Relax, They Can Do It

After moving from teaching grades 3-4 to grades 1-2 this year, I was unsure of what the students would be able to do.

I got into the classroom and I felt a little uneasy.

I felt off balance.

I put on the kid gloves and began the year.

We used a lot of paper. We painted. We cut. We did things you would expect a [1995] lower elementary class to do. Sure, we went to the computer lab, but I was not pushing them to explore technology.

Then I signed up for COETAIL and to complete my assignments I had to push my students into areas I did not think they were ready for.

We dove into using Google Apps, I had them logging into different accounts, researching, finding answers to their own questions, finding answers to my questions, and learning new ways to express ourselves.

Photo Credit: mariandy_gizfel via Compfight cc

I thought about how far my class has come this year today when one of my students asked me what roly polys eat. (A roly poly is also known as a pill bug or a wood louse. It rolls up into a ball when it gets frightened. See the picture to the left.) For the past week or so, several of my students have been spending their time making a roly poly town.

Town in the making

When they came in after building, one student asked what roly polys eat. Since I had no idea, I got the iPads and passed them out.

I wrote the question on the board and asked the students what they thought roly polys might eat. I wrote each response on the board. Then I told them to go ahead and find out what roly polys eat.

It only took a few minutes for one boy to come up to me and show me what he found. He got the answer off of a wiki answers site. Other students were right there with him. Several of the students (and it was interesting because it was mostly girls) used Image Search. They found the answer too, but they did not know it.

This brought forth a whole new set of questions about its habitat, if they would survive in the structure they built for it, and where its mouth is.

I sat there amazed at how much they can do, and how much we will do next year.