Great News

Hello, Friends!!
I've been MIA but for good reasons. I graduated with my master's degree last week! In the meantime, I'd been in the whole job search process and was recently offered a second grade teaching position!! I can now say I am a second grade teacher!!!!!!! I am SO excited.

I don't have much else to share except I have been reading two books:

The Well-Managed Classroom from the Boys Town Educational Model

 The First Days of School by Harry and Rosemary Wong

 Definitely recommend both, especially for new teachers.

As I plan and create things throughout the summer, I'll be sure to post.

I'd love to hear any advice from veteran teachers as to how to start the school year off!

Take care!

Action Research

Hi, Friends!
Sorry that I've been missing in action! We've been on spring break this past week. While I wish I'd been on a beach somewhere tropical, I've been analyzing and writing up my action research on virtual field trips as an enriching educational tool. Throughout the semester, I organized five virtual field trips in first grade:

1. The students performed Readers' Theater for another class in New York.
2. The students met with a storyteller at Mount Vernon.
3. The students met Stuart J. Murphy, author of the MathStart series, in Boston.
4. The students met with a former Peace Corp volunteer and learned all about Morocco. They even learned some words in Arabic!
5. The students made a butterfly marionette with the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta.

We used the TANDBERG, a videoconferencing system, for the trips but you could also use Skype (we did use Skype for one of the programs). You can schedule the programs through the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration. Some of the programs cost money, some of the programs are free.

This is Addison, the former Peace Corp volunteer, on the TANDBERG. He volunteered in Morocco so he wore the Moroccan attire for us! 

If you'd like more information about virtual field trips, you can view my presentation on Prezi.

Have you used video-calling in the classroom? If so, how?

First Graders as Researchers!

I'm so excited to share with you about the research the students did this week! I divided them into groups, and each group was assigned an animal. I would have let them choose their own animal but our options were limited to the books that were available in the library and those that the students would be able to read independently. In the library, I found the perfect books made my Scholastic that were non-fiction leveled readers.

On the first day of their research, they were given one of the Scholastic non-fiction leveled readers and read about their assigned animal. Before they started reading, I modeled how to work cooperatively. I also showed them a poster I had made about ladybugs and modeled the process of researching and designing the poster.

 On the next day, they were each given responsibility for finding a particular piece of information about their animal. I created research notes for them to record their information. Some of the groups had an odd number of students so in those cases two students worked together to record the information.

On the third day, the students designed posters about their animal. Finally, on the fourth day, students presented their poster and reported about their animal to their peers! Here are the posters they created:

Angelfish

Bear Cubs

Bunnies

Seal Pups

The students got really into their posters and were so excited to share! They also impressed me with how they worked together in cooperative groups. Only one of the groups was having trouble getting along so I had to do some extra modeling for them, and their poster turned out great!

What other research projects have your students done?