Mr Hammerlund

As some teachers and I were waiting outside for the morning bell to ring last spring, I saw students outside taking responsibility for watering the garden. It was unexpected, but highly appreciated. They took time to water every plant and then showed their accountability by making sure they put away the equipment when they were done. I saw students observe plants and nature as well as ask questions about what they were seeing. The students around the green area were each engaged with it at their own levels and interests. Tohoku International School, located in Sendai, Japan, has a small student population. As with every good school, we are constantly working to make learning meaningful and exciting for our students. Last year teachers on the elementary team got together and made plans for a way to utilize the space behind our school that was not being used. It was decided we would make five small gardens, one for each class in elementary and one for the secondary students, plus a p...

This year I have tried taking more time for reflection on learning. At the end of our first unit, all those moons ago, I tried a switch to a different way of having the students do their portfolios. I tried using one of Kath Murdoch's reflection sheets - Targeting Your Learning . I chose this particular one because I thought the coloring and the targets looked the most friendly for grade ones and twos. That first time I had the students reflect on their work in this way, many of the students had forgotten the assignments they had chosen to reflect on. From there I decided to have them reflect right after they complete a task. Of course, there is not always time to do that, but the more we do it, the smoother it goes. For my next unit, I want my students to even more reflection on their learning, as well as reflection about how they learn.

The math attached to my new unit, Fairy Tales , is Data Handling and Probability. I came in ready to start the math portion of the unit getting to know what the students knew about graphs, but after I visited the kindergarten room, I came away with the idea for a name graph. The name graph picture showed squares with letters on it lined up like a bar graph (like what is shown above). Especially after seeing what they knew (or thought they knew) about graphs, this was appealing since it was straight-forward and seemed like a good way to get them into graphing. But this graph has been more than I had expected. It is allowing me to: have the students start to learn how to develop questions from data go into addition and subtraction concepts. My question for them today was, "How many ways can you get ten letters with the names?" My next will be to assign a point value for each letter and have them add and subtract with them. introduce averaging (thank you CD !) in...

Many moons ago now when it was still warm out and the students would come in from recess looking like they just got out of a pool, I tried an idea [I got from one of the Japanese teachers] to help my students better grasp word families; words with the same pattern. This beginning was a great way to assess where my students were. Could they see the pattern? Did they know words that ended in __op? As this was the beginning of the year, I put up on the board the pattern "__op". Then I asked the students to give me a letter to fill in the word. While the students were giving me ideas, I put them on the board. While I was doing this, I was explaining the words they did not know. I did this until they gave me a word that made no sense. As soon as they gave me that word (this time it was wop ), I put it on the board and told them that a wop was an animal and they had to draw it. They all looked at me as if I were crazy and doing something really unfair. They complained th...

After hearing about these search lessons on  thethinkingstick.com , I had to try it. I have been meaning to write a reflection on my experience for a while now; better late than never. I was excited to see what my students knew about a search engine. After seeing how proficient some kindergartners were with an iPad, flipping around and finding pictures with ease, I was prepared to be pleasantly surprised by my own class. Something I did not anticipate however, was that our school network blocked the ads from Google (at least that's what I assume was happening since no ads showed up). So, I modified the lesson a little bit. I started by showing them the different aspects of a search results page. Since I am teaching grade 1-2, I focused on the "Images" tab and how to find images. The above picture is a search I did today, and this did not happen last time, but if I was doing the lesson today, I would also talk about the information to the right...

Today I was showing my kids some pictures from our sports day yesterday, and one boy commented on this photo by saying, "It's good but it's all boketeru [blurry]." I tried to explain to him that the blur was a good thing because it makes it easier to see the subject. He just smiled at me.

I love music. I have been listening to music and have enjoyed singing for as long as I can remember. I picked up the guitar in college, and for several years in my twenties, I was in a band. Music has played a significant role in my life. I know the power of music and I wanted to incorporate it more into my teaching this year. I have done more singing and dancing with my students, but wanted to write some memoriable and catchy songs related to our units. Easier said than done. Now we are looking at the Earth and learning about the continents. The studnets had been having trouble remembering their names and suddenly I remembered that there is a continents song. I went on Youtube and found it . I am amazed at how much they like it, and how quickly they remembered the vocabulary. I really need to write a song for my next unit.

Today was our sports day. It was a half day of fun outside playing games. Parents came, teachers participated, and the kids had fun. I think we could have gotten a lot done this morning based on what we did in the afternoon. But we did it for the kids. I spent a few hours tonight going through the two hundred and some pictures I took today. I had to sort through them, edit them, and move them so I can access them tomorrow. While I was finishing up I thought of the other things I could have done with my time. But then I thought of the kids faces when they watch the video of themselves having fun. I thought of the memories they will have of today. It was for them.

I am trying to incorporate more hands-on activities this year; more building, more constructing, more tinkering. To demonstrate how paleontologists retrieve bones from the ground, I put some plastic dinosaur bones in some plastic trays and buried them in dirt. I had the trays out for a while before we did this, so the students all knew what was in them after digging in them themselves, but the purpose of this activity was not to find what was inside, but rather to be scientists and to use the clues we find to paint a picture. I was also able to show them how to make a grid, as shown below, so they could record exactly (or as accurately as first and second graders can) what they saw. 1 2 3 A B C I have more bones buried in the garden which I want to use as an activity to build on this one. That is, if the weather ever clears up.

Yesterday we went on a fild trip for our unit Finding Out About the Past . In our inquiry into how the Earth changes and the different animals from the past, we talked about how scientists find clues in the ground and piece together a story. I wanted the students to see an actual site, and fortunately there are several historical villages around Sendai and the Tohoku region from the Jomon Period .  This was the first time I took them out on a field trip, and they had such interesting questions. Next time we go I think I will have them either write them down, or better yet, record them so we can talk about them later. Since we are currently studying geometry, we discussed the shapes they saw in the houses. The highlight of that was when they drew the houses, one girl drew a heart on hers. The world needs more hearts.

There is not enough time in the day. There is too much to do. There is so much more I want to do with my students. I find myself saying this a lot lately. I am not sure where the time goes. I certainly do not feel like I am wasting classroom time, but I do feel like I could be spending it better. We just returned from autumn break, and during that time I reevaluated our weekly schedule. I decided to try adding more time for Language Arts during the week, and then have bigger chunks of time on Fridays for Unit Studies. Today was the first day I tried it out, and it was refreshing how much I felt like we got done today. It is funny how rearranging classes can have that affect.