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.

Workshop Five Blog

Questions, questions, questions. Six year old's ask questions every other sentence. They are curious about the world all around them. This is probably my favourite thing about teaching first graders, especially as their English grows and the questions begin to never stop.

"How do you spell help?" "When is it lunch time?" "Do we have to stop science class now? We're having fun!" "When will we have the fire drill?" " Do you spell heart h-e-a-r-t?" "Can I use markers to colour?" "Will we get to go to the treasure box tomorrow?" "Do I turn this into the box now?" "May I go to the bathroom?" What does brave mean?"

All these questions make for lots of opportunities to ask them questions to help guide their learning.


1. After you have explored the Questioning Toolkit websites, what types of questions do you generally use when you teach students?

In science and reading classes, we daily use esstential questions to guide our discoveries and to set purposes for our reading and our experiment outcomes. My students are all on different levels of English language learning, so clarification questions are also a daily type of question used in my classroom by both myself and my students. Grade one is where children are transitioning from kindergarten and into formal schooling. The overall goal of this year is independence in completing common routines and procedures. Thus, we have a lot of telling and planning questions.


2. What kind of questions would lead students to think critically and at higher levels?

Elaborating and inventive questions are two of many types of questions that can help primary grade children to think critically. Strategic questions also help guide them to think at higher levels while providing structure for them to not become discouraged easily.

3. What kind of questions would complement the integration of technologies in your classroom?

Elaborating questions would really complement integration of technology in my classroom. It is a natural step from ‘What does it mean?” to “What does this mean in relation to me?” and “How can I use this effectively?” Sorting and sifting questions allow my students to determine a technologies personal relevance to their lives.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, the word brave in Chinese is 勇敢[yǒnggǎn].

Workshop Four Blog

My student reading selection this week was about Johnny Appleseed. One of the things that we discussed was Johnny’s life-style– he did not wear the same types of clothing as others, and he did not live in a house like others did. He did not even stay in one place for very long. He was different from others. This caused some people to not trust him although many people still liked him and knew him to be a good man.

I feel like I have the same type of relationship with technology and its uses for it in the classroom. Our school does not have a “technological lifestyle” similar to the schools of friends in my cohort. I cannot pull up a video on my interactive whiteboard or dazzle my students with a PowerPoint created to teach them about collective nouns. The technology I use is different from others, and at times I do not trust it because of these differences. This however, doesn’t mean that many other people can’t also use it or know it to be good for integrating into their classrooms.

The learning activities that I’ve completed for this education in technology course have opened my eyes to the many possibilities for their use in education. I have especially thought over the blogs and social networks idea and have found it very helpful. I would really like to integrate it as a form of student portfolio.

I feel like the work my students do is worthy of being displayed and could provide a link to other schools across the globe. Education in China is much different than education in Canada, or even education in Australia. All educational technologies have good application and if we combine these ideas and collaborate with others, I think I could really see something amazing come out of it. I’d love to be able to present how I’d used blogs in the classroom at a educator’s professional development conference, similar to the ICEC conference I attended in Hong Kong.

Workshop Three Blog

Maybe it's because I've lived in China for three years now or perhaps its because I'm used to first graders, but I was blown away by my friend Stephanie's fourth grade class. I visited to share and teach this past Wednesday as a guest speaker on Chinese New Year when I was still in the States. The students were eager to ask questions and one of them asked me (no, I didn't stage this question just so I could blog) what sort of educational technology we had in China. While my school doesn't have the same capabilities as her school, like interactive whiteboards, I am excited about the level of technology that is growing and being implemented each day. One of those technologies is podcasts.

Right now, I currently use audio to distribute my weekly reading selections. At first, I thought it would be useful to convert this into a podcast. Then I started to explore the possibilities of video podcasting. I think a video podcast would be much more useful to my classroom. For example, today we did an experiment in the class that is very simple and easy to replicate at home. We asked three essential questions about liquids and whether or not they would mix or separate. Students completed an observation sheet and part of their reading homework will be reflection on how their predictions turned out. However, I had four students (1/3rd!) of my class absent today. A video podcast would be an easy way to help students follow along with certain science labs at home when they were absent or to review before an exam.

Many of my students are also ESL students. They need many opportunities to practise their listening comprehension and critical thinking skills. A video podcast, even of a lesson that they were present for, would be a great way to help them develop their skills. However, I'm still curious as to how I would be able to best assess their learning when using this type of technology. I do not expect it to be a substitute for my classroom experience, merely a remedial or enrichment activity at this time.

Workshop Two Blog

I’m currently Stateside for Chinese New Year holiday. My friend Amy’s oldest son is in kindergarten this year. Yesterday we had an experience that was laden with technology. First off, Amy texted messaged me to see what I was doing. We had our entire conversation over SMS text messages and then she showed up at my door to pick me up.

So Davis and I went to his school and we did his Accelerated Reading. You sign the student into a computer program and after you read the book, you take a computer based comprehension test. Students earn ‘points’ for each book that they make a passing score on when they take a test. This process is simple. It’s natural. In fact, when we were done testing and reading about five books Davis and I picked out a ‘fun’ book to read that he wouldn’t be required to test on. It was a book on Volcanoes. It took him until halfway through the book for him to realise ‘Wait, I don’t have to test on this book, do I? Can you make a volcano with me?” The concept of reading a book without a computer-based component was something he wasn’t quite used to doing.

It all seems very commonplace and not out of the ordinary to me, until I start to think about it. My first-grade students are also a part of this culture now – worlds without technologies are non-existent to them. This makes the job of me the teacher, very important. It is up to me to make sure that they learn how to interact with it so they are prepared to interact with everyone else who is using it.

• What do you expect are the students’ cognitive outcomes when the students use technology?

I guess I expect that my student’s are able to use higher order thinking skills. I want them to be able to problem solve and to not be frustrated. I want them to be able to communicate, using technology, how they use computers, Internet and programs to do daily activities. I expect them to cognitively remember how to do these basic tasks; to they can focus on the process of creating rather than worrying about how to create. I see this a lot in my kid’s writing. This year, my kids love to write. They beg me to give them free writing time in their journals. As a former 8th grade English teacher, this makes me ecstatic and I usually comply. However, most of them are ESL students and have not yet learned how to spell words that are unfamiliar to them. It sometimes causes them problems. They get ‘stuck’ in the figuring out how to spell that they lose their idea of what they were writing about. I don’t want a similar situation for them when it comes to using technology in content area subjects.

• What do you expect are the students’ affective outcomes when the students use technology?

One of my favourite traditions is my airplane book. Yes, buying a book at the airport (especially if you’re in a country that doesn’t speak English) can get expensive. Yes, I could just put a book on my Kindle for iPod touch, and it would be less bulky….

But ever since I’ve had my passports at the ripe age of 9 months, I’ve had my airplane book every time I travel. On my way home, I picked up two books in the Beijing airport, one of them being Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat. I’m only 137 pages into his explanation of the history of digital-technology advances and I’m fascinated. Here’s a quote from his book that grabbed so much I had to underline it.

“Once a standard takes hold, people start to focus on the quality of what they are doing as opposed to how they are doing it” (pg 84).

I think this sums up exactly what technology will do for our students. Many of us as teachers, and even our students to a degree, are in the process of trying to figure out how they will produce or use software. I know when I plan my lessons, my main focus is on how I can make the projector work and be set up and the website not be blocked and my students actually gain something out of it. I’m challenged to move beyond that. Once technology in education is standard, my students will be affected in a way that goes far beyond the mechanics of figuring out HOW to produce something and they can really begin to focus on WHAT they are making. This affective outcome will revolutionise not just our students but also the world in which they live everyday.

EDU554 Workshop One Blog

It's a rare moment of silence in my classroom. The smart cookies are in computer class down the hall, so I thought it would be appropriate to do my first blog entry about how I can integrate technology into what I'm already doing.

Once again, I can see the difference between this generation and my own. I'm not that old, and I grew up with a fair amount of emergent technology that makes me open minded about the progress we are making (Twitter aside) and a person who uses technology in my every day life.

I was sitting the reader's circle with them talking about how I used to play outside and when it was time for supper, the ways I knew I needed to come inside. Usually it was my mother or sister shouting 'CHRISTINA! DINNER'S READY!". Some of my friends had whistles, or triangles and bells that they would ring and we could hear throughout the neighbourhood. If I was playing, and the street lights came on, I knew -- shouting or not -- that it was my curfew time and I was to head home.

My kids looked puzzled at me, so I took their bait and asked "Why are you guys looking at me funny?" "Miss L, why did your mother shout? Shouting is so LOUD", my smart cookies replied. "Why didn't your mom just call you on your iPhone?" (no, I'm not kidding. My first grader asked me this.) Here's what I found out: They don't go outside. They do their homework and then they play computer games or play with their Wiis and Nintendo DS. They do what I do with Facebook -- staying connected while I am in China and my friends and family are spread out all over the world. But they do it without giving it a second thought.



How do you currently integrate or plan to integrate technology into the existing curriculum?

Currently in my class, I am figuring out how to make podcasts of my weekly reading selections. Right now, I just export the file as an mp3 and I email it to my parents. I want to figure out how to do this as a podcast, so I save space on my hard drive and it can be accessed by more users than just my class and their parents. I have to be creative with the lack of resources my Chinese private school has. The Chinese teachers here don't even have WHITEBOARDS, and I am part of an elite group of classrooms that have them installed and are not relegated to using chalk and blackboards. The reading curriculum is old, and the media resource CD-ROMs were considered a waste of money when it was purchased, so much of the supplemental matierals I am using I make myself. I don't mind doing it but I want to plan ways to integrate technology that is easier for ME to produce and gives the students the most benefit.


What motivated or will motivate you to include technology in your lessons?

Like I said previously, the lack of resources and budget really means I get to be stretched in ways that make me grow as a creative technological user. Eventually, if I can show the administrators the invaluable difference that having resources, books, computers, technology, etc integrated into the classroom can bring maybe they'll increase our budget. Maybe (this is a dream, but hey, DREAM BIG) I'll even have the projector mounted to my ceiling and ActivBoard that I had my first year teaching when I taught at Westside Middle School.

"Brain, it's time to speak English!"

I'm ignoring my students right now (they're in Chinese class) but they're lecturing the Chinese teacher about why he should use my Expo markers instead of the Chinese brand. I think I find it even funnier that I understand what they're telling him in Chinese.

They are exactly right, I think. My colourful array of dry erase choices are 好的！

They've learned something at least. ：）

I can't think of anything else funny my smart cookies have done today, but its only 8:33 and I haven't had my coffee yet.

I just needed a test entry for my blog.