Collazo Cove

Thanks to my great colleague, Danita, for passing along this link to a December 3rd BBC News article entitled, "Children Who Use Technology Are 'Better Writers'". My favorite quote from the article states, "The more forms of communications children use the stronger their core literary skills." I couldn't agree more, and am seeing it in our classroom as we pilot the 1:1 initiative this year.

In an effort to prepare my kids for two upcoming events at the end of this week, we are once again, very busy! The kids are getting ready to take the second of the state's formal writing assessments. This one must relate to content information they have learned. The fourth grade team chose to focus on Roanoke Island, the Mystery of the Lost Colony. As we were watching a short video and reading an article about the Lost Colony together, they were given the choice to take notes in their notebooks, or on their netbooks using a Word document. All but 1 chose the computer! They will be able to use these notes as they pilot the writing test for the first time on their netbooks. I am anxious to see the results!

Also, we are preparing to enjoy a theatrical presentation of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" this Friday. I decided to use this week to study the story as our literacy work. I was fortunate enough to find this wonderful unit written by Kim Meyer from South Carolina. It has some wonderful activities to go along with the story, including creating an old English village reminiscent of that in which Dickens lived. We've begun collecting our cereal boxes which will turn into a decorated village! I'm currently selecting some sites with illustrations for the kids to go by, so look for picture of our village to appear soon!
[caption id="attachment_290" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Reading, Writing, Speaking!"][/caption]

There are several things in our classroom that have made the 1:1 situation run more smoothly and efficiently. Although on this blog I have spoken mostly about software and web 2.0 merging with the curriculum, these five minor details have added a great deal of instructional time (not to mention CALM) to our day!

#1: Tables - We started the year with 22 desks. However in preparation for the netbooks, I decided to exchange the desks for four long tables. This has really helped my kids collaborate more easily, gain an identity (the table groups include the Shark Sandbar, Barnacle Bay, Jellyfish Junction, and Stingray Station), and have plenty of room for notebooks/textbooks alongside their netbooks.
[caption id="attachment_280" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Tables at the Cove"][/caption]

#2: Chair Bags - These organizational miracles have helped for two reasons. Our classroom is in a mobile unit (we call them "Learning Cottages") so there is absolutely no storage! In addition, due to losing the storage provided by the desks, we needed a place to keep our "stuff". We decided all textbooks would be stored on a few bookcases we have in the room (which works out because we use them only for occasional support) and we sent home many notebooks that would not be needed now that we have our netbooks! We purchased the chair bags from a wonderful company called Happi-Nappi. They are made of very sturdy denim with extremely durable, reinforced seams. They have one large pocket for our clipboards, notebooks, and larger items, as well as two small pockets for our pencils/pens and little necessities!
[caption id="attachment_281" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="The Cove\'s Chair Bags"][/caption]

#3: 15 foot long surge protectors - We started with an old laptop cart that was not being used. Thanks to our technology director, we were able to get several long extension surge protectors to replace it. This has been beneficial for several reasons. Storing the netbooks in a cart adds a lot of wear and tear on the computers and cords. Now, they stack nicely on our tables at the end of the day and I take about 3 minutes (literally) to bring the cords (already plugged into the surge protectors) to the computers. We call them our Octopus Arms! It has also added learning time to our classroom. I unplug the arms every morning before the kids get in the room, store them close to the various outlets, and the kids are able to get right into their work! Much less chaos and chance for accidents when the charged netbooks are already on the tables!
[caption id="attachment_282" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="One Octopus Arm!"][/caption]

#4: Sharing bins - Prior to getting these dollar store storage bins, kids were always getting up to get supplies (borrowing pencils, getting crayons, sharpening their pencils, etc.) which takes longer than you might think in an elementary classroom! These bins have become community sharing boxes. They are each marked with the group name (Sharks, Barnacles, Jellyfish, and Stingrays). Each group decided early on they would pool their individual storehouses of materials and share with each other! How wonderful!! They've even taken pride in making sure their bin is more organized than other groups'.
[caption id="attachment_283" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="The Sharks\' Sharing Bin"][/caption]

#5: Clipboards - The tables I purchased for the classroom are not smooth on the surface (lesson learned!). They have minute grooves and bumps. The kids hate writing directly on top of them. In addition, we participate in a program called Clipboard Math (we call ours Pirate Ship Math) in which there are 6 posters around the room which house math problems that are changed several times throughout the week. The kids' clipboards (which I purchased at the Dollar Store as well) play three roles. They create a smooth surface on which write, they make working while moving about the room very easy, and they organize the loose papers that are needed on a daily basis (spelling list, Tic-Tac-Toe Spelling, Pirate Ship Math template, etc.). We have almost no papers being lost since we put these to use. And, they fit nicely into our chair bags!
[caption id="attachment_284" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Colorful Clipboards"][/caption]

So, although these things may seem minor to the outsider looking in, they are crucial elements of our classroom's efficiency and time on task throughout the day! Something to consider...

As many of you know, I've been struggling to feel comfortable with my language arts program this year. I think I'm finally getting to a point where I'm using strategies that match my beliefs about what is important in a literacy program while still preparing my kids for the all-important End of Grade test.
I am very thankful for Laura Candler's newsletters and wonderful site. Having used Accelerated Reader as the backbone of her reading program (just as we do at my school), this year she has given it up for other foundational experiences for her kids. Her transition has been perfect timing for me, since I have never really loved AR either!
After reading about her use of Reader's Workshop, and exploring other wonderful sites like that of Mandy Gregory which also provide support for using Reader's Workshop, I decided to give it a try!
Today I taught my first mini-lesson (using the picture book The Rough-Faced Girl by Rafe Martin) on WOW pages. My kids were so engaged and excited to use their sticky notes to find their own WOW pages, I was amazed!
Tomorrow we will work on using the notes from our WOW stickies to write some reactions on our reading wiki pages.
Between our Comprehension Krill, Spelling Tic-Tac-Toe, Literature Circle Groups, and the Reader's Workshop mini-lessons, I am hoping all the great ingredients are coming together for a powerful literacy program!

Some things happen for a reason! I had been wanting to download Skype onto our netbooks for quite some time, but hadn't had the minute to do it (it literally takes just about that long). So when my Principal came to me today (at 11:00) asking if my kids would like to Skype with a gathering at the Cental Office in about an hour, I hesitantly said, "Sure, we'll do it!" The last day before any holiday is a little stressful, but what the heck!

So I quickly downloaded Skype onto one of our mini HP's (and our IT savior, Donna, came to help us out! Thank you!). My students had not actually written any Thanksgiving stories, but we sure had been doing a lot of research on the 1st Thanksgiving! I chose one of the students I knew I could count on in a pinch to not freak out, and sure enough she even found a perfect Thanksgiving story to read from the Internet (Thank you, Jordyn!). We tweaked it a bit, she practiced it over lunch, and at 12:30 the Skype call went flawlessly! The netbook's video was perfect and the sound was loud enough for all the students in the room to enjoy!

Thanks to Mrs. Johnson for thinking of us, and allowing us to join the festivities downtown, and now world.... here we come!
Skype anyone?
[caption id="attachment_273" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Skype at the Cove!"][/caption]

Last week another teacher and I were talking about a graduate class she had taken in which they talked about the stereotypes we teach children in traditional schooling related to the early Native Americans, Colonists, and the first Thanksgiving. Since my class has been studying the early North Carolina tribes, we had also been talking about stereotyping Native Americans. We've had some wonderful discussions, many about the Cherokee and the Trail of Tears.

How wonderful to be checking out some old bookmarks blogged by super-teacher Kelly Hines this weekend! One of the sites she had added to her social bookmarking site was "You Are the Historian - Investigating the First Thanksgiving". My kids spent a good part of this morning working through the site, which is very kid-friendly and interesting (many parts are read aloud, which was great for my struggling readers!). They were instructed to put some of the interesting "truths" about the first Thanksgiving onto a few PowerPoint slides which we will pull together as a class presentation and post to our website. They were very engaged, which allowed me to meet with our new Literature Circle groups for some fantastic book conversations! More on our new Lit. Circle groups in a future post! And make sure you check back to view our PowerPoint!
[caption id="attachment_269" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="You Are the Historian - Investigating the First Thanksgiving"][/caption]

Can I just say how much I love Edmodo? I used it some last year with my 6th graders, and just introduced it to my 4th graders! One of their first comments was "Mrs. C. we get to use Facebook?" LOL! This tool, if you haven't used it already, is so easy to set up with a class, and fanastically simple to use!

I recently started a morning warm-up program called our daily Comprehension Krill. Since we are the Cove, stickin' with the ocean theme again! So, each day the kids are sent to a short reading comprehension article or story with some multiple choice questions that focus on a particular comprehension skill. (Found a great site through NC State for this here) According to our 1st quarterly assessment results my kids could use an ocean-load of work on understanding supporting details!

Edmodo to the rescue! I send them the link to the day's passage using their link tool and they return their answers to me in a short "note". It is simple to grade and so organized, I can whip through their responses in no time, and we can go over commonly missed questions right away! And they love the fact that it looks like Facebook! Very cool!
Daily Comprehension Krill!

So we've been having these great workshops on how best to differentiate in our classrooms, spurred mostly by the administration's focus on classroom teachers working with small groups throughout the day rather than teaching to the "whole". Although this comes naturally to K-3 teachers, for those of us teaching 4th and up that's not necessarily the case, even though it makes so much sense!

Well, one of our last presenters shared the wonderful strategy of using a tic-tac-toe board with choices of assignments to meet certain academic goals. Yes, this strategy has been around for years and years, and I had used it eons ago, but just like going to the grocery store, you get into ruts in teaching and find yourself doing the same old things - often forgetting other great tools!

Given our 1:1 situation, I decided to create a tic-tac-toe for our spelling program to include technology activities. You can check it out on our Cove Spelling Page HERE. This week was our first stab at it. The kids were so involved! Most of the skills were fairly new, including the part about uploading most of their artifacts the spelling page of their wiki (you can check it out HERE). So it took a little longer to get things done than it will once they get used to the actual technology skills. I had some quick learners who became my experts for others, which was wonderful!

Now, I know there are pros and cons to sharing grades publicly, but I decided to grade their components right on the wiki so they could have immediate feedback. They loved being able to open their page and see their grades. And since we're using the wiki as a digital portfolio, their parents can see the grades right away as well.

Well, today was the big end of week test. Just so you know, last week my class scored an average of a 79.8 on the 20 word test. Nothing to phone home about! I don't think many of them glanced at their lists or the "old" practice activities more than the 5 minutes it took them to mindlessly get them done. This week was different! They were engaged with their spelling words every day. The difference shows up in the scores! Our average for this week? Are you sitting down? A whopping 93.9! Eleven of my 19 kids scored a 100 on the test. Proud? Yes, I was proud, but they were even more proud! Proud that they learned some new technology skills, proud that they completed some more interesting tasks, and proud that they knew the words (easily!) come Friday!

A great way to end the week!

Photo Credit: Refrigerator Letters from http://www.flickr.com/photos/peterbox/