Legal Dramatic Play

"Objection" "I rest my case" I was amazed how much law lingo the students already had in their schema.

One of my student's father is the local magistrate. We were reading about patent attorneys & inventors, so we went down the local court house to settle a "patent civil case"

Two students played patent attorneys. Two played inventors claiming the invention. Two were witnesses. One was the judge and one was the court clerk.  They were given a general outline for the court case and they each prepared statements and ad-libbed questions. "Are you lying?" One attorney even prepared video evidence which was shown as "Exhibit A" 

The witness being sworn in by the clerk. The students were curious what happens if someone does lie in court. We were told that was called "Purjury" and that you can get in trouble by it. 

They also asked some great questions "Is it hard to make a decision?" "Are people sometimes sad?" 

It was an awesome real world experience. 

Life Below Zero

We hit -25 on Sunday. The cold is biting. When you open the door to the outside, you get lots of steam where the warm and cold air hit. My lunch froze when I put it down for a second on the way to the bus. Icicles formed on the inside of the windows.

Strangely with the wood stove and furnace, our main problem is being too warm. We wake up dehydrated and are constantly drinking cups of water.

It is also beautiful. There is no wind. In the early morning, the snow twinkles on the ground like little diamonds and as stated before: every sunrise and sunset is gorgeous. We are only getting about 6 hours of sunlight. By 9am, its starting to sunrise and 3pm, its sunset. This means as the students are getting ready to go home, it is gorgeous.

You do start to get cabin fever though. We had a birthday party for James this week and Thanksgiving is next week. Good to have some variety to the routine. We will be happy to visit Washington for Christmas Break.

It really makes you wonder how the Alaska Natives survived this back in the day. Would be so interesting to examine the history and cultural artifacts that were used!

Public Vs. Private Education

I realized today that I dont understand teaching in a Public School setting because I didn't get the American Public School experience. I grew up attending mostly private schools and international schools. I have no real frame of reference for what the classroom is "supposed to look like", that's why I'm so easily swayed by alternative methods.

My baby turned 1 yesterday. My toddler will be 3 and will be able to attend Headstart next year, so this realization really hit home:

1) I had privilege. I never understood that till right now. The people I interacted with, the experiences that I had is not what the average person has. I had teachers who were flexible, I wasn't just part of a huddled mass: I had a voice, I had an identity. I was held to high standards with a dress code & strict codes of conduct. Even now comparing how I speak, write, and spell compared to my husband astounds me.

2) What do I want for my kids? I am now terrified at the prospect of sending my kids to Public School.  My husband went to public school and we have different world views, which I value. I am idealistic and forward thinking, but he is grounded in a bit more cynicism and reality. I see things how they should be and he sees them how they are... and that's a terrifying realization of how our country has become divided.

How can I ensure that my kids get this diverse worldview that I have? Is there a way to transform public education to become more like private education?

Do you do it from the ground up? Leading as a teacher in a classroom...
Do you do it from the top down? As a Superintendent or Principal implementing policies across multiple classrooms...
Do you have to change the law? Write to the legislators to implement the needed changes...
Do you have to change the curriculum? Write & research as a professor at a University...

As this first semester of second year teaching at public school ends, I find myself with a lot of big questions..

Dash & Dot

My DonorChoose Project got funded and so our Dash & Dot coding robots arrived in the classroom. The students were SO excited. It was like Christmas. 

We encountered a small problem. Our ipads could not connect to the robots via bluetooth to be able to code them :( But our tech guy said that the ipads in the second grade classroom could! He would switch them out later this week. We have the xylophone (so they can create music) and the lego, bulldozer, and tray accessories. I can't wait to keep you posted on what creative things the students will do with them! 

Thankful...

We read some Thanksgiving poems this week. We wrote an example together on the smartboard and then I gave the students dry erase markers to draft their poem on their desk before writing it out on paper. 

The Second Grade teacher suggested the dry erase markers. The students are more willing to do drafts with the markers. (We have also used them to drafting stories and doing math problems.)  

I LOVE this poem & illustration. I love to read and I love the fishing analogy. 

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The 6th Grade class did a Thanksgiving play, so they invited us to go to it. 

They did a great job. So great to come together as a K-6. :) 

Connecting Class with Kahoot

We finished reading Pax for the global read aloud. We did a Kahoot Quiz between three classes. 

We also had some survey questions to figure out which of the characters was our favorite and how we felt about the ending! There were 36 students total participating between 3 classes. A little girl in the Illinois class ended up with the highest score. 

We had been tweeting once a week for the last month with these two classes (in Illinois and Florida), so this was a fun way to end the end. The class in Florida is reading Flora & Ulysses too, so we will likely re-connect with them again later in the year. 

I gave my students access to make their own Kahoot this week, so they have been working hard making their own quizzes. I have been really impressed. The best way to learn is to teach, right? :) I have been writing word problems like this to help the students understand HOW to understand what the question is asking. Seeing the student's Kahoot made me realize how successful this actually was. 

We have had some great connections with other classes. Here is our map board with the 4 letters we have received. We are doing the Holiday Card Exchange, so we should have more in the near future! 

Open-ended projects are just the best! This week, we participated in the #marshmallowchallenge. The students were given 10 sticks of spaghetti, 1 yard of tape, 1 yard of yarn, and one marshmallow. They were supposed to make a free-standing tower with a marshmallow on top. (https://docs.google.com/document/d/16PHez0zQJl0FKUHyQJvQu8TXeMpAGnF-4iBofRqVBds/edit)

It was interesting. We had just studied Native Americans who live in the plains, so there was plenty of references of how to make it stand like a "teepee" 

Most concentrated on getting the "tallest," but one group wanted it to "be able to stand up" first. We mysteryskyped with another class in Michigan who shared their towers. 

Afterwards, I put out more spaghetti, tape, and string so the students could attempt a second tower. They learned from their errors on the first tower. It really is incredible the difference between the 1st towers and the second towers.  

And by Friday.... They had really gotten complicated! 

#marshmallowchallenge