December 9, 2014 by plemmonsa

Hour of Code 2014: Scenes from Day 2

Day 2 was a whirlwind with back to back class all day from 8AM until 2:30PM. Once again, it was a day filled with perseverance, collaboration, and celebration as students figured out how to create pieces of code in apps and websites and run them.

Kindergarten and 1st grade continued to use the app “The Foos” by CodeSpark. Today, I gave better instruction encouraging them to write the shortest code they could think of in order to get their character to capture the star. We also did a few examples together by displaying the iPad on the screen. This helped us to think about problem solving, trying something different, and visualizing the actions we wanted our character to take before we wrote code.

Our 2nd grade classes tried out block coding by using the Anna and Elsa snowflake game on Code.org as well as the Angry Bird and Flappy Bird game. Once again today, the Code.org site was slow. It didn’t crash, but it was still so slow that students were discouraged. We visited it when we could, but we focused more of our time on Google’s Made with Code site. This site was created to encourage girls to code, but we’ve found that it’s really a site for everyone.

Students chose from 3 block coding activities: making a yeti dance, creating a White House light show, and designing an animated snowflake.

This was such a great tool for 2nd grade because it walked them through each step of adding blocks and then they could make adjustments to create various effects. It was a great stepping stone to move on to something like Scratch or Scratch Jr. In fact, we looked at Scratch at the end of each session and students better understood all of the menus in Scratch because of what they learned on this coding site.

Finally, the entire 5th grade came in for a coding extravaganza. It was loud and productive. They tried the three Scratch tutorials on Code.org

Several students also used Made with Code to create more dancing yetis and lights. I have a feeling that many of these students will be coding on their own tonight, in class, and over the winter break.

November 10, 2014 by plemmonsa

It’s Picture Book Month….Let’s Have a Smackdown

November is Picture Book Month. It’s a time to celebrate the power of picture books and why the matter in our lives no matter what our age. Picture Book Month was started by author Dianne de Las Casas to bring awareness to the role of picture books in our lives. Each year, multiple authors and illustrators contribute daily posts about why they think picture books matter. The Picture Book Month website has a wealth of resources for you to celebrate picture book month with your students, including a calendar, logos, bookmarks, and certificate.

At our school, we host a Picture Book Month Shelf Challenge. Students set their own goal for how many picture books they will read during November. I like allowing students to set their own goal because it allows for differentiation and also allows for surprising goals from students. Each student receives a sheet to document their reading for the month.

At the end of the month, students turn in this sheet. They receive a certificate, a bookmark, and get entered into a drawing to win picture books that I’ve collected for prizes.

For the 2nd year, we will host our annual Picture Book Smackdown. On November 18th from 1:30-2:30PM EST, students in multiple schools across multiple states will gather online with authors in a Google Hangout to share favorite picture books and why they matter in our lives. The event will be a Hangout On Air, so it will also be archived for future enjoyment.

To prepare for the event, I’ve sent a Google form to students to identify students in various grades who want to participate.

As students share their interest, I’m sending them a script to help them prepare for their sharing during the smackdown. They don’t have to use this script, but many find it helpful to remember all of the pieces of sharing. The day before the smackdown, they will gather in the library to do a quick practice.

I hope you will join us on November 18th to watch the smackdown and help spread the word about the event in advance. During the smackdown, students and authors will step to the microphone in their own states and share a favorite picture book. We also hope to capture all of these recommendations in a Google doc.

Here are some things to know:

From now until November 18th, share the direct link to our event or share this post
On November 18th, watch the smackdown with your class or on your own by visiting the event page or watching the stream:

Tweet about the event and your favorite picture books. Even if your class isn’t in the smackdown, they can still share their favorite picture books with the hashtag #pbsmkdwn as well as leave comments for our authors and students. You can also include the picture book month hashtag #picturebookmonth

Many thanks to all of the schools and authors who are participating in the smackdown so far this year:

Participating schools include:
Andy Plemmons, school librarian in Athens, Georgia
Jenny Lussier, school librarian in Durham, Connecticut
Cathy Potter, school librarian in Falmouth, Maine
Kathy Kaldenberg, school librarian in Solon, Iowa
Shawna Ford, school librarian in Weatherford, Texas
Julee Murphy, school librarian in Texas
Christina Brennan, school librarian in Pennsylvania

Participating authors include:
Dianne de Las Casas, founder of picture book month
Anne Marie Pace, author of Vampirina Ballerina

How are you celebrating Picture Book Month? It’s not too late to get a plan together and promote the power of picture books with your students.

March 25, 2014 by plemmonsa

More University of Georgia #GeniusCon Research Partners

Last week a group from Gretchen Thomas’s EDIT 2000 class at the University of Georgia partnered with Caitlin Ramseyer’s 2nd grade class to work on research for the students’ GeniusCon projects. Students are answering the question: If you could change one thing about your school, what would it be?

Students topics range from improving the lunch menu to healthier options to adding additional playground equipment to eliminating homework to starting school later in the day. Even students who share the same topic are taking different approaches to what they would change and how they would do it.

Today, a new group of Gretchen’s students came to work with the 2nd graders. Last time, most 2nd graders went through their lists of questions and answered them with their own thinking. Today’s focus was to move to researching online and in books as well as developing next steps.

I loved walking around and seeing some of the online reading that students were doing with their partners.

I also loved seeing how the UGA students interacted with the 2nd graders and how they helped to keep our students focused and thinking. Of course, the UGA students learned a lot too about how much our students know about using technology.

Some of those next steps involved created Google form surveys that could be emailed out. Some students crafted emails to send out to the lunchroom or the principal. We asked students to wait before sending anything out. The main reason in doing this was to spend a little more time thinking through the content of the email or the survey. For example, one student had one question in her Google form asking students if they would like more access to the 3D printer. She was ready to send it out, but after talking with me, she realized that if students wanted access to the 3D printer, we would have no idea what they wanted to do with it. Our conversation pushed her to think more about her survey before sending it out. Similar conversations were taking place all over the library.

At the end, Caitlin pulled her class together to debrief what they had accomplished.

Catilin’s students will continue working on this project and our UGA partners will return again.

January 22, 2014 by plemmonsa

Exploring Chinese New Year with Kindergarten: Google Voice Search, Pebble Go, colAR Mix, and More

Mrs. Li’s Kindergarten class has been exploring the Chinese New Year with me in the library. During our exploration, we’ve tried out several resources for information. First, we used Capstone’s PebbleGo database to do some pre-reading for background information. We did this with little discussion about the holiday, but instead just focused on listening to the information to build some shared knowledge.

Next, we thought of questions that we had about the Chinese New Year that were possibly not answered by PebbleGo. We asked things like:

When is Chinese New Year this year?
When is the lantern festival?
Where is it celebrated?
How is it celebrated?

Before students came, I installed the Google Voice Hotword Search extension in Chrome. This allowed us to control a Google search with our voice. For Kindergarten students who aren’t fluent in typing, this lifted a big search barrier for them. We took our list of questions and took turns saying:

“OK Google”
When is the Chinese New Year?

Google searched and spoke to us telling us that this year Chinese New Year begins on January 31st. We continued this process to answer many of our questions.

Next, we used Grace Lin’s book Bringing in the New Year to continue our exploration. Many facts that we had already discovered were confirmed in the text, but the book allowed us to learn some of the family structure in China and what different family member roles are. Mrs. Li was able to help us with this part of the lesson. Since I wasn’t sure how to pronounce some of the words, she pronounced them for us and also explained the meaning of each family member’s name. We certainly could have used Google for this, but we had a conversation about choosing resources to answer our questions. Since Mrs. Li was with us in the room and is an expert in Chinese culture, she was a faster option for us than taking the time to go to Google. It’s never too early to begin surfacing the thinking process that we go through as learners when we are trying to find the answers to our questions.

During the 2nd lesson, we once again used the Google Voice Hotword Search to explore the Chinese Zodiac. We learned that 2014 is the “Year of the Horse”. Students were curious about their own birth years, so we used Google to look for the signs for each of their years too. From here, we spent some time coloring a colAR mix coloring page for Chinese New Year. Students used the iPad app to view their carousel creations. The app uses augmented reality to bring coloring pages to life. The carousel pops off the page and rotates to music with they year 2014 in front of the carousel. Students were mesmerized by their coloring page brought to life.

We explored so many skills and tools in just 2 lessons. I want to continue this transliterate thinking of how our students can experience content across multiple platforms. In these 2 lessons, we examined print, databases, websites, search engines, crayons/markers/paper, and augmented reality. I’m curious to ask students later what they remember about Chinese New Year and see what stands out in their minds from these 2 days.