Experience The Trip With Us!

At the end of last year, I wrote a post on my professional blog about "giving the students control," and how amazed I was by what one student did when he wrote about our whole trip during the field trip itself. Through some replies by others, I commented about how great it would be if the students had iPod Touches or cameras to record their learning on the trip. I thought that I would give this a try on our first field trip of the year to the Ancaster Fair. I'm so glad that I did!

My class was divided into three groups of six with two parent volunteers in each group. I gave each group an iPod Touch or a flipcam to take pictures and record videos showing what they saw, did, and learned throughout the trip. I was amazed by the results! When we got back to the school, I realized that I received over 200 photographs and over 60 videos throughout our four hour field trip. Incredible!

What I love the most is that the majority of these photographs and videos were recorded by students. They were documenting their own learning. They were watching closely, reflecting on what they were seeing, and engaging in meaningful discussions with others. As I watched the videos, I heard students inferring and I saw students problem-solving. I love that! It's not about the quality of the video, but what that video captured. I only wish that I tried an activity like this one a long time ago.

For other educators reading this post, have you ever tried this before? What were the results? For parents and students reading this post, what do you think looks like the most exciting activity? Why?

I'd love to hear your thoughts on our trip to the fair!

Aviva

Our First Week At School

Meet the Teacher Night is tomorrow evening, and I wanted to put together a slideshow to play tomorrow night showing what the students have already done in Grades 1 and 2. For those that can't make it tomorrow night, below is our Animoto Slideshow of our exciting first week at school. Watch this slideshow with your child. What did your child enjoy doing the most? What has your child already learned at school? Please leave us a comment and let us know!

Have a great night!

Miss Dunsiger and Her Grade 1/2 Class

Down By The Bay

For Shared Reading this week, we read Down By The Bay. The students got to create additional verses to this song, orally first and then in writing. As a class, we developed Success Criteria for good sentences and questions, and all of the students had to check that their questions started with a capital, that they left spaces in between their words, and that they ended their questions with a question mark. The Grade 2 students also created some more complex verses, adding in adjectives to make their writing more interesting. Students were given a choice of using the sentence starter provided or writing their own complete question. Many of the students independently made use of their copy of the poem to find the words that they needed as they wrote their questions.

Below is a digital copy of our Down By The Bay Class Book:

Please read this book with your child and leave a comment with more possible verses that we could add here. We'd love to hear all of your ideas!

Aviva

A Down By The Bay Update

Today (Friday, September 9th), my students recorded themselves singing Down By The Bay using AudioBoo. They read the words as they sang the song, tracking the words as they went along. I hope that you enjoy our singing debut!:)

Students Saying Goodbye

On my professional blog, I posted today about our school principal retiring at the end of the month. Bev Laporte is a fantastic principal that has really made a positive impact on all of the students at the school. When I told my class that Ms. Laporte was retiring, they wanted to do something for her to say, "goodbye." Below are the common craft videos that the students created in partners today. The children drew the pictures, wrote the script, practiced the lines, and recorded the videos too. This was a reading, writing, and media literacy activity, but also a thank you to somebody special.

Ms. Laporte, we're all going to miss you!

Miss Dunsiger and her Grade 1/2 Class

Happy Father's Day!

On Mother's Day weekend, I was inspired by Angie Harrison (@techieang). Angie's a Grade 2/3 teacher for the York Region District School Board, and even though I've never met her in person, I am constantly learning from her online thanks to Twitter. In May, Angie wrote about a special Mother's Day gift that her students made for their moms: they created padcasts using the Garage Band app. I thought that this was such a fantastic idea, and I commented on Angie's post right away saying that I wanted to give this a try another year. Angie then said that maybe I could do this for Father's Day instead. She also shared with me some other Father's Day gift ideas.

I was so excited to try something new! I vacillated over different choices, but eventually, I decided to have my students collaborate to make a Father's Day gift. During literacy centres, they worked on GoogleDocs to make a presentation about their dads. Children contributed slides to one of three different presentations. They had to share ideas in complete sentences, check their spelling and grammar, and find appropriate images to match their thoughts. Here is what they created:

All of the dads and step-dads in my class now have a CD with these three presentations on them. Hopefully they'll enjoy watching these presentations and seeing just how much they mean to their children. Angie, it's thanks to you that this year I tried something different other than the ubiquitous tie. Now my mind is reeling with new gift possibilities for next year!

Happy Father's Day to all of the dads, step-dads, and grandfathers in my class and from around the world! I wish you all the best on your special day!

Aviva

What A Week!

It's been a very busy week in our classroom. Between the car experiment, the Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Blowdryer activity, the ladybug research, and the Prezi lesson (see the completed Prezis on the individual student blogs), the students have been reading, writing, talking, and learning all day long. Below is a short video highlighting some of the exciting activities from this week. What did your children enjoy the most? Why? What did they learn from these activities too? I would love to hear their thoughts!

Aviva

Learning Prezi: Students Teaching Students

A couple of months ago, I was speaking to Mrs. Faux (@mrsfaux), and she mentioned that she was using Prezi with her Grade 7 students. I said that it would be great if her students could teach mine how to use Prezi too. I thought that we could use the screen share feature in Skype to do this. The two of us spoke more about this plan, and even though Mrs. Faux had never used Skype before, she was willing to give this a try. We thought that June would be the perfect time!

Mrs. Faux worked with her students to create six Prezis -- each a separate mini-lesson -- on how to use Prezi. The students ordered the Prezi lessons according to what skills they thought needed to be taught when, and then they grouped them, so that they could teach two skills at a time. Today was our first of three Skype call Prezi lessons.

Last night, Mrs. Faux and I worked together via FirstClass (our email system) to set-up Skype on her laptop computer, and this morning, we did a practice call at 8:30 to make sure that everything was working well. Once I realized that I needed to turn on my microphone for her to hear me (oops!!), we were good to go!

My students were so excited for the call, and her students were fantastic teachers. They went step-by-step, explaining what to do, and they made sure to answer students questions at the end to clarify what they explained as well. I think that the sign of a great lesson is when every student is able to accomplish what is expected, and in this case, that is exactly what happened!



Thank you so much to all of the Grade 7's and Mrs. Faux too for teaching us something new, and giving us a great way to create media texts and practice our writing skills while having a lot of fun as well! We can't wait for our next set of mini-lessons on Friday.

For the students in my class, what did you think about using Prezi? What are you excited to learn next? For other educators that have used Prezi with their students before, how have you used this tool? What did your students think about using Prezi? I would love to hear your thoughts!

Aviva