First Annual Author's Celebration

A few months have past since school began, and the students all have multiple projects that showcase their hard work and creativity across all subject areas.  Sometimes things get so hectic here at school that unless we have a publishing party with the parents or share our work with another class we forget how much fun it is to just share with each other.  And so our First Annual Author's Celebration was born!

Each of the students selected one project they were most proud of to showcase during the celebration.  The students broke up into small groups and rotated throughout the classroom visiting their peers works stations where they watched movies, read stories together, asked questions about each other's work, talked about why they were proud of their projects, etc.  I think the pictures are proof of how much fun it was and why it's important to slow down and smell the roses so to speak!

Thanksgiving Memories

Leading up to the Thanksgiving holiday the kids began a writing project in between the completion on their personal narratives and our big holiday project. Since they've now learned how to use many of the different apps on their device, I wanted to give them a choice of whether they would like to create an iMovie or an ebook because I believe student choice to be an important part of our classroom. No matter which option they chose, the kids focused on topics such as what they do on Thanksgiving, what they are thankful for, what their favorite Thanksgiving food is, and why they think Thanksgiving is great.  As you can see, the Adventures in Multiage crew has a lot to be thankful for!

Video Dec 03, 1 24 32 PM from Jamestown Elementary School on Vimeo.

Video Dec 03, 1 24 31 PM from Jamestown Elementary School on Vimeo.

Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall... you won't be able to choose a favorite!

A few weeks back the kids explored the four seasons and the adaptations  plants, animals and animals make because of the changing weather. Working together with groups they created posters to depict each of the seasons, on which they were to include at least one animal making an adaptation for their season, show what a tree would look like during it, and depict themselves in outfits that are appropriate to the season.  Using their creativity, they added details about different activities that may occur during winter, spring, summer, and fall.  You may have a favorite season, but it will be hard to choose your favorite among their four posters! 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving from our class to you!  As students finished working on their Thanksgiving iMovies and ebooks last week, a few of them took it upon themselves to video the members of our class and what they're thankful for this year.  The resulting video is absolutely adorable and really captures what's important to our first and second graders.  The best part about this was that it was made completely by the kids!  Enjoy!



Thanksgiving from Jamestown Elementary School on Vimeo.

Kindergarten Sharing

One of the best parts about creating our technology projects (or any project for that matter) is getting to share our hard work.  The students not only did a fantastic job on their retelling projects, but they've also grown leaps and bounds as readers since just September.  I thought it may be fun to not only share their videos with a Kindergarten class in our school, but also read the book that it was inspired by to some of their younger schoolmates.  We had so much fun going back to our Kindergarten roots with Ms. Gray's students, and some of the kids even got to visit with siblings. Another fun "adventure in Multiage" complete!

Explain Everything... for the very first time

One of the challenges of teaching Multiage (both first and second grade in one class) is having a wide range of abilities in the same classroom.  This is especially true for math, which is why I love to teach math in workshop model.  This year I have some very talented mathmeticians, who were ready to take their thinking to the next level during our first unit.  The iPads ended up being the perfect tool for them to demonstrate their problem solving abilities.  This group of students wrote their own number pattern story problems based off of questions we had been working on during our mini-lessons. The students then used the app Explain Everything to create slides explaining their thinking and how to solve the problem. 

Full Disclosure: I have never used Explain Everything before and this was a complete learning experience for both my students and myself, but they picked up the features of the app even faster than I did.  Every day during our meeting to check in on their progress, one of them had a new feature they had discovered to share with the group.  As we learn more about the app and get to become experts at using it I can't wait to see what products my students produce.  If this first experience is any indication, more excellent work lies ahead!



Roller Coaster from Jamestown Elementary School on Vimeo.
JJ's Pizza Place from Jamestown Elementary School on Vimeo.

Pumpkins have Character Traits too!

I couldn't let the opportunity of decorating character pumpkins pass us by without tying it to our reading workshop lessons, which fit perfectly with what we'd been learning about character traits! We began exploring characters not just by what they look like, but by digging deeper to investigate through their actions, feelings, and thoughts.  After the students picked the character they'd like to decorate their pumpkin as, it was time for them to become character detectives.  They had to find at least three character traits for their character, and back it up with a piece of evidence from the book.  The examples they came up with were not only insightful, but in some cases very witty!  They typed their traits up in the app Pages and added both a picture of their pumpkins and an illustration they had made.  The best part about this project was how perfectly it combined our learning with good old fashioned Halloween fun.

Halloween Book Characters

Halloween is such a fun time in first and second grade and this year our school held it's first ever Book Character Pumpkin contest.  Each class decorated a pumpkin to look like their favorite book characters, and everyone was awarded a prize.  Our class created the characters Stingray, Lumphy, and Plastic from the book "Toys Go Out," a book I love to use as a just for fun chapter book read aloud, and we were awarded "Best Overall."  Seeing how excited the kids were, I decided (some days I thought it was against my better judgement!) it would be fun for them to each create their own book character from a pumpkin and decorate it however they want.  That meant for a few days our class was covered in streamers, tissue paper, glue, tempura paint, googly eyes, and the list goes on. It may have looked like a slight disaster zone, but the end results were worth it.  Check out our book characters below! More tomorrow on who we tied it in to our reading workshop lessons and of course a second book project....

Bringing Our Favorite Books to Life!

One of the things we love most in our class is to read.  My goal this year is to have the students complete at least one book project a quarter, and instead of assigning them a book to complete whatever project they're working on about, I think this is a great opportunity for the kids to pick books that they love.

In some of our mini-lessons this first quarter we had spent a time learning how to retell stories including the setting, characters, problem, an event from beginning, middle, and end, and finally the solution.  The students chose a book they would like to retell, and to really bring them to life I had each create a retelling moving on their iPads.  The first step was to write at least one sentence for each part of the retelling. After creating an illustration to match each sentence in Drawing Pad, the final step was to put it all together in iMovie. By using the voice recording feature, each student created a short video that retells their story using their own words and illustrations. It's been very powerful for the kids to hear their own voices retelling the story.  Next week we plan to visit a kindergarten class in our school where the kids will read the books then share their retelling videos.  Until then, enjoy these sneak peeks of some of our favorite stories!

Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late from Jamestown Elementary School on Vimeo.

Duckling Retelling from Jamestown Elementary School on Vimeo.

Welcome to Multiage University!

Welcome to Multiage University! Why Multiage University, you ask?  Every year I love to create an inviting, conducive space for learning in my classroom.  Being that I teach first and second grade, I'm always trying to think of a class theme that will excite my students and capture them from the second they come down the hall to our classroom. In a cute play off this summer's kid favorite "Monster's University," Multiage University came to life. 

To keep with the theme, our first writing project of the year was to create a "Meet My Monster" poster introducing the other Jamestown students to an M.U. monster they created.  To help learn the writing process, the students took their monster from beginning to end including brainstorming, first draft, peer edit, revising, teacher edit, and final draft.  Their product was typed in the iPad app Pages, and the students created a portrait of their monster using the app Drawing Pad. Merging the two together in pages was the final step in bringing their monster to life.  Huge eyeballs and multiple arms galore.... meet our monsters!

Departing on a New Adventure

Last Spring, our school's fabulous Information Technology Coordinator, Camilla Gagliolo, came to me and asked if I'd be interested in participating in a 1:1 iPad pilot program with my class come September. Excitement shot through me as I thought about the possibilities a program like this could offer my students in terms of creativity, innovation, and differentiation. But even more than excitement, I was proud.  Proud because I knew this invitation was a direct result of the terrific work my students were already doing with the technology our school is so fortunate to have.  So as we depart on this new adventure, I invite you to share in it with us.  Because after all life is just better in first and second grade! :)