March 28, 2014 by plemmonsa

Banding Together with Joyce Sidman and Heart Poems

Our two schools are part of a wonderful project called “Banding Together”. In partnership with In This Together Media, the Van Meter third graders kicked this off while working on their Rainbow Loom research projects. After creating so many beautiful bracelets throughout the project, they wanted to do something special with all of these handmade creations. They partnered with In This Together Media to bring these bracelets, happiness, and friendship to children from an orphanage in Mangalore, India. The third graders decided to call the project “Banding Together” and the next step was bringing others onboard to make a difference in the world.

Shannon told Andy about “Banding Together” right away….Van Meter School couldn’t wait for Barrow Elementary to be partners with them too. Together they would bring so much to the children in India….and to each other.

Recently during a Skype planning session, Andy brought up the idea of incorporating poetry into the Banding Together project. It started with a wondering. What if we added short poetry, like a fortune cookie slip, attached to the bracelets? Shannon said, “Let’s go for it.” And the brainstorming began.

We both started thinking of possible titles for the short poetry. We wanted the title to represent the spirit and joy of the Banding Together project. In looking through poets, we thought of Joyce Sidman and her new book, What the Heart Knows: Chants, Charms, & Blessings. In her note to readers, Joyce Sidman writes, “We believe in the power of words themselves. Why else would we pray, sing, or write? Finding phrases to match the emotion inside us still brings an explosive, soaring joy.”

That idea of finding a phrase that matches the emotions in our hearts really connected with what we hoped the Banding Together poetry would represent. Suddenly, we had a thought about our poems. What if we called them “Heart Poems”? They would have a connection to our inspiration from Joyce Sidman’s words. They would represent spreading the joy in our hearts to friends across the miles. They would also be symbolic of the heart charms that we have been creating on our Makerbot 3D printers.
charm design (1).jpg Screen Shot 2014-03-27 at 10.24.47 PM.png

We both reached out to Joyce Sidman to share our ideas and see if she would like to meet our students to kickoff the heart poem project. Not only did she say yes, she pointed us toward a great graphic organizer on her website that would help our students figure out what their heart knows. www.joycesidman.com books what the heart knows chants heart worksheet.pdf.png

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_X43iW-4ZE

Today our students in Athens, Georgia and Van Meter, Iowa came together with Joyce Sidman via Skype. After a quick hello and meeting her dog, she read the poem, “Blessing On the Smell of Dog”. She reminded us that when she is with her dog, she feels like she is home.

This setup the idea that poems come from what he hold in our hearts whether it’s joy, treasures, things we long for, or even what scares us. Joyce spent time walking through each question on the graphic organizer and giving examples of what the question means to her and why it’s important to think about all of these emotions we hold in our hearts, even the feeling of being scared.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyYcSRpfCHc

She encouraged our students to write from their hearts. She also connected with our Banding Together project. She said, “You’re helping form a bond between you and kids in another part of the world.”

Our students were able to ask her some questions at the end of our Skype. When asked why she writes poetry and not other kinds of writing, Joyce said, “I notice the things that are happening around me and I celebrate them. Poetry allows me to focus on that one thing”.

She also told our students, “Even if there are times when you don’t write, you can always go back to writing from your heart.”

Our students left this experience eager to begin writing heart poems to attach to our Rainbow Loom bracelets. They will fill out the graphic organizer and then submit their poems using a google form.
Heart Poems.png

Students can quickly get to this form from Symbaloo or by scanning this QR code.

Poems will go into a spreadsheet when they are submitted which will allow us to easily print them and attach to our bracelets. Heart Poems Responses .png

We invite you to join us by submitting your own heart poems. Use Joyce Sidman’s great graphic organizer and have your students submit their poems in our Google form. We’ll attach them to bracelets that we have as well as share them with other special friends in coming months. You can also use the hashtag #heartpoems to share some of your poems on Twitter.

Thank you, Joyce Sidman, for inspiring this special addition to the Banding Together project, and thank you for taking time to connect with our students.

March 21, 2014 by plemmonsa

Banding Together with Rainbow Loom, Makerbot, and Libraries

Back at the beginning of the new year, my friend Shannon Miller in Van Meter, IA told me she was planning to do a research project that involved Rainbow Loom bracelets. When she started implementing the project in her library, it organically grew into something much larger. Through connections with In This Together Media , the project developed into “Banding Together”. You can read the full details of the project here: https://www.smore.com/n65m

Here are the basics:

Students at Van Meter, Barrow, and multiple schools around the country are making Rainbow Loom bracelets.
The bracelets will be sent to a school in Mangalore, India
Along with the bracelets, we will send poetry written by students, 3D printed charms designed by students, and a disposable camera to take pictures to send back

I announced the project this week on our morning BTV. I placed a collection box for Rainbow Loom bracelets on our circulation island, and by the end of the day, a few bracelets had already been donated. Students asked me about the project all day. By the next day, several kids were bringing bracelets in. I was so surprised by the generosity and enthusiasm from the students to send their bracelets across the miles.

First Day

Second Day

Next, we started designing charms for 3D printing. I had already experimented some on my own, and I sent Shannon Miller a file that I made so that her students could print it and learn from the file too. Her students took my file and modified it or examined it in order to design their own.

Shannon’s students in Iowa being inspired by the file I sent them

I have a group of 5th graders who have been exploring different technology and how they might support other classes trying to use that technology. They have already been exploring Tinkercad to design objects for 3D printing, so I knew they would catch on fast to the idea of making charms.

Since the Banding Together project has a lot to do with spreading the joy in our hearts, we have focused our charm design on that theme. We decided that each charm should have some kind of heart. Dmitri designed a heart with a heart hole in the center. Walker designed a charm with the word “love”. Instead of an “o” he used a heart. I designed a triple heart to symbolize India and the US uniting together with our shared joy. We took these first 3 designs and made sure that they printed correctly. Once we saw how they worked, we started mass production.

As charms were ready, parent volunteers helped put them on bracelets. Dmitri and Walker also became quality control and made sure that all of the Rainbow Loom bracelets we were sending had joy-filled quality. They continued attaching charms.

We are waiting on a few more designs to be completed and we will ship our first batch of bracelets and charms.

Next week, we are adding a new layer onto the project with poetry, so look for an update soon about this exciting development that our 2nd graders will be involved in.

I love how this is a project that students in all grades can be a part of whether they made bracelets, wrote poetry, designed charms, or helped with packaging and quality. We truly are banding together in more ways than one.

March 19, 2014 by plemmonsa

Using Skype in the Classroom to Connect with Rube Goldberg’s Granddaughter

Second grade has been studying force and motion as a part of their science standards. We kicked off this unit in the library by learning about the inventions of Rube Goldberg and exploring the Rube Works app for iPad.

In class, students explored force and motion through a Picture Perfect Science lesson about roller coasters. During this exploration, they learned key vocabulary and concepts for force and motion. After exploring, they learned even more about force and motion through informational text. Finally, students worked in collaborative groups to build their own Rube Goldberg invention. During this process, students were able to apply many of the concepts and vocabulary that they learned through the other experiences. I loved peering into their classrooms from time to time to watch them try to get their inventions to work. I loved how they tried something, failed, and then tried again. This is something we’ve had a lot of conversations about.

Today, thanks to Skype in the Classroom, students had the chance to Skype with Rube Goldberg’s granddaughter, Jennifer George. If you haven’t taken a look at Skype in the Classroom, you should! Teachers and guest speakers can post topics or lessons and classrooms can sign up to participate in those lessons. Once you sign up, you go through a process of communicating with the creator of the lesson or topics in order to schedule your Skype connection. Also, educators get a free Skype premium account for signing up.

Our connection lasted from about 40 minutes. During our time, Jennifer George shared some Rube Goldberg facts that only a granddaughter would know. For example:

he wore shoes when he went swimming
he was always on time
he ate whip cream for dessert and when cool whip came out he ate it by the bowl
when he got his 1st car, there were only 12 cars in New York City

She talked about how Rube Goldberg never built the inventions that he drew, but many people have taken his drawings and built the machines or designed their own. I loved how this fact fit in with our collaborative project and how each member of the team brings something different.

We also loved meeting Jennifer’s cat. The students couldn’t contain their excitement when the cat jumped up behind her on the counter. Jennifer gave us a close up view of him.

After Jennifer gave us some facts, she spent some time letting students ask questions. They love to do this. I loved how she listened to each student’s name and repeated it in her response. It made the conversation connected and personal.

http://youtu.be/kn9UfhReGIU

It was during these questions that we learned things like:

Rube Goldberg created over 50,000 cartoons
He started drawing when he was about the age of our 2nd graders
Jennifer is a fashion designer who has designed clothing for several big celebrities like Madonna and Aretha Franklin

The students really wanted to see some of Rube Goldberg’s drawings, but thankfully thankfully many of them are available in a new book called The Art of Rube Goldberg. I think that students are going to be demanding that we get this book in our library. Thank you Jennifer George for sharing the stories and inventions of your grandfather with us. Thanks Skype in the Classroom for this fun time.

You can learn more about Rube Goldberg at http://www.rubegoldberg.com/

We have another Skype in the Classroom connection coming up soon with David Fox, developer of the Rube Works app that we have been playing. We can’t wait!

February 11, 2014 by plemmonsa

Connecting Libraries: Using Tinkercad with Students in Van Meter, IA

Hanging out in Iowa from my kitchen!

I had so much fun today spending some time in Van Meter, IA from my kitchen. Shannon Miller and her students just received their Makerbot 3D Printer from Donors Choose. Her students are starting an Olympic project where they will be designing new symbols for the Olympics. Students will eventually use Tinkercad for their designs. Since this is a new tool for her students, Shannon thought it would be a good idea for us to connect and share what we’ve learned. I had a group of 5th graders eager to share their expertise, but the GA ice and snow caused us to be out of school today. Rather than keep her students waiting, I went ahead and shared my own learning about Tinkercad. We plan to reconnect when we are back in school so that students can share. I’m sure that her students will have just as much to share with mine by the time we reconnect next week.

Here’s our Google Hangout from today:

After the Hangout, I realized that I forgot to tell them an important step, so I made a quick screencast to fill in the hole I missed. I also share with them the steps that wouldn’t screen share through hangouts.

http://youtu.be/YgQ_fN7WQwY

It was wonderful to be a part of another library. We all have expertise to share, so why not share beyond our walls. Happy making, friends!

December 30, 2013 by plemmonsa

Let’s Connect For LitWorld’s World Read Aloud Day During The Week Of March 5th

On March 5th, we will celebrate World Read Aloud Day with LitWorld again.

We will actually celebrate all week long….March 3rd through the 7th.

One of my favorite connected educator friends, Shannon Miller, and I have been planning our collaboration and teaching plans for 2014 so of course World Read Aloud Day was a very important part of this. We decided to write this post and start planning, connecting, and sharing the excitement for this day.

This is always such a special day for celebrating the power of literacy….and one of the best for our libraries, schools, and students too.

You can read about all of our connections at Barrow at the post from last year, World Read Aloud Day 2013. Also check out Shannon’s post at Van Meter, Our World Read Aloud Day Celebration Connected Us 21 Times During The Week That Made A Difference.

This year we are excited for even more of these special connections.

If you are interested in connecting with others on this day, please add your name, schedule, and ideas to the information in the Google Doc that we started. This will begin to fill up with others around the world as they want to connect their students and schools too.

We plan to celebrate throughout that entire week….March 3-7th.

On March 3, it is also NEA’s Read Across America Day so we will tie this together with World Read Aloud Day too.

Also, check out all the wonderful activity ideas and resources that LitWorld has included on their website here.

The classroom kit is great! We love how it contains suggestions for read-aloud, suggestions for group activities, and a fundraising guide to support LitWorld and their programs.

Let us know if you have any questions on how this works. One of the fun parts is collaborating and throwing around ideas with each other.

Have fun and get connected for World Read Aloud Day this year too.

Many thanks to Shannon Miller for creating this post for us to share.

December 8, 2013 by plemmonsa

Hour of Code is Coming This Week!

We are very excited about the opportunities planned for our students in the library this week. It’s Computer Science Education Week and to celebrate several classes in grades K-5 will participate in Hour of Code, which gives kids hour-long experiences in a variety of kid-friendly coding tools. The hour of code site has multiple step by step tutorials to help kids learn some basics of each coding tool, while allowing them the freedom to be creative. Theres’s something for every age from 5-106 🙂

Computer Science Education Week (CSEdWeek) is an annual program dedicated to showing K-12 students the importance of computer science education.

Organized by the Computing in the Core coalition and Code.org, CSEdWeek is held in recognition of the birthday of computing pioneer Admiral Grace Murray Hopper (December 9, 1906).

Why would we want our students to learn computer coding? Take a look at some of these statistics.

Some of our Kindergarten and first grade students will use an iPad app called Kodable.

Second and Third grades will be exploring both Blockly and Tynker. Some first graders will also try Tynker.

https://i0.wp.com/www.tynker.com/image/hp/course-intro-to-programming-videotutorial.jpg

Tynker Intro

Fourth and Fifth graders (and perhaps a few other students too) will make holiday cards with Scratch.

During the week, we plan to make connections with other schools around the country who are also participating in Hour of Code in order to allow our students to share, brainstorm, and problem solve across the miles through Skype and Google Hangouts. On December 17, we will participate in a live Google Hangout On Air where students will share their coding creations and learning with students in multiple states simultaneously.

The intention of Hour of Code is to give as many students as possible experience with coding, which will hopefully lead to both individual exploration or class projects in the future. I’m prepared to be amazed this week by what students discover. Look for posts throughout this week to share our progress.

September 19, 2013 by plemmonsa

Talk Like a Pirate Day 2013

Ahoy thar maties! Today be national “talk like a pirate” day. What better way to celebrate than dressing up like a pirate, reading some stories with classes around the country, writing some fun pirate sentences to practice saying, and creating some pirate stories.

That’s exactly what we did in the Barrow library. The planning started last weekend, when I started looking for classes in the school who wanted to participate. As class signed up, I used twitter to locate some special library friends around the country to connect with.

Over a couple of days, the schedule took shape for us to connect with:

Shannon Thompson at Stroud Elementary in Athens, GA
Jenny Lussier in Durham, CT
Okle Miller in Tampa, FL
Edie Crook in Gastonia, NC
Shannon Miller in Van Meter, IA

The plan during each connection was to:

look at a google map of where we were connecting and talk about distance
say hello with a few pirate words like “Arrrrrrrrrgh!”
take turns reading pages of a pirate story so that voices in each location were heard. Sometimes it would be the librarian and other times it would be the students reading.
Say goodbye
At tables, write pirate sentences using a pirate vocabulary sheet. Students could stretch out an -ar word or they could use actual pirate vocab.
Students moved to do projection areas to have an adult type their sentence onto a padlet. Throughout the day, any school could add to the padlet as they had time.

Our pirate padlet

We started our day with Mrs. Boyle’s Kindergarten class. They have been learning how to tell stories from pictures. Today was the launch of our storybird project, so I decided to focus our storybird on pirates. After warming up with some “Tell Me a Story” cards, we searched for pirate pictures on Storybird. We made a simple story with a beginning, middle, and end. It was a challenge to link our story together between pictures, but the students did a great job working together. Be sure to read their story here.

Our Storybird cover

Next, we skyped with Shannon Thompson at Stroud Elementary in Athens. Shannon and I took turn reading A Pirate’s Guide to First Grade by James Preller. We both read in our best pirate voices. Following our skype, we disconnected and students added sentences to the padlet. We reconnected on skype and students shared their sentences with one another in their best pirate voices. We had a few sound issues, which led me to switch the webcam I was using.

At 10 & 10:30, Mrs. Wright and Mrs. Ramseyer’s 2nd grade classes connected with Jenny Lussier’s 4th graders in CT. During one session, we read Bubble Bath Pirates by Jarrett Krosoczka and during the other session we read How I Became a Pirate by Melinda Long. It was fun to hear our different pirate voices and share the many costumes that both of our groups of students were wearing.

At 11:45, Mrs. Yawn’s 2nd grade class had a special triple skype. We connected with Okle Miller in FL and Edie Crook in NC at the same time.

Okle and I read How I Became a Pirate by Melinda Long and Edie Crook read A is for Arrr! by Laura Salas. Okle had on a great pirate costume, and Edie’s students had made great pirate hats to share, too. It was fun to know our voices were connecting from 3 different southeastern states.

A is for Arrr! with Mrs. Crook

At 1:15, Shannon Miller’s students connected with Mrs. Em’s 1st grade students. We read How I Became a Pirate by Melinda Long. Our students also took time to share what was going on at our schools today. In addition to pirate day, our students had a walking field trip and Shannon’s students had dot day, Homecoming, and a color challenge. Shannon’s students took time to add to the padlet after our connection, while Mrs. Em’s students added sentences that focused on words that used sounds they were working on in class.

Finally, at 1:45 Mrs. Choate’s Kindergarten class connected with Edie Crook in NC. I read Bubble Bath Pirates by Jarrett Krosoczka and Pirates vs. Cowboys by Aaron Reynolds. It was a challenge to switch from pirate to cowboy while reading the book. It would be a fun book to read over skype if both schools have a copy because you would only have to keep up with one accent. I loved hearing Edie’s students make connections between the two books.

It was a fun-filled day. We made connections. We read text and had great discussions. We practiced reading fluently and with expression. We practiced our sentence writing. I’m exhausted. Now off to Krispy Kreme for some free donuts. They are giving away a full dozen of donuts if you are dressed like a pirate!

September 13, 2013 by plemmonsa

International Dot Day 2013 @ Barrow

Ms. Kelly Hocking’s class mural inspired by Chuck Close

International Dot Day has become a special day at our school and it seems to grow a bit each year. This day was created by author/illustrator Peter Reynolds. Each of Peter’s books focus in some way on creativity, expressing your individuality, and making your mark on the world. It’s so much more than a day to create dots. It’s a day to embrace your own uniqueness and express the things that you truly love. It’s a day to establish an environment of innovation and encourage students to express their ideas through multiple formats.

This year at Barrow many classes came to the library to read The Dot by Peter Reynolds and Press Here by Herve Tullet. Students made digital dots using Drawcast and Glow Coloring on the iPads. They made coffee filter dots with markers and water. They used the super cool app colAR Mix to create augmented reality dots. The media center windows have filled with dots throughout the past week to the point that you can barely see in. Our principal even let us have a Dot Dress-up Day today. It was so much fun to look down the halls and see dots everywhere.

Mr. Plemmons with pumpkin dots, converse dot, and Scaredy Squirrel dot.

A unique project that emerged was Ms. Kelly Hocking’s Kindergarten class. Kelly always listens carefully to her students’ interests and this year she has heard their interest in art. They are looking carefully at multiple artists and recently started looking at Chuck Close. His artwork had a direct connection to dot day with its many dots to make a larger image. This spark took us on a great journey. We read Sky Color by Peter Reynolds where students were introduced to murals. We spent time learning about Diego Rivera’s murals. I shared my own mural that is in my son’s room and how it was designed and painted. Students started looking in the community for murals. Some even began to report back about the murals that they saw while in Atlanta. Ms. Hocking facilitated her students in deciding what kind of mural they could make and over several class periods they penciled in their mural onto a large piece of paper and began filling it with dots just like they had seen in Chuck Close’s art. Today, their dot mural was displayed on the large window of our media center. The sunlight gave the mural a stained glass effect. It was breathtaking and so many people were in awe as they saw it. When I posted the picture of the mural on our media center facebook page, it immediately was showered with likes. The mural was surrounded by window cling dots that a Barrow parent discovered and collaborated with other parents to purchase some for the library.

Today was also a day for students to come and tour the dot gallery on the media center windows. I had all of our iPads available for classes to come and interact with the colAR dots on the inside and outside of the windows. Ms. Li’s Kindergarten class was here bright and early to look at the dots. Look at how much fun they had!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ga4bNA65AE

Reading The Dot with Van Meter

At the end of the day, Mrs. Wyatt’s 1st grade class skyped with Shannon Miller’s students in Van Meter Iowa. We read the dot together. Then, Mrs. Wyatt’s class used Google Earth to go on a virtual tour of a walking field trip that they will soon take in 5 Points. Each stop on the tour was of course a dot on the map!

Our Van Meter dot friends

I look forward to next year and how we might celebrate even bigger when we aren’t in the middle of moving in to a new school.

Ms. Kelly’s K class posed with their mural

April 29, 2013 by plemmonsa

El dia de los ninos: Connecting Libraries and Making Connections

Over the weekend, an opportunity popped up on Twitter. Mrs. Crook, elementary librarian in Gastonia NC, tweeted that she wanted to connect with some class in honor of El dia de los ninos. This day, celebrated on April 30, honors many cultures, children, and books. It’s a day to celebrate reading, celebrate our uniqueness, and celebrate the joy of reading in many languages. Mrs. Crook had many great ideas for celebrating the day.

Athens, GA to Gastonia, NC

We chose to celebrate with her by connecting 2 Kindergarten classes through Skype and doing a shared reading of Book Fiesta by Pat Mora. Before our Skype, I showed Mrs. Li’s Kindergarten class a Google map of the distance from Athens, GA to Gastonia, NC. We learned it was about 181 miles away and would take about 2 hours 50 minutes to drive there. In our connection, I read the English pages of the book, and one of Mrs. Crook’s students read the Spanish pages. It was so much fun to hear the pages spoken in 2 languages. Mrs. Crook had several students who spoke Spanish and many of them began sharing their words in a chorus of voices. Mrs. Li had 2 students who spoke Chinese. I was so happy when Mrs. Li stepped up to the camera and said hello in Chinese to all of Mrs. Crook’s students. She even taught them a few words and had them repeat them back. We said “adios” to one another and disconnected.

After our Skype, we talked about several other books in our library collection that are bilingual. We also listened to this Dia Day song.

Later in the day, Ms. Spurgeon’s 3rd grade class came to read the book Tomas and the Library Lady. This book had a wonderful connection with Ms. Spurgeon’s work this year with diverse literature and literature that raises discussions about poverty and still achieving your dreams. The book also connected with their discussions of Cesar Chavez and migrant workers. I have my own connection to the book because I am friends with Tomas Rivera’s daughter. As I read the story, I couldn’t help but think of Ileana on every page and how grateful I was to the library lady in Iowa that gave her dad access to books no matter what the circumstance. I was also grateful to Tomas Rivera for persevering to bring new stories to his family and becoming such a leader in education. This story gave many of our students a positive example of someone striving for their dreams in life no matter their background, living conditions, or social status. We read the book to celebrate Dia and to talk about the importance of summer reading, but I think we left the lesson with many more conversations flowing in our minds that could not have been predicted in advance.

Tomas Rivera’s daughter, Ileana Liberatore signed this copy of the book.

April 25, 2013 by plemmonsa

Kindergarten Tux Paint Consultants

Today Mrs. Kelly Hocking’s Kindergarten students had so much fun Skyping with Shannon Miller’s Kindergarten and 1st Grade students in Van Meter, IA. Shannon’s students are planning to embark on a similar project as Kelly’s students by making their own stories in Tux Paint and recording them with a screencasting tool. The purpose of today’s Skype session was for Shannon’s students to ask Kelly’s students about what they did.

Shannon’s students watched our videos in Van Meter, IA before our connection

Before our connection, Shannon showed her students our Tux Paint videos made in Screencast-o-matic, including the instructional video. She let me know on Twitter that they were ready.

When we connected, Shannon’s students applauded Kelly’s students’ great work on their stories. Then she guided them in asking questions about the process. They asked questions like:

How did you decide what to write about?
How did you work together?
How did you learn to use Tux Paint?
What screencasting tool did you use?
How long did your story have to be?
and more

Each time a question was asked, Mrs. Kelly called on a student to answer, and sometimes she answered the question or added additional insight. We had a computer ready with Tux Paint in case we needed it to show something. The students also had their planning paper, which they showed to answer one of the questions. I had a USB webcam plugged in so that I could move the camera closer to students as they talked. Although, my camera skills weren’t great, I think the kids enjoyed seeing themselves closeup on the screen.

Now, Shannon’s K and 1st grade students plan to use Tux Paint to make their own stories and use a new screencasting tool to record them. We ended our time by agreeing to come back together to Skype and share our work with one another before the end of the year.

Shannon, Kelly, and I could have all easily just done the teaching of Tux Paint on our own, but giving the students this ownership of the project and sharing of expertise between schools means so much more. I think that they now look at themselves as experts with knowledge to share. Not only do they have the knowledge, they have the support that it is ok to take a leadership role in the classroom and teach alongside the adult teacher. They also know that they have an authentic audience that their work immediately impacts. I hope that this idea blossoms into other opportunities for students to demonstrate their knowledge and become leaders in technology and learning for our school and beyond.