Question for the Next Meeting

If we are supposed to integrate our teaching, then why is there a seperate box for Unit Studies? Doesn't this further confuse parents [especially since the majority of our students are non-native English speaking]?

Watch the Grass Grow

"I saw the grass growing."

How did she know that is what we will do soon?

I found a great idea for this lesson about watching grass grow and finding how much it grows in a minute. I think some of my students will be able to get down to a minute, some might do a day.

In other news I am doing my report cards now. Last night I opened one from my email, worked on it, pushed the save button several times along the way, and woke up today to realize that I did not save it to a specific folder. That report card is gone and has to be redone.

As I tell my students, always, always, always, make sure you "save as" files before you close them. And another thing I tell them - mistakes happen; just try to learn from this one.

Expressive Translation

Before we go on our field trip on Friday, we had to explain to the students how to make the jewelry out of rocks.

The first time I had them draw designs, they were too complicated to make and would take forever. I brought in a woman from the office to help explain to them what to do.

Beetle Inquiry

The beetles I brought into my room (along with the box of dung I found them in) has brought on a life of its own.

To recap:

• While digging in the pile of horse dung to use as fertilizer, I found a larvae. Knowing that my students would love it, I put it in a bucket and brought it back to the school.
• Later that day the high school students found another one.
• I borrowed an aquarium from the science teacher and filled it with the same stuff I found the larvae in (which I don't think he'll ever want back)
• I offered to let anyone who wanted one to have one, and half the class said they wanted one, so I went out to the pile and got a total of ten for the class.
• One girl said her dad raises beetles, so I told her to write me up some rules on how to take care of them (writing integrated!)
• A boy brought in a book on beetles in his native Japanese (Japanese language integrated!)
• The Kindergarten who are studying living things, and Grade 1-2 classes both came in to check them out.
• The students are hypothesizing on what they will turn into using their prior knowledge and that from books to make their guesses. (I am pretty sure they will turn into kabuto mushi or rhinoceros beetles - at least that's what the maintenance guy said they would become.)
• Today students that do not normally play together all gathered around to read about beetles.

I would like to incorporate a math problem in here somewhere, I am thinking something with volume involving dirt in the aquarium.

I don't know the first thing about these beetles and I have learned more in the past week than I ever wanted to know. I just wish that our current unit was focused on bugs. And I hope these things turn into beetles sometimes soon.

Compare

Standardized testing - you know the when and the what and you can prepare [the students] for it.

Accreditation - you know the when and the what and you can prepare [the school] for it.

Unit of Inquiry Database

I had this idea for a unit of inquiry database where one could go and look at units other teachers had taught. I think it would be cool to see the different ways teachers plan [since I am from a small school of 14 total teachers].

Then I saw that the IB sells sample PYP units of inquiry.

I don't think my idea of a collaborative database will happen anytime soon.

When Trouble Happens

Today I took my kids to the computer lab to try a new way of exploring their questions. I made a Google Doc that had a table for all their questions. The students were then to go in and write their questions on a blank line. I gave them specific instructions to not go into others' lines. (That has happened before and it becomes a big mess.)

Everything was going great, I had the document on the projector so everyone could see what was happening, and I had the students at their own respective computers. I was thinking, "this is going better than I expected. We will be able to send this out today!"

Then something happened. Just as the Headmaster came in to talk about tomorrow's earthquake drill, someone happened to delete the column with all the questions in it. There was panic followed by groaning. I told them to stop what they were doing and I would try to fix it.

My repeated attempts to use CTL+z failed with Google giving me an error and telling me to reload the page.

There was no time left so I told them that we would do it again tomorrow, but if they wanted to, they could write their questions at home (that's what I love about using Google Docs).

I told them that next time they do something like that [make a big mistake] tell everyone to freeze. "Freeze" is now our code word to stop working on the document so we can fix it.

That was a period used to learn a valuable lesson. 

Tomorrow we will be back at it.

Try It On Friday

Last night I attended pypchat for the first time. The hardest part for me was trying to remember to put the hashtag on the end of my tweets. I am going to have to see if there is a way to get those automatically put in.

One idea put forth by DwyerTeacher was to have the students draw the Central Idea at the end of the unit. Fortunately, he works with me so I was able to ask him some more questions before the day started.

This Friday was the final day of the unit, and it was a wrap up day. I had some students who were finished with their work before the other students. I told them to think about the unit's Central Idea, and draw a picture about it. After brainstorming and talking about it a little, they turned the units CI from "The natural features of the Earth have been formed over time and are still changing," to "The Earth is changing every second".

The three of them worked together on it, which I encouraged, but they ended up all creating the exact same thing. I will remember to tell them to brainstorm together and then do their own work next time. Actually, next time I am going to change several things next unit.

The point is that I joined in a conversation for an hour and got several new ideas for my teaching. Where was this a few years ago?

The Japan Chapter of the ASCD has weekend technology workshops called "Try It On Monday". I might start calling pypchat "Try It On Friday".

Beetle Larvae Digging

I shot this for my students the other day.

I had just brought in some beetle larvae, I set them on top of the soil in the aquarium in the classroom [we are up to ten now]. As soon as I set them down, I could see them start to dig.

I grabbed my camera and started shooting away as the larvae were digging.

I thought this would be cool to show my students even though it is only a few seconds.

Another Angle

This is another picture of my students outside measuring for the garden.

Our design proposal was rejected, but that was not the purose of doing this to begin with.

Totally Unexpected

A few weeks ago I wrote myself a note in the reflection section of my unit planner. It says:

It was interesting to hear more than one student say after we had started learning about the inside of the Earth, that before learning about that, they had thought people are inside rather than on the surface of the Earth.

That is something I have not thought of myself, nor have I heard anyone ever say that before. It sounds like a fantasy book. It is hard for me to imagine what exactly the students thought the Earth was like prior to this unit.

This week I have been planning for my next unit and have been trying to rack my brain for unexpected questions like that.

Our next unit is about plants.

What If ...

MrDwyer over at Teaching Paradox posted an interesting question the other day: What if schools were open 24 hours a day?

Today while I was thinking about my next unit and what I would do with it, I wondered if I could do some collaborative lessons with another class in the school (as long as the units meshed).

As I was thinking of that I thought of this question:

How would collaborating across age groups help (or hinder) learning?