesses begging for any type of device they would love to give away. Students left today at 9:45 to practice for band. They were very excited for their concert this evening! Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! I look forward to seeing everyone's bright face in January! Ms. Love
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. Today was an eventful learning day in TAG! We started off very excited to write about what Christmas means to them and they requested to write about what the "Gingerbread man/girl" was that they take home and write about.
Students then created their own "Fuzz" icon on paper, and recreated the one they had already created on Kodable.com. I uploaded photos of their work on Class Dojo. Students made the connection that we must design a code within the program for the computer to design how exactly we want an icon to look like. Students noticed that their paper version and Kodable version were quite different. Kodable had certain preset layouts that the student had to choose from unlike their paper designs. We ventured into two new robots, a MakerBot named, Rocky, and a Robot Mouse Maze. There are a couple of videos on Class Dojo of them experimenting with the two new items. Students were invited to a recess around 2pm and then returned to class at 2:25. They were able to learn about ocean animals on the Virtual Reality and manipulate the Cubeletts for the last 10 minutes of class. I hope that you and your family have a wonderful break and I wish you a Merry Christmas! This week has gone by entirely too fast! We had our pizza party in class yesterday and had a great time sharing "bread and cheese" together. We discussed the finals schedule during our lunch time and then went to work on our research papers.
Sixth graders are hard at work researching about what inspired them from our Museum field trip. Students are writing their papers on their Google Docs within the school district. I am able to see their progress online and make suggestions and/or corrections to their writing. Students learned how to add an MLA bibliography using Easy Bib within Google Docs. What a great time saver along with giving credit to their resources to prevent plagiarism. The research writing is a little bit of a challenge to the students, but they are grasping the idea a little more this year as last year that were subjected to the idea and the writing process. This year, the research paper is for a grade and the students have been given a rubric as their guideline. The paper and their presentation is worth 200 points and is due next Monday while they are in class with me at 8:00-10:00 am. This will be our last class together for this semester. Please encourage your student to work on the paper over the weekend. Students may text me when they have their work ready for me to review again before they submit it for a final grade on Monday morning. I will be able to give more suggestions on Sunday before 5 pm and possibly a quick look after 8:30 pm. I am very proud of each student and what they have accomplished this past school year and how they have grown since 5th grade. Please know that they may come to me at any time for help and/or encouragement. Have a wonderful holiday and Merry Christmas! Ms. Love 1st grade today was in a creative "Fuzz" mode! After we wrote about our writing prompt of:
If you were to create a robot, what would it do to help the world?? Explain and draw your idea." Students came up with creative writing responses along with detailed drawings. We shared our ideas with the class and answered questions from our class mates about our idea. We then shared more of our thoughts within our circle time using the shoulder partner sharing. After sharing our great ideas, students learned a little bit about html coding by designing their own "Fuzz" using pre-set coding for example: class grees extends Fuzz { constructor() { this.body = new FuzzBody("Green"); this.eyes = new FuzzEyes("Gray"); this.mouth = new FuzzMouth("BigSmile"); Students filled in what color they wanted for their Fuzz to be, gave it a name, "grees" , what color their eyse would be, what type of mouth, and more. They did a "Fuzz" online and on paper. They were quite proud of their designs! Those photos are posted on Class Dojo. After we designing our "Fuzz" students worked through the challenges of getting Fuzz through several Mazes on Kodable.com. At the end of class, students reflected on Google Classroom what they worked on today while in TAG. Have a wonderful Christmas break everyone. We will meet the first Thursday after we return in January. Ms. Love A sample of what is projected on the board and how class went today.
WARM UP/THINKER: (write this in composition book) What is the Hour of Code? Why should we participate? * Discussion warm-up at tables * 15 minutes of “free/self-explore time * Google Classroom (Google Classroom: Do the google reflection assignment AFTER CSFirst/Scratch) ● Staying on Task and Not Causing Distractions?
● Clean Up: doing your job respectfully. ******Your chair on table, your table and floor clean. ● Exiting Thoughts (last 5 minutes of class) *******When leaving, exit ticket of what you learned/accomplished today. Your Agenda today in TAG: 8:15: Exploratory time. 8:30 – 9:30 - Start on your CSFirst and Scratch. Remember to sign in to both as it is keeping track of your progress. 9:30: OPTION.. Work on research project or Scratch, you do not have to work on the research below. I am giving you time to work on it in class, but you can work on it at home too. 9:30 OPTION… Make 3D snowflakes to hang up in the Cafeteria. 10:20 GOOGLE CLASSROOM: Express what you accomplished today under the General “streaming” area that I started. *RESEARCH PROJECT: After you are finished with above, you may research on your project. Remember to document all of the sites and books that you visit on a Google Doc page. *Title your page as “Anthropology Research Biblio” Keeping track of the information you use during your research will keep you organized and help with plagiarism. Start another Google Doc and title your project “My TAG Research Project of ……………….(what your project name is) A sample of what is projected on the board and how class went today.
(Some of the students went to band today at 9:45. Next week all are required to attend band for one last practice. Ms. Pirtle and I have discussed the practice time in advance. ) WARM UP/THINKER: (write this in composition book) What is the Hour of Code? Why should we participate? * Discussion warm-up at tables * 15 minutes of “free/self-explore time * Google Classroom (Google Classroom: Do the google reflection assignment AFTER CSFirst/Scratch) ● Staying on Task and Not Causing Distractions?
● Clean Up: doing your job respectfully. ******Your chair on table, your table and floor clean. ● Exiting Thoughts (last 5 minutes of class) *******When leaving, exit ticket of what you learned/accomplished today. Your Agenda today in TAG: 8:15: Exploratory time. 8:30 – 9:30 - Start on your CSFirst and Scratch. Remember to sign in to both as it is keeping track of your progress. 9:30: OPTION.. Work on research project or Scratch, you do not have to work on the research below. I am giving you time to work on it in class, but you can work on it at home too. 9:30 OPTION… Make 3D snowflakes to hang up in the Cafeteria. 10:20 GOOGLE CLASSROOM: Express what you accomplished today under the General “streaming” area that I started. *RESEARCH PROJECT: After you are finished with above, you may research on your project. Remember to document all of the sites and books that you visit on a Google Doc page. *Title your page as “Anthropology Research Biblio” Keeping track of the information you use during your research will keep you organized and help with plagiarism. Start another Google Doc and title your project “My TAG Research Project of ……………….(what your project name is) A sample of what is projected on the board and how class went today.
WARM UP/THINKER: (write this in composition book) What is the Hour of Code? Why should we participate? * Discussion warm-up at tables * 15 minutes of “free/self-explore time * Google Classroom (Google Classroom: Do the google reflection assignment AFTER CSFirst/Scratch) ● Staying on Task and Not Causing Distractions?
● Clean Up: doing your job respectfully. ******Your chair on table, your table and floor clean. ● Exiting Thoughts (last 5 minutes of class) *******When leaving, exit ticket of what you learned/accomplished today. Your Agenda today in TAG: 8:15: Exploratory time. 8:30 – 9:30 - Start on your CSFirst and Scratch. Remember to sign in to both as it is keeping track of your progress. 9:30: OPTION.. Work on research project or Scratch, you do not have to work on the research below. I am giving you time to work on it in class, but you can work on it at home too. 9:30 OPTION… Make 3D snowflakes to hang up in the Cafeteria. 10:20 GOOGLE CLASSROOM: Express what you accomplished today under the General “streaming” area that I started. *RESEARCH PROJECT: After you are finished with above, you may research on your project. Remember to document all of the sites and books that you visit on a Google Doc page. *Title your page as “Anthropology Research Biblio” Keeping track of the information you use during your research will keep you organized and help with plagiarism. Start another Google Doc and title your project “My TAG Research Project of ……………….(what your project name is) I am so glad I was able to attend class today as the students were engrossed in their projects. See the information below of what we worked on in class:
Warm up and Discussion: How would you design a maze for fuzzy the robot to get from one destination to another? Explain and draw it. Lesson: Learn how to sign up for CSFirst and Scratch with a special sign up code Watch CS Videos teaching us how to make our name spin, flash, change colors, change background, etc. Apply those videos to our own name on Scratch. Learning that block coding is a step by step process of algorithms, sequencing, and conditionals that are designed behind to blocks students are connecting together. Links or Attachments to lesson: Scratch.com CSFirst.com Animate A Name project Students enjoyed being challenged with a harder coding concept with Scratch. They have been using Kodable.com and worked through the basic programming of getting the "Fuzzy" to a destination, now they can begin applying their skills to the block style programming in Scratch. This type of programming will help them program some of the Robots and/or help them understand why and how the Robots are controlled by humans. We took a break from Scratch and became engaged in our new Robots that Ms. Love brought in. See photos on Class Dojo. Lastly, we reflected on Google Classroom what we accomplished today. Daily Blog news about the lesson: http://msandrealoveart.weebly.com/tag-blog (look for today's lesson on the blog which is emailed out to parents and posted on Class Dojo) ClassDojo.com has photos for the day as well that only members may view. Wow! The year is flying by, I can't believe it is almost Christmas! I hope that you have not felt that I have ignored the sixth graders blog post. Repeating the same information would probably not be interesting to you therefore, I try to do a once a week informational post and email about what the sixth graders have been working on in class.
As you know, every day at the beginning of class, students have a writing prompt on the white board or projected on the wall. The prompts are a variety of affective emotional reflections, about computer science and/or about their weekend or thoughts. I try to mix it up a little bit to help me understand where they are in life and in the classroom. With that said, I have noticed personal issues with students and have pulled each one of them aside to talk with them about their concerns. I am very concerned about my students and their lives even more so as I read the book, "Wholehearted Teaching of Gifted Young Women." This book is not only about women as I spoke with the author in person at our mini conference. She enlightened me about how the book is geared to both sexes. It is important to me to have a connection with all of my students, not just the girls or the boys, but both of them. We talk in a group often about important discussions that sometimes take up most of our class-time. I feel that their emotional needs as "high achieving" students are valuable discussions. After we write and discuss our prompts, students have been hard at work working on the Scratch coding projects. Their projects have been a challenge at times and I am proud of them for working through their challenges as this will help them progress through hard times as they move through each grade level. As Gifted students become older and learn how to face hard issues, they become less vulnerable to shutting down when issues arise. We have had times in the classroom where we would stop and reset ourselves and move through the learning process instead of pushing the problem aside. Facing that problem makes us a little stronger. Our Scratch projects will be available to view at the LSE big event, Pirate Plunder, on December 11th. Please come by and let your student share what they have been working on. I will have Chromebooks for all of the students. Come sit and be amazed at their creativity and problem solving. Yesterday, Thursday, I brought some of our new robots that I ordered out of the budget for the students to work with. They were the first group to test out the new items. The students enjoyed the virtual reality, Makey Makey (played a piano through a banana), Cublet Blocks, Sphero, Little Bits, Kubo, and Ozbot. Ms Love was unable to take pictures as my cell phone was being used with the virtual reality googles. We will utilize the robots again next week after we have our work ready to share for the Pirate Plunder. About next week. I will be out of town on Monday. Students have been asked to work on finalizing their Scratch projects and continue working on their research projects. For next Wednesday, the students earned a pizza party from collecting all the letters for "Boonville Pirates" each day they were on task and working respectfully in class. Students discussed the options of pizza from Caseys or another place nearby. We will decide on Tuesday where the pizza is coming from and if I need to pick it up before class or have it delivered. Each student would need to bring $4.00 or $5.00, a drink for themselves and if they would like to share a treat with the class, like brownies or cookies. The classes voted on Wednesday as they pulled up the lunch menu and explained that this day was fish day and they wanted to skip this day. If you would like to join us for our pizza compliment party, we would love to have you! I have thoroughly loved working with this class this semester and I will miss those that will not be returning until next school year. Please know that I am always interested in what they are working on via school or personal challenges. That is what I am here for. Please let them know that they may come visit with me anytime and/or email me through the school if they would like to discuss something that is troubling them. Sometimes they just need someone different to listen to them. I think this note is long enough! Please contact me via email, call, text or Dojo if you would like to speak or meet in person. As always, thank you for having your student in TAG! I hope to see you next Tuesday at the LSE event! Ms. Love First graders had a writing and drawing prompt today. They were asked to design a maze for the fuzzy robot to get from a starting point and to reach a destination. This writing and designing prompt began their creative mode of programming robots that Ms.Love brought to class. We also borrowed an item from the library. Students moved around the robot centers and experimented with the items in a respectful and responsible manner.
I was not able to take photos as my phone was inside of the virtual reality googles. Then, my phone lost its charge. More items are on their way for the students to create, tinker and learn with. Have a great week and I will see students next Thursday. We will have our second grade friends joining us next Thursday as well. Ms. Love. |
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March 2019
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