@BloxelsBuilder

 

Thanks to @DonorsChoose, we have 2 bloxel boards in our classroom. The students used graph paper to make designs and thank you cards for our generous donors.

 

The students were so excited to try out the boards to create new characters, backgrounds, and objects to create new games using the Bloxel App. 

 

When the creations are made on the hands-on bloxel board, the students can then scan their creations and then use them for further creation.

 
The had great fun finding digital pictures to copy on both the hands-on board or the graph paper. Can't wait to see what they continue to create!

Small schools are important

For some, its easy to say to just close down the smaller school sites. But small schools are a center of these bush communities. They provide employment, meals, and also are gathering places where athletics or arts can happen. Whenever a small school is closed down, families either have to move to another community or stay where they are and not send their children to school. Online homeschool is not a viable option for many of these people where a monthly internet service can be close to $350.

I am working at the largest school in the district and they have been hit here by school choice. Almost the entire 9th grade class & is spread out to boarding schools, which means that the enrollment is down here. I have an assistant who went to a boarding school last year, but returned this year who says that she didn't like it there because of bullying.

As a parent, I do believe in school choice. I was privileged enough to attend private schools and as my sons grow older, I worry about sending them to public school. If a voucher program were to be instituted in Alaska, it would have to be to attract students from the larger school districts to come to a boarding school at one of these rural schools where they could get a smaller class size and more personalized instruction. It CANNOT be to open more charter schools in a large district where there are already options.

These bush schools need to be a priority. I never realized how much they need support till I started working here such as access to formal Physical Education, Arts, and Music instruction is needed or support for libraries outside of school hours. Governor Walker says that they want to ensure excellent education every day and so, we need to raise up the schools that we already have instead of trying to open & maintain more.

When the larger districts serve more students, its easier to think about their needs outweighing the needs of these smaller communities. These smaller communities are important. They are unique and distinctly Alaskan. Their constituents don't have loud rallying voices, so its often easy to forget them. These small schools matter.

Analog #booksnaps

I love the idea of using snapchat, but was hesitant of enrolling my younger 3rd grade students on there so I found the app: Skitch that does many of the same things such as taking pictures and being able to add text or drawings on top of it.

I am going to use it for our Iditarod Reading Challenge. Each student will keep a reading log. They will use booksnaps to take a picture every 5 pages and write a reflection

or a connection 

or identifying spelling or vocabulary words. 

I'm pretty excited. The skitches are then saved to their camera roll and I can share & compile them for others to see in the class & offline. It should be fun! 

Self-Directed Class

After the break, I start to release control in the classroom to give the students more responsibilities. I've done this with Preschoolers/Kindergarteners and they absolutely love the chance to be "teacher"


The Principal announced that the gym was under maintenance today and instantly one of the students was up at the white board taking a vote to see if we would play outside or have centers this afternoon. They wrote in the times & dates for the Basketball games onto the classroom calendar. They proactively remind and make rules "You are making us wait for you, so you are going to get 2 minutes off centers"

For our reading direction instruction piece: I've started letting one of them have the answer key and read the answers out to the students.




During GeniusHour:

-We got a funded for a 3D printing pen (3Doodler), so they have been busy making designs from their invention convention a couple months ago. Others are now asking to put together a donors choose project so they can get other materials they need for their projects.

-2 students are busy programming Dash & Dot.
-Using the ipads, they have been making stop motion movies using clay, animation, and even a live-action superhero film. There is dialogue, sound effects, and music.

-2 bloxel boards are due in the mail soon, so they will be able to start programming with that as well!

I have such a remarkable group of students. So thankful.

#SpellingBEE

We are ready for the Spelling Bee! It is next Friday at the school.

We have been practicing our words & spelling rules for months! Our in-class spelling bee had to go several rounds because everyone was spelling correctly!

The students had fun creating Bees for our fliers to put up at the school, AC store, post office, & tribal office building!

Kahoot! created a jumble feature, so we were able to practice spelling through that program. The students noticed that the symbol on the yellow was supposed to be a circle, but showed up as a square on their ipads, so we wrote to Kahoot, so they could fix it.

Grade Level Proficiency vs. Continued Progress

As we start our Winter Benchmark testing, I began to think hard about the whole Grade Level Proficiency vs. Continued Progress.

I had a student who started at a 4 in math computations. At winter, they are a 16, which shows a tremendous growth. However the majority of their classmates scored in the 50s (and around 20-30 in the Fall) At the beginning of the year, they struggled with basic addition computations, having to add on their fingers while the others were learning about multiplication. I supplemented: while the others did multiplication fact games, they would do addition ones. I sent home materials to practice at home. They were exposed to multiplication concepts even though they didn't understand it, while they built up their fundamental math skills.

There has been the big question that our principal posed: "Do we teach to mastery or do we teach for exposure?"

I think in math, it is very cyclical. Our first unit was on the commutative, distributive, and associative properties of multiplication. After winter break, our units are on the commutative, associative, and identity properties of addition.

I love the idea of education as a spiral where you re-visit terms & concepts at different points to check your understanding rather than spending time on one term & concept till you have "mastered it" I believe true mastery happens when you still remember something even after not being exposed to it for an amount of time. 

#ASTE17

https://www.aste.org/aste-2017-conference/

I am so excited to be presenting at the ASTE conference this year. For years, I have made it my professional development goal to present and get to learn from other educators. The last two years, I presented at the AEYC-SEA (Early Childhood Conference), so this leap into a larger forum of Technology is big!

I am really excited about my topic- Your Digital Footprint: Teaching Digital Citizenship Online & Off-line. I feel especially in this age where social media is huge, you really need to start teaching & acting like someone is always watching!

I am also so excited to learn from Alice Keeler & George Couros. I'd love to be like them someday. This year, my goal is to write my book.
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My students received Time for Kids where there was an article about a boy who attended school as a "robot" because he had surgery and couldn't leave. They thought it was such an interesting concept and when I told them that I would be missing school a couple days to go to the conference, they thought it would be cool if I could appear via skype to teach them.

Every semester, we do an awards ceremony here. The students all get awards for most improved scores, being helpful or kind, but the most coveted is the PERFECT ATTENDANCE award. I had 2 students who missed 1 day of school last semester because they had to fly to Dr. Appointments in Fairbanks and 2 who were sick (throwing up for one day.) and they thought it would be so cool if they could get perfect attendance by appearing in class that way.

#MLKDay

History is so important. To start our MLK Day story, I started at the beginning when Africans were brought to America to work in the fields as slaves. 

We talked about the Civil War where the Northern States & Southern States fought and Abraham Lincoln signing the "Emancipation Proclamation" into law. 

Even though they were free, the African-Americans were not treated fairly. 

They organized a boycott of the buses to protest the unfair bus policies. "That law was stupid" 

They held marches to protest the unfair treatment

Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous "I have a dream" speech in Washington. 

The students drew a lot of parallels between MLK and Malala, who we read earlier this year. Both of them won Nobel Peace Prize. Both were shot. Both were advocates because things were not fair. 

Teachers play "Indian Bingo"

Staff morale after the break can go a little down, so I highly recommend that you play Indian Bingo. I had never played it before and it was incredibly fun.

Our principal bought lots of little gifts (and one big one: CROCKPOT) and wrapped them. We were around the perimeter of the table where there were 4 pairs of dice. Each person took a turn trying to get doubles. If you rolled doubles, you got to pick a present. 

The school counselor who is from Ireland was the only one who didn't end up with anything to unwrap after that first round. The principal joked "No luck of the Irish!" and she retorted "I can see why its called Indian Bingo" (Our Gwich'in staff had the biggest piles!)

After all the presents had been claimed, you got to open it and see what everyone had. Then came the fun part! The stealing. You rolled the dice and every time you rolled doubles, you could steal a present from someone... That crock pot moved hands many times... 

At the very end, our Irish counselor stole the crock pot from ME and the game was concluded. Lots of fun. I didn't end up with the crock pot, but I did get a nice water bottle & cutting board. 

Honestly, the most fun staff game ever! Great way to come back from break. 

Houdini, Glass-blowing, Crickets, & Rhino Conservation

The students read individual stories on the ipads using Epic! or ReadLive. If they like a story, they recommend it to their friends and it leads to great discussions.

One student read about Houdini and we ended up looking up more videos about him.
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We were reading about volcanos and one of the students wondered "If sand is little rocks, how come it becomes glass and not lava because lava is melted rocks" We watched 3 videos on glassblowing, which they found absolutely fascinating.

Side Note: I think every city needs to have a glassblowing studio to take glass from landfills. I think of the garbage dump here... instead of having the bottle rot away since there is no recycling center, wouldn't it be nice to put them to use?
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We were talking about 3 things we were excited to learn about. One student decided he wanted to help save the rhinos. We looked up the WWF site and he wants to fundraise some money. He wrote that one one of his goals this year. Another student updated her goals to having a job and being in college.

Many Students said the multiplication tables were the hardest thing they did in 2016, but it was often the thing they were most proud of. One student said their proudest thing was giving rabbits to the elders.

One student came back from break and said his favorite present was "crickets" and they were crunchy. Coincidentally, NEWSELA did a great article on edible insects. So several students had "eat crickets" on their lists of things they wanted to try!

Coding in the Arctic

My students coded Dot to be a "hot potato." It was really simple. They made a repeat loop and then Sound 1 was Dot saying "hot potato hot potato hot hot hot and Sound 2 was Dot saying "You're out" By re-arranging the blocks, they made it be long and short durations so it was random.

I can't wait to see what else they will come up with! 

Books

One student took the Bill Clinton biography off the shelf of Presidential Biographies and remarked "Now, they are going to have to make a Donald Trump book."

Another student chimed in "Did they make a Barack Obama book?" Yes, I replied but we didn't have it in the classroom. I would have to order it the next time we did a Scholastic order. This small interaction underscored how important diverse role models are and their stories. There is such a huge gaping hole in our library for diverse books.

One of the things that has made me sad here is the limited book selection at the library. They are hand-me-downs with the word DISCARD emblazoned on many of their covers. There are a lot of great ones in the pile, but a lot of out-dated ones. (I also think of the library of books for my own two boys which are sitting in a dark storage unit since clothing & food made the cut for our weight limit flying in and books can't.) So grateful for these books since the kids treat them like gold. Thanks to the Friends of the Seward Library! (http://www.friendsofsclm.org/used-book-sale/used-books-to-fort-yukon-school) They devour them and all the stories inside. They love scholastic orders, I've never had students so enthusiastic about books. I treat the free book rewards like gold ordering things that I know we need. My Aunt in New York sends me boxes of books because where she lives piles of free books go unclaimed.

"Can you order a Bernie Sander book too?"

Yes, I can.

“Apprentice Style” Education

Instead of being a teacher and students, we should be mentors and protege. We are helping give them experiences they need to succeed.

“The Apprentice” works because it divided people into two groups and gave them the same assignment, which they interpreted in different ways. They were then judged by how successful they completed the challenge:

-Sometimes they won because they went out of the box.
-Other times they won because the other group strayed too far from the criteria. 

-Sometimes it was because they were more successful: having more people come to their event or raising more money. 

Could you imagine if the classroom was made into this “Apprentice Style” Education? The teacher could assign the task in large groups, small, groups, pairs, or individuals. The teacher could set these groups differently each time to ensure different groups of students worked together. At the beginning, there would be a set objective with open-ended interpretation. 

1. Project Manager: When working in groups, there should always be a project manager and people need to pick different roles. Who is the best artist in the group? Maybe they design the posters. Who wont stay on task? Lets assign them to work with someone who is vigilant. At first Project Manager should be by volunteer, with the understanding that everyone should have a turn with it at least once. 
2. “The Boardroom”: Debrief time. In the classroom, you should have students go around and talk about what went well, what didn’t, and how to improve next time. They should focus mainly on self-improvement, but if there was someone not pulling their weight, it should be modeled in a respectful way. (“X, it made me frustrated when we were all working and you were siting in the corner and not participating” X would get a chance to respond and students can give suggestions on how to improve this behavior in the future) 
3. “You’re Fired”: Members of the different groups could then vote on which project they thought was successful of the original assignment instead of the teacher picking a winner. 

Instead of focusing on small assignments, you could be focusing on real practical experiences. How do you have a fundraiser dinner? How would you write and market a kids book? Art Gallery? Newspaper/magazine/radio/tv show? Sport tournament? Auction? Carnival? Pop-up cafe? Marathon? Community clean-up? Tour company? A shop? A lawn business? All of those are invaluable life experiences. 

How do you poll people? How do you modify what you want to do with what your audience wants? How do you modify with your budget or time constraints? It involves so much design thinking and problem-solving. Such a great way to look at education in a pretty easy to replicate format!