February 10, 2014 by plemmonsa

#GeniusCon: Topic Selection and Question Development

We’ve been having so much fun participating in #GeniusCon. Haven’t heard of #GeniusCon? Visit this archived webinar to learn more and read the post about our first steps.

After students left the library for our kickoff session, they spent time in class reflecting on our chalk talk, writing in their notebooks, and fine tuning their topics. Today, they came to the library with their topics ready to work on question development.

We started with an overview of what happened since our last session. I shared tweets from Sherry Gick, Matthew Winner, Peter Reynolds, and more. I also told them how their work had been featured in the #GeniusCon webinar. Their eyes lit up knowing that their work was already making a difference!

I framed our session for the day by talking about how questions help us think about what we need to know about our topics in order to focus our research. We did a practice session asking questions about a topic that I could do for #Geniuscon: Teaching all of my lessons from home. At the moment, I’m not really doing this topic, but I wanted to choose something that might raise some eyebrows, and it really did! Students began asking questions about my topic, but as we progressed they started to ask questions like “how would you feel if you didn’t see us anymore?” and “what if we needed help with something in the library?” and “Wouldn’t you miss being here?”. This topic did exactly what I wanted because it allowed us to have a conversation about our chosen topics. I told them that it wasn’t our jobs to tell one another that our topics aren’t possible, that they’re wrong, or that we need to pick a different topic. Our job is to push one another’s thinking through questions and to support one another even if it means we disagree with topic choice or we feel personally that a topic is “impossible”.

We spent a bit more time brainstorming questions for my topic with partners. Here are a few questions that they came up with:

What lessons should I teach?
Do I know anyone that will be interested in learning from home?
How will I do it?
How many students will I have?
How many lessons from home can I teach?
What happens if someone needs help checking out and I’m not here?
Why would I want to do this?
How would people know how to connect with me?
What if the Internet doesn’t work?

Next, students logged into their Google Drive and created a document with their topic listed at the top. Then, they started a bullet list and began adding their own questions. After all students were set with their doc ready, we began passing the laptops around the circle and asking one another questions. Students looked at the topic at the top and read the question already generated. Then, they thought of what questions they would add to the list for the researcher to consider. I’ll admit that this part was difficult. Even with our lively opening, students had a hard time generating questions. Several adults had individual conversations with students to support their question development. These conversations were critical. At different times we had me (the media specialist), the classroom teacher, a gifted teacher, a tech integration specialist, and and early intervention teacher supporting students. Here are a few topics with the questions generated.

Taking Tablets Home:

can we for a week?
or for month?
what happens if you break it?
What do students do if they don’t know how to use it?
what happen’s if somone needes one at school and you forget it at home?
how long?
what if people don’t have internet at home?

More Playground Equipment:

what equipment should we get?
how much equipment?
what kind?
what if there’s not enough space?
isn’t it expensive?
why do you wont to change the playground?
will we be kind on it?
is the play ground equipment safe?
who would pay for it?

At our closing, students got their own computers back, read their questions, and shared their documents with me. I told them that it was ok if they didn’t understand a question or if they even disagreed with a question. We closed by once again asking “Why are we asking questions and not jumping into answers?” We framed the idea of thinking about what we need to research. Next, we will spend some time developing a research plan. We’ll brainstorm where we need to look for answers and begin our search for answers.

January 22, 2014 by plemmonsa

Our Miraculous Start to 2014 with Flipgrid

In the new year, I wrote a post about expecting the miraculous in 2014. I can honestly say that the expression “Expect the Miraculous” has taken on a life of its own in our school. Let me tell you how it happened.

To kickoff the second half of the year, we held a schoolwide assembly. The purpose of the assembly was to review goal setting, celebrate our unique talents, and to give ourselves permission to have dreams. It really was an amazing assembly. We had student performances, a teacher who played her violin, a youtube video from Kid President, and Martin Luther King Jr contest winners. The assembly was also a space for me to talk about expecting the miraculous. I read the excerpt from Flora & Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures.

“All things are possible,” said Dr. Meescham. ”When I was a girl in Blundermeecen, the miraculous happened every day. Or every third day. Actually, sometimes it did not happen at all, even on the third day. But still, we expected it. You see what I’m saying? Even when it didn’t happen, we were expecting it. We knew the miraculous would come.” ~Kate DiCamillo

I also shared synonyms for the word “miraculous” such as “extraordinary”. Finally, I told my own story of expecting the miraculous. My story involved our new 3D printer. From the day I heard about 3D printers, I expected that one day our library would have one. I wasn’t sure how or when, but I felt in my heart that this incredible piece of technology was something our students should have access to in school. About a year ago, our district considered purchasing a 3D printer for our school. It was all the way down to the ordering process, but something happened over the summer and it didn’t get order. Still…..I expected the miraculous. I wrote grants and began advertising the idea of purchasing a 3D printer. I publicized that a portion of our book fair profits would go toward 3D printing. However, this was a slow process and I knew it would take time to raise almost $3000 for a printer and supplies. Still….I expected the miraculous. Then, in October, Makerbot announced their partnership with Donors Choose. I immediately submitted my project and hoped for the best knowing that much of the available funding would most likely go to Brooklyn schools. Still…I expected the miraculous. Miraculously, our printer was funded overnight!

This is the story that students heard. I followed this with an invitation for them all to “Expect the Miraculous” with me. To capture our goals, dreams, wishes, and expectations for 2014, I created a Flipgrid. I gave them a quick tutorial on how to record a video into the Flipgrid by walking them through screenshots of the process. Then, I setup a Flipgrid recording station in the library.

Over the past 2 weeks, students have written about their hopes and dreams in class and visited the library to record. It has been an amazing process to watch. Goals have ranged from reading goals to behavior goals and from school-related to extra curricular related. I encourage you to spend some time listening to their miraculous expectations and feel free to click the + and add your own. Students have enjoyed coming into the library and listening the the videos on our touchscreen computer at the front of the library. I can put the Flipgrid on slideshow and it flips through each video throughout the day.

I’ve heard so many kids, families, and teachers using the word “miraculous” in conversations. Some students have even recorded their videos at home with their family. Our school embraced the phrase so much that we even put it outside on our sign.

One more miraculous thing happened. Kate DiCamillo posted an opportunity on her facebook page to ask questions about her books. I asked, “What miraculous things have you expected that actually happened and what miraculous things are you still expecting?” Here’s her reply!

January 6, 2014 by plemmonsa

Our 2nd Student-designed 3D Print on Our Makerbot Replicator

Today, the second student who designed a gem using Sketchup was able to print his gem our our Makerbot replicator. In case you missed the 1st print, you can read about Grant’s history-making print here.

Danny’s gem was quite different from Grant’s. Danny figured out how to make a square hole right through the middle of his gem. It was something we had wondered how to do, and he figured it out. This again brings to my mind the importance of letting go of the feeling of being an expert in everything before we allow our students to explore. Because Danny was given the freedom to explore Sketchup, he figured out how to do so much more than his teacher and I could have ever figured out on our own. Now his expertise can support others who want to try a similar design.

Before Danny pressed the bright red M to start the print, we made sure he got to choose the filament color that he wanted. We now have a selection of filament to choose from: blue, red, white, clear, black, yellow, orange, green, purple, and black. Danny’s gem took about 24 minutes to print. Now that we have an approximate time frame for printing these gems, we are going to try to get 2 printed during each class period over the next few days. Once again, students flocked around the printer and begged for their gem to be next.

You can watch is gem print process here:

I’ve also been experimenting with a couple of tools that will hopefully inspire some new projects with several classrooms. One tool is Tinkercad. I recently used Tinkercad to make a words with wings keychain. In her new book, Words with Wings, Nikki Grimes has some incredible poems that detail how a single word can help us take flight through its meaning in our lives. I hope that I can share this poetry with students, have them select their own “words with wings”, and create backpack pulls using Tinkercad.

Another new tool is Blokify. With this easy-to-use iPad app, students use a series of blocks to make pretty much anything they want. While the blocks are designed to look like a castle, space ship, or pirate ship, they can really be stacked into anything in a Minecraft-like style. The files can be emailed from the iPad to be imported into Makerware. I hope to do storytelling projects with teachers around student-designed settings and/or characters. With the blocks all being the same size, there is also great potential to use this for perimeter and area in math.

I love how ideas keep naturally surfacing within our standards and explorations. It’s not about what we can 3D print. It’s about what we are learning about, what we want to create, and how 3D printing might support that.

April 10, 2013 by plemmonsa

3rd Annual Barrow Media Center Poetry Contest

For the past 3 years, the media center has hosted a poetry contest leading up to Poem In Your Pocket Day. The hope was that this contest would encourage students to carry and read original poetry rather than just a copied poem. Each year participation grows. This year, we had over 180 entries from students in grades PreK-5th grade. It is near impossible to choose just one winner in each age bracket. This year, we had 7 top winners. Each of these students earned a certificate, an autographed book or journal, and their poem featured here on our blog.

Over 60 other students earned certificates for poetry in several categories including: list poetry, science poetry, Where I’m From poetry, concrete poetry, acrostic poetry, feelings poetry, humorous poetry, story poetry, found poetry, and deep thinking poetry. These students had their names announced on BTV and earned a pencil, pen, bookmark, or other small prize.

I can’t wait to see how this contest grows, and I especially can’t wait to listen to all of the great poems read aloud at our annual Poem In Your Pocket Days this Thursday and Friday. Please join us! You can find the schedule here.

Where I’m From

By Natalie

2nd Grade

I am from the Georgia Bulldogs

A cat who scratches

My Mommy, Daddy, Grandmas and Grandpas

I am from a big purple rose bush

I am from Friday Movie Nights

Eating out at the Burger Barn

I am from a family of worry warts

Rise and shines and Goodnights

I am from golf clubs and bridles

And dreaming to own a famous racehorse

I am from a big funny family

That is where I’m from!

Hummingbird

By Patricia

3rd Grade

http://youtu.be/nHrU_nFzJUg

Hummingbird, Hummingbird

They drink nectar from pretty little flowers.

Hummingbird, Hummingbird

They fly around all day.

Hummingbird, Hummingbird

They flap down and snooze in their nests.

Hummingbird, Hummingbird

It is great to meet you!

Hummingbird, Hummingbird

It is sad to leave you!

Dragons Today, Dragons Tomorrow, Dragons Past, Dragons Forever

By Cassie

5th Grade

http://youtu.be/tmwL65TXtzw

The air beats around me as I open my eyes to see the beautiful creatures flying above my head,

Their wings beat up and down in a pattern together,

Together,

Their wings display colors like you’ve never seen, hypnotizing you, making you see colorful

rabbits hopping in front of your eyes and otters gliding through a river,

I always see wondering dragons all around, wandering, but never this close,

Never this close do I get to hear them,

Roaring and beating their wings, snapping their tails,

Never this close do I get to see them,

Flying above and away,

Never this close do I get to feel them,

The breeze blowing around me at the top of the hill and their breath down my neck,

Never this close do I get to taste them,

The sweet grass I’m chewing and the taste of the freedom and wind,

Never this close do I get to smell them,

The smell of wondering and knowing and curiosity from the young ones,

The young ones fly around, chasing each other and occasionally bumping into elder ones,

while older ones roll their eyes and beat their wings, keeping a steady rhythm through the air,

they don’t notice me on top of the hill watching them,

More dragons sweep through, gathering gusts of air whipping my long hair around,

One glides so close to me, I know if I wanted to reach out and touch it, I would have

touched its scaly skin,

For I am too a young one full of curiosity, living in the world where no man has touched yet,

Where it is peaceful,

The wandering dragons keep sailing through the sky and I don’t notice them growing

smaller as they soar farther away,

As quick as they had come they disappear back into the sky,

I wave goodbye, and as I put my hand down it seems as if a tail sticks out of the sky and

starts waving, as if the dragons are saying good bye to me too,

I take one last look at where the dragons disappeared and then look away, you can’t hope

wandering and wondering dragons to stay forever, because it’s not in their nature,…….

They like to wander and wonder.

April

By Hank

Kindergarten

April is warm

April is baseball season. Hooray!

April is rain

April is sunlight. Doesn’t everybody love April?

April makes grass green

April is the Final Four and the championship and go Louiseville!

April is the best season

April is when lots of plants grow

April is when people play outdoors

April is school time

April is when it is dark in the morning and light at night

April is when more sports go on.

Fireworks

by Sadie

1st Grade

Fireworks glisten in the air!

Boom! Crash!

Sizzle! Everywhere.

The colorful colors of light

But when it goes out

It’s the pitch black dark.

The Soldiers Lying on the Battlefield

By Taylor

5th Grade

For the strong and the powerful, the ones who lie to rest, all soldiers

who gave their lives, all soldiers who risked their lives for our country.

For our country, to be one people and stay one people.

Our one people, lying on that battlefield, never returning to the

country that will still be free, everyone still free, but them lost, them to never

be found, to always be missing.

Yes it’s them on the battlefield that kept our country one people.

Them, that kept us free. Them, they deserve to be alive more than any of

us. Them, lying on the battlefield.

This is the power of war, this is the power of one bomb, of one

missle, one gunshot, one person with a knife in the forest, this is what it

does to one people, many people.

Thank you veterans lying at rest for giving your life for this nation.

Thank you veterans wounded for everything you lost.

Thank you veterans here before me for going out to war and fighting

brave, as a reward you come back with scars and bruises that show you’re

brave.

Thank you for fighting the fear, for facing the bombs, and missiles,

and one person in the forest with a knife, for keeping us one people, for

keeping us all free.

You deserve the best, you gave me a beautiful nation to live in, and it

was you, you deserve the thanks, you deserve to be one people.

You and soldiers lying on the battlefield.

You.

Extinction

By Eli

4th Grade

As the fires rain down

as the gunshots are heard

as the trees burn I wonder

I wonder what caused this

why do we turn on each other

what drives us to kill

why does hell rain from heaven

and why does mankind discriminate,

When we love each other

or do we

and when the bomb drops on only ashes,

what have we achieved

except

destruction

death

terror

extinction

what do we achieve

every move brings us down with a weight

constantly

bearing

down

and

know

what did we gain when we made the bomb

what did we achieve when the cities

burned

human torches

terror

all hell rained down

that day

as the towers fell

as the planes exploded

as the harbor sank

all hell rained down

what do we achieve

do we become godly

or devilish

do we gain power

or lose money

do we become popular

or outcasts

this

the

Human

Races

Extinction

when all hell rains down

Here’s a gallery of our winners from this year:

February 20, 2013 by plemmonsa

Connecting Libraries with Extra Yarn (Part 2)

Today, Ms. Seeling’s students had the chance to connect with another Kindergarten class in Van Meter, Iowa. Librarian Shannon Miller and I read the book Extra Yarn once again and students made bookmarks to send to one another. It was another magical time.

I made some fun observations this time:

Students wondered if Shannon’s students could read the same letters that they do.
Students wondered if they would get their bookmarks in the mail by this afternoon.
Students wondered if Shannon’s students were in another country.
Students had personal stories for each of their bookmarks.

Any of these wonderings would have been great next steps of investigation in the library or in the classroom. The personal stories really made me curious, so I grabbed my phone and tried to capture a few of the stories. Each student had a reason they were using particular color and shapes. Many were trying to tell the Van Meter students something about themselves through their artwork. It really made me wonder how many stories we miss from students about the work that they create when we don’t stop to listen. I want to do better capturing these kinds of stories.

Bookmarks are almost ready to mail to Iowa.

Since Shannon and I connected our 2 classes, I’ve had some brainstorming going on with teachers and other librarians about other activities to do with the book Extra Yarn. Today, Ms. Seeling talked about doing a compliment web using yarn. A student gives another student a compliment and then tosses the yarn to that student. This continues until students have made a big web of yarn. Kathy Schmidt in Gwinnett County brainstormed with me on twitter. Now I really want to read the book again and try some of these new activities. There’s always next year. Who wants to connect? It’s not too early to start planning 🙂

Kathy and I brainstormed on Twitter.

After our brainstorm, Kathy extended the lesson Shannon and I did and shared on Twitter.

April 13, 2012 by plemmonsa

Poem in Your Pocket Day 2012 (Part 2)

We had more wonderful poetry readings today. We also had guests tuning in from India, Seattle, Chicago, Belvidere, Florida, North Carolina, and a media center in Lexington, KY. The students loved extending their listening audience and hearing their warm comments. You can listen to today’s archives at the links below:

Mrs. Slongo’s 5th grade

Mrs. Cross’s 5th grade

Mrs. Carney’s Kindergarten

Mrs. Hocking’s PreK

Mrs. Spurgeon’s 3rd grade

Mrs. McCannon’s 3rd grade

Mrs. Griffith’s 3rd grade

Mrs. Clarke’s PreK

Ms. Olin’s 4th grade

Mrs. Freeman’s 4th Grade

Mrs. Selleck’s 4th Grade

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April 12, 2012 by plemmonsa

Poem In Your Pocket Day 2012 (Part 1)

Today, 14 classes came to our poetry cafe to read their original and favorite poems. Many people attended via Adobe Connect: parents, grandparents, other Barrow classrooms, and more. If you missed the day or want to relive it, you can view the archives below.

Mrs. Sheppard’s 2nd Grade

Mrs. Hart’s 1st Grade

Mrs. Wyatt’s 1st Grade

Mrs. Em’s Kindergarten

Mrs. Li’s Kindergarten

Mrs. Watson’s 1st Grade

Mrs. Stuckey’s 1st Grade

Mrs. Shealey’s 3rd Grade

Mrs. Brink’s 2nd Grade

Mrs. Brewer’s 2nd Grade

Mrs. Yawn’s 2nd Grade

Ms. O’Prey’s 5th Grade

Mrs. Boyle’s Kindergarten

Mrs. Vertus’s Kindergarten

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November 28, 2011 by plemmonsa

Book Choice Champions Unpacking Time

Today, the 11 boys of the Book Choice Champions enrichment cluster gathered today to unpack the first shipment of books that they ordered for the library. Each student had a job to do during this process which included:

Unpacking books and checking for damage and correct processing
Highlighting the packing slip
Stamping books with the media center stamp
Displaying books on tables
Taking pictures of books for marketing on BTV and our enrichment fair
Repacking books into boxes for the enrichment fair

It was an efficient process that took about 20-25 minutes. Two students agreed to come back during their lunch & recess to work on an Animoto video of the books and a video of the process. Here’s their final products:

The Book Choice Champions will share their process at our enrichment fair tomorrow Tuesday November 29, 2011 at 5:25PM at Barrow Elementary. Once the fair is over, these students will have first choice of the books to checkout and the remaining books will be available for checkout Wednesday morning. I can’t wait to see how fast they all get checked out this time!

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November 16, 2011 by plemmonsa

Book Choice Champions Final Steps

The Book Choice Champions, a group of 11 boys in 2nd-5th grades, finalized their project today. Their job has been to use a budget of $1500 to purchase books for the media center that are about topics that students are interested in. They’ve been through a long process, including surveying 199 students at our school. Last week, they finalized their book order and now we are waiting on it to come in. Today, the boys made some final pieces to advertise the books as well as show people the process they went through. Some worked on posters. Others made a commercial for BTV, while others worked on an Animoto of the process. Even though today was our last official meeting, several of the boys want to continue meeting to plan ways to promote the books to the school. One idea was to take pictures of all of the books and make another Animoto for BTV. Here is the Animoto that they made today to show the process that they went through.

Book Choice Champions.

September 28, 2011 by plemmonsa

Book Choice Champions Begins

Surveying students using iPad and Google forms

Once again, I’ve set out on a journey with a group of students to make decisions on what books are purchased for the library in a project called Book Choice Champions. This year, I set aside $1500 in book fair profits for a budget that is completely decided on by students. Once again, our school is doing enrichment clusters on Wednesdays, so from 9-10AM I have a group of 11 students in grades 2nd-5th that come to the library to work on this project until late November. The students self-selected which enrichment cluster they would be in based on their interest in the cluster topic. The surprising part of this is that the group of students I’m working with is all boys.

On day 1, the boys immediately noticed that no girls were in the group and they saw this as a problem. How would they buy books that were supposed to be for the whole school without having girl representation in the group? They decided to survey students from the whole school and felt that it was important to know how many boys and how many girls answered the survey. They also wanted to know what grades students were in so that all grades were represented in the decisions. Two students in the group were in a similar group last year and they talked about the problems that we had with surveying, especially using blank paper and simply asking people what they liked to read. For this reason, they decided to develop a Google survey that could be done on laptops, desktops, smartboards, and iPads. They felt it was important to ask about various categories of books such as animals/sports/fairies/etc, kinds of books such as chapter/picture/informational/etc, and to give students a chance to request specific books or series.

The next problem was when would students take the survey. We knew we didn’t want to interrupt instruction, so we thought of the least disruptive process we could. They came up with several idea that they are now trying:

Ask their teachers when they could come get an iPad from the media center to survey their own classes
Ask 3rd-5th grades to take surveys on the iPads and desktop computers in the media center during morning arrival time before going to homerooms.
Ask K-2nd grades to take the surveys on iPads in the art room during morning arrival time before going to class.
See which grade levels seem to be missing from the survey results and ask specific teachers if there is a time to come into their room to do surveys
If needed, email the survey to teachers to use on their smartboards

Today, we asked PreK teachers permission to pull students to survey. Members of the book choice champions read the survey to them and filled in the results on the iPad. Also today, several students have come to the media center throughout the day to borrow an iPad to take to their classroom and to recess to do more surveys. At the beginning of today, we only had 14 results and by the writing of this post 85 students out of 500 have been surveyed. That’s pretty impressive for a group of 11 students.

Our next steps will be to look at this data and make decisions about where we will focus our time. I’m so excited by the energy and passion that this group has. All 11 boys truly want to be a part of the process and they’re stepping up to offer ideas and make decisions.

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