Germany, Gingerbread and Funny Food Faces

Every Christmas season, I do a social studies mini-unit about Christmas traditions around the world. One of the countries we learn about is Germany and we also learn about the tradition of gingerbread!!!!!

We do a fun gingerbread man glyph in math class that was photocopied and given to me three years ago from my friend Jessica. This year, I found a fun website that lets students decorate a gingerbread house! Its called "Gingerbread House Dress Up Game" and its on Highlights for Kids! website. My students really enjoyed the house making and we even did it again today. We made a total of three houses. The first one they made, and each one after they insisted that we write with icing "We love God". It really warmed my heart this holiday season.

Even more fun, I discovered on this same website another big hit with the kids called 'Funny Food Face". We played it a total of 13 times as each one of my students was able to choose the food they wanted to use to make their face's eyes, nose, mouth and hair. (A tip if you use this in your class though: turn off the sound!) It was silly of course, but it reinforced the vocabulary for food (many of them didn't know bacon, olive or mushroom for example) and it also solidified direction words like up, down, left, right, smaller, bigger, rotate and flip.

If you have a Smart Board the kids could do it themselves, but the first time through I just had them point and ask for the food they wanted and then orally direct me to where they wanted it placed. I was using it as an oral English activity but you could have the kids come use the computer mouse and do it themselves as well. Another teacher's two kids did the activity that way during lunch. They're in 3rd and 2nd grade and they had just as much if not more fun than the first graders did!

Happy Holidays and enjoy the fun things to do with your students using a projector or Smart Board or even a class set of laptops. :)

http://www.highlightskids.com/Magazine/Feb05/h10205funnyFood.asp

Well, it's been a long time since I blogged anything having to do with my students. But I have a good reason why: I rescued a terrier puppy named Sydney in October and now all of my free time basically is all about the dog. :) Which I don't mind.

Having a class of 13 really helps have a built in socialisation pool to draw from. It's interesting to see how the puppy responds to the kids and the kids to Sydney. Sometimes I bring her up to school and sometimes the kids come over to my house (which is just across the street from school)

Grace and Jack came one day and they played with her for a little over an hour! Grace was great with the dog. Tracy bought the dog some toys for Christmas and so I brought her up yesterday to let the kids play with her again. I'm also watching the 4th grade bus students in addition to my own bus kids this week, so the 4th graders had a ball with her! They were like "Miss L, she sort of looks like Andromeda!" (their teachers dog) and couldn't believe it when I said 'Yes, they are sisters! They're from the same litter!

It's been really fun to teach her different commands and I'm a sucker, she sleeps with me at night. I have a Nintendo DS and I was waiting for Josie and Amelia to make enough money on Nintendogs for me to have my own lab -- yeah, not anymore! Sydney is way better than any video game!

Anyway, I think Sydney has been a great lesson for the students on how to treat animals kindly and with respect. And its been great for Sydney to learn how to act around children and other people. She's got the whole 'sit' thing down when people come in the house or if we're out walking but she's still working on it when in the classroom!! She just gets a little too excited and so do the kids! Many of them have never had exposure to dogs or the prior knowledge of what a mammal is, so this sets them up for when we get to that science unit as well.

Do you use animals in the classroom?

Anticipation of Fall

I'm on holiday right now in my uncle's home in Devon, UK. I love it here. I just flew back here to rest before I have my birthday (27...wait, I don't remember that I would getting this old!) and then head back to Beijing for another school year. I've been to England, France and Switzerland for my school break and now my mind is turned towards school again. It took everything in me not to buy office supplies in the stores in Switzerland... knowing that I would buy way too much to carry back in my rucksack and also paying way more than I needed too for certain items. I still might buy some highlighters anyway!

This blog started as something I was required to do for a master's course but I hope I can keep it up with small but funny posts about my upcoming first graders. I can't believe it will be 4 years of first grade when the bell rings this fall and 6 years of teaching. I feel OLD. But I love this time of year when everything is so NEW.

Why the Sun is so Hot

Yes, I’m the girl who carries an umbrella and uses it more for a sun shade than I do for rain. Today it was SO hot outside. I sat down under my umbrella during recess duty and immediately had 4 of my first grade girls gravitate to my side to also seek shelter from the sun’s harsh rays. I asked them why it was so hot outside and got a couple of great answers:

“Because maybe we are getting closer to the sun like the Equator country people”

“Because yesterday the sun was not feeling well so now it feels so much better and it is happy and dancing and feel much better so it is hot hot hot!”

Workshop 8 Blog

I put up some new photos that I got developed last week in my classroom. My students immediately noticed that there was new photos taped up to my bookshelf. This led them into a series of 'Good morning' questions about why, and when, and who was in the photos. Then they asked 'Miss L, why do you wear different clothes everyday? Why do you have so many different beautiful earrings?'.

Change. It's all around us. ESPECIALLY when it comes to technology, and where there is technology right behind it is some way to integrate that technology into our classrooms and to make it 'educational' for students and easier for teachers. I'm ALL ABOUT jumping on that bandwagon. As I learn more about technology, it gets easier and easier to both naturally use in the classroom and outside the classroom.

So, here we are at the end of my Technology in Education course. I learned WAY more than I think it is possible to ever apply. I've applied so much of it already. My next big task is to find that 'perfect' balance in my instruction.


• What teaching strategies used during this course compliment integration of technology?

Discussion, collaboration, multi media applications/programs, textbooks with interactive CDs and using the internet are just a few of the ways this class compliments integration of technology.


• How do you personally define technology integration after completing this course?

I personally define technology integration as the process of well balanced use of available technology into the classroom on a daily basis. When we use technology, we become more familiar with how we can use it in different ways. The state that results from using technology in the classroom is that our students are receiving balanced education through a diversity of ways. Technology also allows them to process the information they are constantly learning.

Workshop Seven Blog

Monday, I was using the projector and my computer to watch a media clip for science class about using shadows to help you find directions. We were pausing the video to do discussion about content and to fill in our graphic organisers. As we discussed shadowgrams, and filled in a blank, my students queried me 'Miss L, is shadowgram a compound word?'

Yes! They'd remembered a prior lesson and we're applying the knowledge to a separate situation independently! I was excited. They knew the skill and could apply it.


• Reflect on the skills used as a result of your learning so far that you are applying to promote an effective method of applying
the modern instructional technology and producing instructional media and aids into teaching.

I learned how to use PowerPoint and other presentations in high school and college, but these basic programs have evolved to include so many different applications to the classroom than ever before. I've been able to try some of the ideas given in the class to the classroom with great success. One thing I'm planning to do is use Photo Story 3 as a final project with my students and their publishing part of the writing process. We work through the process of writing a rough draft fiction story on paper, then move to typing up our first drafts on the computer. Once students have typed their final draft I want them to use Photo Story 3 to narrate and illustrate their story.


• What do you expect are the students’ affective outcomes from using these forms of technology?

Well, specifically with using Photo Story 3, I expect them to be able to identify and produce the steps of the writing process from Pre-Writing to Publishing. If you look at the NETs students will be completing Creativity and Innovation, Communication and Collaboration and Technology.

Workshop Six Blog

"Information technology is identity technology. Embedding it in a culture that supports democracy, freedom of expression, tolerance, diversity, and complexity of opinion is one of the decade's greatest challenges."


• What role could multimedia instructional materials and student multimedia projects play in bringing about this culture?

This quote struck me as somewhat ironic, considering that the country I live in realizes the validity of how information technology transforms identity and supports freedom of speech, etc. To that end, many information and social networking technologies end up blocked by the government. Even this blog that I write in is inaccessible without a VPN. As part of a culture that is trying to censor their population, in the classroom efforts by Western teachers often suffer. A use of a wiki to share who our class is and what our class is learning just isn’t always feasible due to internet blocking and other issues beyond our control.

• How can teachers' use of multimedia support the development of such a culture?

In an international school setting, students are constantly searching for their place and where they belong and who they are. Technology allows for students to connect with other TCK students around the world.
In my experience, when students feel as if who they are is valued both inside and outside the classroom, they perform better and have higher motivation to learn. Multimedia in the classroom helps these students be able to express themselves in a way that they might not otherwise be able to do – both academically and socially. I think this is especially important when you live in a culture that is trying to reverse this trend.

• What are the challenges in your classroom?

In my classroom, the language barrier is of course huge. In some aspects, we are asking these children to put aside for large amounts of time per day who they are. Language is one of the biggest ways that they identify themselves and we tell them they must put that aside and communicate in English. Once a basic level of proficiency is obtained, this too is used to identify themselves (I speak English and he doesn’t), express themselves through opinions (I want to do this instead of that), measure diversity (Bob can speak three languages and Sally can speak four). Technology is very helpful in scaffolding my student’s language development but it also presents challenges as the technology is not equally distributed to all students.