Letting Students Shine

Tomorrow is the first gathering of our new stop motion video club which has now been named Scotty Dog Productions.  I must say I am full of excitement and nerves as I have never actually made one myself but have seen plenty of examples, read blogs about and discussed them with others.  Word surfaced at school of a 5th grader who has developed a passion for stop motion videos and it was suggested to approach him as a support person for this journey. Tony (over at Learn Me Sumthin') and I agreed we would approach him with the idea of being a mentor to kids in the group.

The art teacher had shown me one of the movies this student had created and I was very impressed by it.  He had created a scene that could have taken place during an Indiana Jones movies.  He used a toy car, an Indiana Jones figure and then a "bad guy" figure.  The gist of the scene is that the "bad guy" is in the car and Indiana Jones throws him out and takes over the car.

I called this student's mother to run the idea by her and I could tell in her voice that the idea of her child taking on a mentoring role would mean a lot to this student.  He hasn't had much of a chance to come forward as a leader and this would be a wonderful opportunity to highlight one of his strengths.  When I pulled him out of class and asked him if he would be willing to share his videos with the group and help us guide them through the process of creating videos of their own you could actually see the excitement start radiating from him.  I feel like we have given this student a chance to shine in a leadership role that might not have occurred without this group being formed.  

Here's to hoping tomorrow's first gathering of Scotty Dog Productions goes well!

If You Give A Teacher Technology

Have you ever had the chance to read books written by Laura Numeroff?  One of her bestsellers is If You Give A Mouse A Cookie and it follows a wonderful pattern.  If you give the mouse a cookie they are going to want milk.  If you give them the milk they are going to want a straw and so on.  Today I had the pleasure of sitting down with one of the teachers in my building and showing her our district's Wiki/Blog.  Our conversation reminded me of the pattern of this book!

We started off the conversation with clarifying the difference between the two web tools.  Wikis being a collaborative space for multiple users to have input and Blogs typically being an individual's work where others can comment.  As I showed her some examples of how these tools were being utilized in other classrooms I could see the wheels turning and her thoughts running wild.

So I had her back up and tell me what she was thinking about doing before we had started chatting and exploring and she had shared that she was going to have kids post a sentence or two about what they had learned that day.  But she shared that with seeing all the possibilities of what other students had produced using these tools, and through our discussion, she felt like there were so many different directions she could go and she needed to rethink how to use Wikis and Blogs.

So we are scheduled to sit down again on Friday and continue our conversation.  I am so excited to see how her thinking has evolved and where she is going to take her students (and me!) on this journey in using Web 2.0 tools!

Growing and Learning (Slice of Life Day Thirty-One)

Whoo Hoo!  I made it!  31 Slice of Life posts in 31 days!

I am sitting here in my dining room with the sun streaming in the open windows with a breeze gently flowing in while I reflect on this writing challenge and how it has helped me grow and learn.

There is a wonderful picture book by Edith Pattou titled Mrs. Spritzer's Garden.  In the book a teacher plants and cares for a group of seeds (symbolizing students) over the year by caring for them and giving them what they need to succeed.  I feel that at the beginning of this experience I was a bit like a new seed - tossed into the ground without really knowing how the journey was going to go.  With a bit of watering and tending from my writing community's words of encouragement, I stretched my writing skills and grew out of my seed casing into a wee flower.  Thinking back to my posts some days I grew rapidly by really focusing in on one slice of my day and carefully crafting my writing with choice words.  Other days I didn't grow as much through hastily thrown together posts or distracted writing.  At the conclusion of this daily writing challenge I feel like an early spring flower - just sprouting out of the ground with the hope of someday growing into a blossoming, colorful flower.  

Thank you to the "master gardeners" Stacey and Ruth for inspiring us to write about slices of our lives!   Thank you to all the "gardeners" of the Slice of Life challenge!

Bring On The Grocery Shopping (Slice of Life Day Thirty)

Today was one of those days where a trip to the grocery store was necessary due to the complete lack of food in our home.  I prepared for the trip like a Girl Scout troop preparing for a camping trip.  I took stock of what was in the pantry and refrigerator.  A game plan for upcoming meals was mapped out.  The coupon organizer was poured through and assisted in the creation of the seemingly never-ending list that was developing.  After a quick check in with my husband to make sure I had what he needed written on the list, I grabbed my keys, reusable bags, the bag of coupons and the checklist and headed out the door.

I love going grocery shopping in the middle of a weekday because there is less people to try and maneuver around in the aisles.  I try my best to organize my list in order of how the store is mapped out so I don't forget anything, but in evidently I always have to double back for something I missed.  With the quickness and concentration of a Jedi I moved through the aisles plucking items off shelves and tossing them into the cart.  With a sense of accomplishment I crossed things off the list with gusto.  At last I approached the checkout lane and proceeded to load up the conveyor belt with all my purchases.

Now comes the best moment - how much did I save in coupons?  Each time I grocery shop like this I feel like it is a challenge to myself to save as much as possible with coupons from the Sunday paper.  With great satisfaction today's total savings just from coupons was $14!  

Spring Cleaning Mission Monday (Slice of Life Day Twenty-Nine)

Nick over at thenerdyteacher posted on his blog a Mission Monday challenge to those who wish to accept it.  Traditionally during the season of spring people engage in spring cleaning of their homes.  In his post he proposes that people also take the time to do some digital cleaning of their home and/or school computers.

I tend to be one of the those people that like to hold onto various items for memories, or to possibly be used later in life or with the hope that it will inspire me to try something new.  I am not a hoarder however!    When my husband and I moved into our house late last fall and we were packing our apartment up I got over saving some things really fast and let go of them either through pitching them or donating them.  Today as I move through cleaning our new house I need to keep this in mind to help me weed through things that really need to be kept or things that can be removed from our house.

I also need to repeat that practice and go through my laptop files, RSS feeds and bookmarks.  I am certain I will find some files that could be deleted and others that could be saved for the future.  My bookmarks definitely need reorganized and I have played with the idea of moving them over to a social bookmarking site like Delicious.  Maybe now is the time!  Also, my RSS feeds need to be weeded through so I can make some decisions of which I should keep, if I need to delete any or if there are any I need to add to my Google Reader.

So now that I have said I am going to do all of this I need to get moving on it all!    

Love My Parents (Slice of Life Day Twenty-Eight)

Quite simply put - I love my parents!

Today my husband and I are going on a date adventure.  We won tickets to go to the Cleveland Cavaliers game today and we decided to make a day trip out of it and visit some friends as well.  We have a dog and since we would be gone most of the day we needed someone to either come to our house and let her out a few times or someone be willing to adopt her for the day.  Parents to the rescue!  They kindly volunteered to have her come to their house for a "sleepover" with them and their dogs.  So now we don't have to rush back to get her this evening before my parents head to bed!  Yeah Mom and Dad!

Also, this morning my husband had to attend a work meeting before we could leave town.  So I dropped him off at the meeting and then headed to my parents house to drop off the dog.  Bless my mother for greeting me at the door with a "Do you need a cup of coffee?"  Yes!  So as I settled into their couch to drink it my father so kindly offered to make me breakfast.  Yes again!  I felt like I was back home visiting from college as he whipped up eggs, bacon and toast for me.  Nothing tastes better than a home-cooked meal that you didn't have to prepare or clean up! 

So now I am sitting at a Panera (with a pleasantly full belly) down the street from my husband's work waiting patiently to get the call to go pick him so we can head off on our date day! 

Stop Motion Video Club (Slice of Life Day Twenty-Seven)

After hearing about, reading about and thinking about stop motion videos this year my friend Tony over at Learn Me Sumthin' and I are plunging into this world with a group of 3rd and 4th graders.  We decided to start small this year focusing on two grade levels and then next year possibly branch into more grade levels.  The group will meet once a week for 5 weeks for an hour after school.  We sent out the forms this past week and I was not quite sure what the response would be.

The response was awesome!  We have 38 students who brought back forms expressing interest in joining the "club".   So now we have to start laying some foundations for this to get off the ground successfully.  We are crafting an agreement for the students to sign laying out the expectations for group members.  Anyone have ideas of what we could include?

A big thank you to Kevin at Kevin's Meandering Mind for inspiring this journey!