Area of Irregular Shapes

Fourth Graders...

What was this activity all about?  What was hard about it?  What does it have to do with fourth grade math?

Area of Irregular Shapes

Fourth Graders...

 What was this activity all about?  What was hard about it?  What does this have to do with fourth grade math?

Area of Irregular Shapes

Fourth graders...

Why were you doing this activity?  What was a challenge about it?  What does this have to do with math?

PEBC Math Institute: Teaching Math for Understanding

--Takeaways --


How do I teach math for understanding?  "Teach the mathematician, not the problem"


How can I take what I have learned into student blogging?


Workshop Model -- I have to begin implementing!  What are my first steps?
 Three parts, crafting/mini lesson, composing/ work time/ conferring, reflecting
A "catch and release" process


1.  MiniLesson / CraftingPutting doc cam on floor so we can share more closely?  


2.  Composing / Work Time
listening, conferring, sharing ideas, praise for good thinking.


3.  Reflecting
what did you notice, a ha! from today?
sticky note, ticket out the door.
so what?
has your thinking solidified or changed?
self assessment


Quote: "Teaching is a personal craft."


How do you build a community of learners?
--they need to know you care
--they need to have a voice


Discourse: What is it?
Learners making meaning of content through accountable, engaged conversation


Concept mapping


WHAT NOW??
Implement 3 step problem solving process (article)
Revisit Checkerboard Problem with students, have them create posters of their thinking.  Affirm good thinking over correct problems.
Concept Mapping - science or geometry.  Give a list of words, students create posters and hang up.
Workshop model
-get rid of groups
-rearrange front of room
-First plan? work on minilessons/ catch and release.

Promethean PDU Final Reflection

I received my Promethean Board in January.  Actually, it was delivered and being installed on the Friday before winter break.  I was a little disappointed to go to break knowing that the board was in my classroom waiting to be used.  When I returned from break, I was eager to get started.


Prior to coming to DPS I had a SmartBoard in my room for two years and I really enjoyed using it and felt that in some ways it changed the way I taught.  The first thing I did upon returning from winter break was to attend my first training.  During Modules 1 and 2 I learned the basics of using the software and creating flipcharts.  I also felt it was really important for me to simply use the board every day, even if I was using it like a glorified white board.  This was a great opportunity to get used to navigating the software by creating flipcharts, duplicating pages, using features and exploring resources. 


One of the most useful aspects of the training and the PDU is the experience I got exploring resources that are already out there, especially on the Promethean Planet website. I think it is crucial that we share the flipcharts with each other, rather than every teacher creating everything from scratch.  During my Module 3 and 4 training, I found a flipchart on ecosystems that I used in my classroom.  It was a very creative flipchart which used layered images and reveal tools.  I downloaded the flipchart and added video to make it work better for my students.  This inspired me to be more creative in the way that I created flipcharts for my classroom.  I spent a workday creating my own math flipchart on addition and subtraction of fractions.  I was disappointed that it took me all day to create what I thought was a useful flipchart, but in the end I was proud of what I created.  It really impacted the learning in my classroom because I had thought that fractions would be difficult for my students to grasp.  I created a flipchart with pattern blocks that were the same that students would use at their desks.  By manipulating the pattern blocks, they could better understand the meaning of the problems they were solving.


During this PDU I also reflected on my experiences in two ways.  I reflected on my blog and I participated in discussion groups on the Promethean Wiki.  I was asked to answer various questions about my experiences with the Promethean board on my blog.  The most interesting question asked if I frequently offer control of the ActivPen to your students.  Offering control of the ActivPen has been key to students being more engaged and that is the whole point of having an interactive white board in my classroom.  These kinds of boards are sometimes criticized because it is still a "one person" centered learning environment.  But if kids are offered control of the board through the pen, or the slates or the clickers, they are much more engaged and it is much more student centered.   If they aren't offered the opportunity to use the Promethean Board, they run the risk of being passive observers rather than participants.  I was in a training once with a middle school teacher who had a SmartBoard and his philosophy was, the students should be touching the SmartBoard more than the teacher.

This PDU has been important to me for a couple of reasons.  First, I think that it has helped me increase the student engagement in my classroom.  During one lesson students were manipulating shapes to demonstrate addition and subtraction of fractions on a flipchart that I created during a Promethean work day.  As a problem came up, one student was solving it on the Promethean Board, while others were doing it with manipulatives at their seats.  Students at their seats were checking the student up front, while also checking their own work.  The whole time they were staying on-task because they wanted to be the next one at the board.  It was very engaging.  It has also been important for the purpose of sharing information with other teachers.  Often, teachers feel that we our isolated in our classroom, struggling to help students learn.  This PDU has given me an opportunity to share ideas on the blog, discuss issues on the wiki and discuss ideas and issues with other participants.  For example, I was having an issue playing videos on the board and then using a feature to capture individual frames of the video.  This is a great feature for stopping video and discussing certain sections of the video with them.  I was playing a cooking video that was about fractions and capturing frames of ingredients being measured and added.  I posted my question on the PDU wiki and received an answer within a day that allowed me to utilize this important feature.


I learned a tremendous amount in this PDU.  I learned great ideas from other participants.  We had our final face-to-face meeting at the beginning of May where elementary teachers shared a lesson that they had created.  I was totally impressed with what other teachers have created.  There was an art teacher teaching kids about color theory.  A music teacher was teaching kids about setting goals and creating bar graphs about what they want to be when they grow up, melding together music and math.  I learned how to better link pages in my flip charts to other flip charts.  I learned how to drag and drop actions from the action browser onto pages, which makes accessing features on the fly much easier.  I learned that there is another teacher in my grade level who has created a flipchart for every math lesson in everyday math in the fourth grade.  It would be very useful if all of the lessons were available to all teachers so that we aren't recreating lessons independent of each other.  I am planning on using the ActivInspire software to plan lessons in math and science.  As we create these lessons that are aligned with our curriculum, it will become much easier to use and modify these lessons that are directly related to what we teach every day.  I am excited to apply all that I have learned in the modules.  I have learned about creating containers in the ActivInspire software.  A container is where you can place other objects and then you can tell the container to accept or reject certain kinds of objects.  This would be very useful for teaching kids about polygons for example.  I could create a container that accepts only polygons and if a student tries to place an object that isn't a polygon, it will be rejected.


There are also some specific tools in the ActiveInspire software that I have used a tremendous amount.  I was using a timer found in the shared resources, but found out about the clock in Module 3/4 training.  The clock is found on the menu bar under "tools" then "more tools".  You can display an analog and/or a digital clock.  You can also have it count down like a stopwatch and then repeat automatically, or perform an action after the countdown, like move to the next slide.  Very basic and very useful.  I use it all the time to keep students on task, especially when we are working through a multi-step science experiment.  I also love the resource browser. I can find gadgets like timers, dice and backgrounds.  Some of my favorites are the paper backgrounds.  I can make the board look exactly like my students' science notebooks and model how I want them to create entries.  Another is desktop annotation.  I don't use it everyday, but when I need it I like how convenient this feature is.  I have been using it to annotate over math websites to demonstrate how to play math online activities and to annotate over maps to demonstrate scale.  The ability to save these annotations using the camera tool makes it extremely powerful.

This PDU has impacted my practice.  It has changed the way that I plan.  For math, I create the math message and mental math as a page in my flipchart. Then I can create pages with pictures, links, videos, demonstrations that will supplement my direct teaching.  When it comes time to teach the lesson, I simply open up the flipchart and consult it as I would consult the teacher manual.  Then, I can reflect on the lesson, modify and save it so that it is better next time.  It has also made me think more deeply about how to best engage the learners in my classroom.  I don't want the Promethean Board to be a place where students look to see me teach, or a piece of technology that they don't get to touch.  Having this technology has made me think:  Am I engaging students?  Are they getting the opportunity to get out of their seats and interact with the board and with each other?  It has also impacted my day to day practice.  I use my Promethean board constantly.  One lesson that I thought went well but wasn't planned ahead of time was one where I used the board to help kids plan a project they were doing on our ecosystems unit.  I took all of the required documents they needed and made them into a flipchart.  We reviewed, they with highlighters and paper, me with the Promethean highlighter.  I then imported all of the pages as .jpg files and put them on our class wiki.  I was amazed at the number of students who told me that they accessed the documents online to show their parents or to work on the projects over the weekend.  I thought it was very effective to have the exact documents on the wiki that we did in class.  It wasn't fancy or pretty, but it seemed to be very effective.

Another major impact is that everything can be saved, unlike on an old-fashioned white board.  So, if I begin a conversation with students about food chains, we can save and continue or review the next day.  I also create science groups on my Promethean Board, save it and look at the groups every couple of days.  Another impact is the ability to move from the white board space to anywhere else on the computer or web.  Again, we have a conversation about food chains, then move over to a BrianPop movie about the topic.  Links can be embedded in flipcharts as well.

This experience has impacted my students' learning in many ways.  They are simply more excited and engaged in the learning in my classroom. I am able to engage students with a piece of technology that is very exciting to them.  The Promethean Board can still only engage one user at a time (with the "Dual User" feature it can engage two users).  It is still often a situation of 25 students in their desks, watching two users at the board.  I still need to be a good teacher and engage those students in their seats with questions that keep their minds active, so that they aren't just sitting there disengaged, hoping they will get chosen next.  Yes, engagement is higher because you can utilize all things that are on your computer, like images, video, flipcharts, websites, but it doesn't automatically improve engagement.  This is why I think the ActiveExpression Learner Response System is the best for student engagement.  They are really simple to use, you can setup a quick assessment on the fly, and every single student is engaged.  Most days I use my Promethean Board constantly, sometimes just jotting notes like I would on an old fashioned dry-erase board. 


There are many ways I will use my learning in my future practice.  I am going to continue with the learning modules.  I am most looking forward to learning more about how to better use the ActivExpressions Learner Response System.  I can use it in a very basic way, but I am seeing from other participants that there are many features that I haven't used yet.  I am most interested in having students take self-paced tests.  I will continue to use it to access interactive manipulatives for math using EM Games or the Virtual Manipulatives math site.  I would like to extend this to allowing students to do math activities on the Promethean Board as center work, or when they are normally playing other math games.  I will continue to create flipcharts around my Everyday Math lessons.  I will use it to create a system where I put my warm up on the PB and begin my lesson there.  I will continue to watch science videos with students circling key parts that demonstrate a concept.  I want to continue to create science files with my class throughout a science unit beginning with KWL, adding concepts, ending with key points, vocabulary.  This way, when I want to teach it next year, I have a document of what I did.  I have also thought that it would be really useful to have students create a Virtual Science Notebook with the help of the Promethean Board.


Our school improvement plan is focused around writing.  Although I am not a writing teacher, there are many opportunities for students to write when they are in math and science.  In science, students need to keep themselves very organized so they can keep track of the steps of their experiments and data.  I use the Promethean Board connected to my document camera to keep my own science notebook so I can carefully model how we progress through the steps of the scientific method.  I also use it, with the help of the notebook background, to also model science notebooking.  In math we have been focusing on how to think deeper and explain our thinking in math.  As CSAP approached, we spent time as a class creating exemplars of constructed response questions.  Every day we would look at a couple of examples and together we would read over the question to find out exactly what kind of information we need to gather and what the question is asking.  We took notes together on the board.  Students would then work on the problems.  The we would use the document camera and Promethean Board to collaborate and craft advanced responses.  Students would take turns coming to the board and showing their answers.  I displayed their responses outside my classroom door.  I found students to be very engaged in this process.  Without the Promethean Board I think they would have found it dull.

Overall, my experience in the Promethean Board PDU has been a very positive one.  I would be attending the trainings even if I didn't participate in this PDU, but the PDU allowed me to collaborate with my colleagues around the district.  At our final face-to-face meeting many, including myself, expressed interest in continuing to reflect on our blogs, engage in discussions on the wiki, and find a way to continue to share flipchart lessons that we create.

Teaching Elementary Philosophy?

“The world is new to them and they want to figure things out,” says Professor Matthews, who has written extensively about children and philosophy. “Young children very often engage in reasoning that professional philosophers can recognize as philosophical, but typically their parents or teachers don’t react in a way that encourages them. They might say, ‘That’s cute,’ but they don’t engage the children in thinking further about whatever the issue is.”

This fits in to our conversation about deeper level thinking.  The New York Times article is here. It is about a philosopher, Prof. Thomas E. Wartenberg, who is teaching elementary students (second graders) philosophy through children's literature.  He wrote a book about it called, "Big Ideas for Little Kids: Teaching Philosophy Through Children’s Literature” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2009)

Published: April 8, 2010
By ABBY GOODNOUGH

Q8: Favorite Promethean Lesson

I created a lesson at a work day that was on fractions.  Students had to use pattern blocks to determine the fractions.  What fraction of a hexagon is a small triangle?  What fraction of a large rhombus is a small triangle?  Students did the manipulating at their desks while I demonstrated and guided them at the Promethean board.  By the end, students were coming up to the board to demonstrate their understanding.  I did the lesson several weeks ago, and when we did a review yesterday, students seem to have retained the information well.   

Another lesson that I thought went well but wasn't planned ahead of time was one where I used the board to help kids plan a project they were doing on our ecosystems unit.  I took all of the required documents they needed and made them into a flipchart.  We reviewed, they with highlighters and paper, me with the Promethean highlighter.  I then imported all of the pages as .jpg files and put them on our class wiki.  I was amazed at the number of students who told me that they accessed the documents online to show their parents or to work on the projects over the weekend.  I thought it was very effective to have the exact documents on the wiki that we did in class.  It wasn't fancy or pretty, but it seemed to be very effective.

Ken Robinson Makes Sense

"Kids are living breathing people".  Uh, yes, but we continue to act as if they are data points and run them through our mass education factory and expect them to care about test scores. Ken Robinson wants us to "radically transform" our schools.

A New Lens

Okay, it has happened.  We have been talking at length about what we call "Deeper Level Thinking" and now nearly everything I have been reading and seeing on the web is related to it and I can't keep up!  Here is my preliminary list:

Neil Degrasse Tyson talking about Science Literacy - "I am often asked, 'How do I get my kid more interested in Science?'  GET OUT OF THEIR WAY!" (Straight A students get straight A's because you [teacher] don't matter to them.  --ouch...)

Daniel Pink, DRiVE - The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

The Thinking Classroom - Learning and Teaching in a Culture of Thinking, Tishman, Perkins, Jay.  Meg Torres' blog on this topic.

Understanding by Design, Grant Wiggins

How do I (we) filter through this vast body of knowledge that says that we need to be valuing the thinking process in our students, not their grade, not the standardized test.  I see my school jumping from resource to resource, then presenting each to the whole faculty like the latest is the greatest.  The topic is a good one, and I think it is worthy of us spending our PD time working on it.  We should collectively vett this information, experiment and experience it, then boil it all down to its most valuable points.  HOW?

Technology Transformed Learning Environments

As usual, David Warlick nails it when he talks about the use of technology in the classroom in this article.

Tech-infused learning certainly involves the effective and appropriate use of information (contemporary literacy), which includes accessing, working, expressing knowledge — through the networks, digitally, compellingly, and with consideration of others. But what do you look for to see that?  What does the learning experience look like.

His list of 5  mirrors (not surprisingly) what we have been talking about in my school PD sessions on deeper-level thinking.  Deeper level thinking involves the nurturing of the same skills.  In our impromptu book study group we are reading the book THE THINKING CLASSROOM: Learning and Teaching In a Culture of Thinking by Shari Tishman; David N. Perkins; Eileen Jay.  Same stuff: creating a language of thinking, emphasis on questioning, a comfort with ambiguity, encouraging conversation.  If we raise the bar in terms of how much we require our students to think, they will rise to it.  This doesn't require the use of prescriptive curriculum just as it doesn't require the use of technology.  But the more opportunities we give students to ask and answer deep and thoughtful questions, the more confident they become as THINKERS and PROBLEM SOLVERS.

And, in following the thread between DW and another EdTech guru, Will Richardson, Will emphasizes the need to continue to talk about the value of technology in the classroom. (His blog post here.)  Right now does the use of tech still remain an alternative to the "traditional" text book-paper-pencil classroom, or is it better, more valuable, more engaging in the hands of the tech-savvy teacher?  Parent perception is sometimes that this is frivolous and unnecessary.  My teammate and I have talked about doing a "Tech Day"-type of workshop with parents, instead we are presenting a project combining students' ecosystems projects that span science, literacy and technology.  If the focus was on tech, it would still seem to be something separate from the core curriculum.  Hopefully, students, parents and teachers will see the infusion of technology into the content areas as effortless and completely logical.

Q7: Do you frequently offer control of the ActivPen to your students?

I think offering control of the ActivPen is key to students being more engaged.  If they aren't offered the opportunity to use the Promethean Board, they run the risk of being passive observers rather than participants.  I was in a training once with a middle school teacher who had a SmartBoard and his philosophy was, the students should be touching the SmartBoard more than the teacher.

Today, students were manipulating shapes to demonstrate addition and subtraction of fractions.  As a problem came up, one student was solving it on the Promethean Board, while others were doing it with manipulatives at their seats.  Students at their seats were checking the student up front, while also checking their own work.  The whole time they were staying on-task because they wanted to be the next one at the board.  Very engaging.

Q6: Student Engagement

 

Do your students seem more engaged since you have started using your Promethean Board? 

Yes, students seem more engaged.  The "clickers" are the best for instant feedback and engagement.  We just had P/T conferences and I heard from many parents saying that their son/daughter came home raving about the clickers.  I also had a student who, after his conference was over, ran to the Promethean Board to show his mom.  I gave him a blank flipchart and he demonstrated away, showing her how he had learned multiplication.

I have a question though for anyone who would care to answer:  Does the Promethean Board really engage more students? My answer is this...  I think the Promethean Board can still only engage one user at a time (with the "Dual User" feature it can engage two users).  It is still often a situation of 25 students in their desks, watching two users at the board.  I still need to be a good teacher and engage those students in their seats with questions that keep their minds active, so that they aren't just sitting there disengaged, hoping they will get chosen next.  Yes, engagement is higher because you can utilize all things that are on your computer, like images, video, flipcharts, websites, but it doesn't automatically improve engagement.  This is why I think the ActiveExpression Learner Response System is the best for student engagement.  They are really simple to use, you can setup a quick assessment on the fly, and every single student is engaged. Don't get me wrong, I am not looking for the "silver bullet" where --poof-- everyone learns without any effort from me.  That situation doesn't exist.  But I find myself going back and forth.  Some days I use it constantly, sometimes just jotting notes like I would on an old fashioned dry-erase board.  Other days I don't use it as much, going back to paper flip charts for groups to jot ideas and post on the wall. 

Engagement, ultimately, is a teacher quality.

Q5: Time Savers

Here is the question:  Which aspects of the software are the most effective time savers for you, allowing you to be more efficient with creation and delivery of content?

I think the biggest time saver is the "annotate over desktop" feature.  Funny, I was so confused by this at first and now I really like it.  I find myself showing students pictures, websites etc. and using this feature to point out key things that they need to know.

I also began using the Active Inspire clickers.  I was apprehensive because I thought there would be a lot of setup time.  But, I had a teammate who did it and said it was simple.  Sure enough it was, and I took a Friday to just hand them out and do some review of the content from that day.  I had a backup in case it didn't work.  We did some multiple choice, some T or F and then I asked students to text.  It comes so naturally to my third and fourth graders!  I now need to do a better job of integrating it into my lessons.  What a great way to do a quick review or a "ticket out the door" type of check-in after a lesson is over.

Q4: Favorite ActivInspire Tools

My favorite tools so far...

1. Timer/Clock:  I was using the timer found in the shared resources, but found out about the clock in today's Module 3/4 training.  The clock is found on the menu bar under "tools" then "more tools".  You can display an analog and/or a digital clock.  You can also have it count down like a stopwatch and then repeat automatically, or perform an action after the countdown, like move to the next slide.  Very basic and very useful.
2. Resource Browser:  I honestly think that Smart Technologies does this better than Promethean (it may be the only thing), but I DO love the resource browser. I can find gadgets like timers, dice and backgrounds.  Some of my favorites are the paper backgrounds.  I can make the board look exactly like my students' science notebooks and model how I want them to create entries.  I just found out that there are more resources to be downloaded at Promethean Planet, I will download them on Monday and maybe it will be even better.
3. Desktop Annotation:  I don't use it everyday, but when I need it I like how convenient this feature is.  I have been using it to annotate over math websites to demonstrate how to play math online activities and to annotate over maps to demonstrate scale.  The ability to save these annotations using the camera tool makes it extremely powerful.. I'm just not there yet.
   

Q3: Promethean Board vs. Dry-Erase White Boards

There are so many ways a Promethean Board is different than the dry erase board.  I think the first major difference is that everything can be saved.  Yes, I may be using my P-Board as a glorified whiteboard right now, but I can save my work from one day to the next.  So, if I begin a conversation with students about food chains, we can save and continue or review the next day.  I also created science groups on my glorified whiteboard, saved it and look at the groups every couple of days.

Another difference is the ability to move from the white board space to anywhere else on the computer or web.  Again, we have a conversation about food chains, then move over to a BrianPop movie about the topic.  Links can be embedded in flipcharts as well.

How about engagement?  If students know that they will have an opportunity to interact with the P-Board, they are all engaged.  With the "dual user" feature, I can hand pens to two students.  This week we experimented with the slate and the kids love it.  I found myself giving them tips on how to use it, but they are just fine experimenting and playing, this kind of stuff is in their blood!

And the thought of buying a lot less Expo markers doesn't break my heart...

Where do I want to be with my Promethean skills?

It is a couple of days after Christmas and the break is half over.  When I left my classroom last Friday they were in the midst of installing my Promethean board and the room was a disaster.  I am anxious to return sometime this week just to clean up and arrange my room with this new awesome technology.

As soon as I return I want to become proficient in the use of the PB.  In my experience it is best for me just to dive in and start using it.  I often project images of our class blog or wiki so I can demonstrate how to do something or show a really good comment from a student.  I see myself doing simple things like this initially just to get used to using it and for my students to get used to seeing me use it.  There are great interactive math sites that I can use on the board I can also use initially.  Then I am anxious to begin to plan with the PB in mind.  I want to write math or science lesson plans as PB files so that there is much more interactivity in my classroom.  I think it would be ideal if the students were using it as well, but with the SmartBoard, it was very difficult to have more than one student at a time use it.  Some thoughts for math and science:

•  Interactive manipulatives for math using EM Games or the Virtual Manipulatives math site.
• Math warm up - Putting a system in place where I put my warm up on the PB and begin my lesson there.
  
• Science videos with students circling key parts that demonstrate a concept.
• Class created files throughout a science unit beginning with KWL, adding concepts, ending with key points, vocabulary.  This way, when I want to teach it next year, I have a document of what I did.
  
• Virtual Science Notebook?
  

Where are you now with your Promethean Skills?

I am very excited to have a Promethean Board in my classroom.  Actually, it isn't in my room yet.  It is being installed the Friday before winter break.  A sly ploy to try to get me to visit my classroom when I should be on break?  I don't know, but I normally do not look forward to the end of a break.  In January however, I will be eagerly anticipating the opportunity to begin playing with my new Promethean board.

The boards are being installed in mine and 5 of my colleagues classrooms as we speak through a Morgridge Family Foundation Matching Grant.  I have agreed to 45 hours of training in the next year so that I can get up to speed.

Over the last two years, I had the pleasure of having a SmartBoard in my classroom when I taught at Alsup Elementary School in Adams 14.  I suspect that the Promethean Board is very similar to the SmartBoard, but I am anxious to figure out the differences.  The Promethean board I am getting is much bigger than my SmarBoard was.  It also has a fixed-mounted projector at the top of the board, which makes it much more stable, and much easier to stay out of the way of the projection.  My SmartBoard had to be re-oriented several times during the day because of the projector getting bumped.

I will be contributing to the DPS Promethean Blog and Promethean Users Wiki throughout this process so that participants (100 or so) can share ideas and lesson plans.  Many more updates to come...

Give and Take Final Projects

This IB unit was entitled Give and Take and addresses the limited resources in our world. Students were challenged to build a section of a community on the edge of a river. This is loosely based on our own community, so they were also challenged to add a community center, an amusement park, a college, a football stadium, a wildlife preserve and a power plant. Their communities should reflect their knowledge of renewable and nonrenewable resources and how a community reduces pollution and waste. In addition to this project, students also completed an expository writing about ways that they think we could help our environment. Those writings are also posted below. We also experimented with a "Wall Wisher" which is posted here. Double click to add a comment of your own.

We collaborated on this project with Mrs. Heaton's fourth graders from Mossy Oaks Elementary in Beaufort, South Carolina. They mirrored this process in their class and we are going to spend some time looking at the issues that they feel are important in developing their community, and how those issues are the same and different from ours. Thanks to Mrs. Heaton's class!

Great job room24, this is a great start. If there were more than a handful of days left we would continue to discuss in class. This is certainly a discussion you will need to have throughout your lives. Comments are welcome.

Students' India Presentations

Students recently were given the task of studying another culture for our "Cultural Comparisons" unit. Originally, I was going to have students do a voicethread, but with some recent technical difficulties I had, I decided to have students make a presentation through Google Docs. Students were separated into groups to study a different aspect of the Indian culture: Money and Education, Geography and Climate, Food, Diet and Health, or Family Structure and Traditions. I put together a presentation with the questions that they had to answer, and each group had to find or create a visual to go along with their information. The final product looks pretty good. I would have liked students to be able to access the presentation without having to sign them in. I also had intended to embed this in our class blog so students could comment on their work, but the unit ended before I got to that step. We may still do this in the last couple of weeks that are remaining as a review of their fourth grade work.
Cultural Comparisons IB Planner

Sharing Discovery Streaming Videos

Recently, a colleague of mine and myself were given the job of beginning to consolidate Discovery Streaming videos that teachers were using in their grade levels to support their IB units. There are a couple of tools in Discovery Streaming that make it very easy to keep track of your videos. (Here's their help page on this subject.)

First, once you find a video you should save it in a "My Content" folder. I have different folders within "My Content" for each of our six IB units of inquiry. This has made it very easy to find the videos that I used last year.





After the videos are in your own folder, it is very easy to then share them with others in your building or in the district. Click on the drop down menu on the right and select "share".


If you are sharing with others in your school, select which folder you would like to put it in, or select "share to new school folder". I am sharing all of my videos that I use with our unit on renewable and nonrenewable resources with my colleagues who are teaching the same unit. The next time they sign in to their account, they will see the video in the school content folder.

Want to share the video with a Global Learner in another school? Click on "Share to District" in a folder of your choosing or create a new one. There is already a video there from Idledale Mayoral Candidate, Dave "Mountain Lion" Tarwater.

This has been a great discovery (no pun intended) for us so that we can do a better job of keeping track of resources that we use to support our IB units at Alsup. There are a couple of things that are a little glitchy. For example, I will give a crisp $1 bill to anyone who can tell me how to delete a school content folder. I'm stumped...

I used two videos from Discovery Streaming recently to have students compare life of people in India living in cities to those living in the country. Cultural Comparisons planner is here.