YHS Science Classes Teach 2nd Graders

Special Visitors

The second graders were treated to some special guest teachers this morning.  Students from the high school visited our classroom and taught the kids about a variety of science topics, including food chains, Ph levels, pollination, seeds/planting, and decomposers.  Be sure to ask your child about their favorite science center of the day!

 

(cross posted at News from Room 208)

Google Expeditions coming to YHS and YES

Recently,  Yarmouth High School was invited to take part in the Google Expeditions Pioneer Program. This program uses virtual reality to take students on tours of different kinds of places they may never be able to visit in real life. There are hundreds of curriculum based “tours”. The Expeditions Team will be coming to YHS on Thursday, April 7th for the entire day.

Coincidentally, our Teacher Technology time on Wednesday March 30 will be about using virtual reality and having some time to try it out, so you can see what it’s like.

The idea is for a teacher to pick an expedition and then create a mini lesson around it. Many expeditions fit with what we are doing right now in our curricula. Google brings all of the equipment. The list of expeditions is here.  There are over 180 options, so be prepared to browse! Use Command-F to search for keywords to see what is available (try World War, Rome, Asia, Biome, etc.). 

You can read more about Expeditions here. We are very excited to be able to bring this opportunity to our students. Stay tuned!

The following week the Expeditions team is scheduled to visit YES with two rooms of devices used by all classses in the school.

YEF Funded Flight Club from YES visits YHS Spirit Week

Some of the YES Flight Club students traveled to YHS on the final day of Spirit Week to help record the all school events in the Gym.

Scratch Unit for 4th Graders

Grade: 4
May-June Math Exploration Units
Project Name: Scratch Programming
Resources: ScratchEd

The setting: twenty-one 4th graders moving through a Scratch Curriculum that can be found on the ScratchEd community site for educators. There are an increasing amount of resources and ideas for using Scratch in the elementary grades including Wes Fryer's Scratch materials.

The backdrop: Last December we use the Scratch online activity to make holiday cards for the Hour of Code. Middle school students came and helped 4th graders with this introduction to Scratch and coding. In late May of this year I worked with the 4th grade team to develop explorations in math instruction; twenty-one fourth graders worked with me on Scratch for two or three days a week.

What it sounded like: The most common thing heard in the classroom each day was, "How'd you do that?". The spirit of communication, collaboration and creative exploration vibrated throughout the room.

What it looked like: Adapting the curriculum, I created folders of handouts for students to follow. The lessons and handouts are in this slideshow:

These photos and videos were captured with my cell phone as I was working with students so they are of limited quality, but they portray the activity and learning.

We started with the tutorial on the Scratch website as a review for everyone. Then they were charged with the task of "making something surprising" happen and share it.

Scratch learning is designed to support collaboration and students often worked in teams. With parent permission they were able to join the Scratch online community, upload their projects and view the structure of posted projects.

By the fourth class students were becoming experts at "debugging" scripts and moving on to making mazes, games and stories. At the end of each class students volunteered to share their projects and explain their learning.

This series of classes stands out for me as one of the most enjoyable, stimulating teaching experiences I've had. The students were engaged, sharing their learning and making progress from one day to the next. 

This quote from Howard Gardner was one of my inspirations for this Scratch activity:

High time for an example. We turn here to Scratch, a wonderful application created over the past two decades by Mitch Resnick, a valued colleague at MIT, and his colleagues. Building on Seymour Papert’s pioneering work with LOGO— a prototypical example of constructivist education— Scratch is a simple programming language accessible even to youngsters who have just reached school age. By piecing together forms that resemble pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, users of Scratch can create their own messages, be these stories, works of art, games, musical compositions, dances, or animated cartoons— indeed, just about any form in any kind of format. Moreover, users of Scratch can and do post their creations. Others around the world can visit these creations, react to them, build on them, and perhaps even re-create them in their own favored symbolic system. The genius of Scratch is twofold. First of all, it opens up a plethora of modes of expression, so that nearly every child can find an approach that is congenial with his or her own goals, strengths, and imaginations. Second, educational ends and priorities are not dictated from on high; rather, they can and do emerge from the child’s own explorations of the Scratch universe. In that sense, Scratch brings pleasure and comfort to those who believe in the constructivist view of knowledge. Not only are users building their own forms of meaning and constructing knowledge that they personally value, but they are epitomizing the claim of cognitivists that one learns by taking the initiative, making one’s own often instructive mistakes along the way, and then, on the basis of feedback from self and others, altering course and moving ahead. Howard, Gardner; Katie Davis (2013-10-22). The App Generation (p. 182). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

Global Awareness Project in 2nd Grade

Grade: 2
Teachers: Laura Wetmore and Cathy Wolinsky
Subjects: Reading, Writing, Social Studies
Project Name: FlatConnections - Building Bridges to Tomorrow in Grades K-2
Resources: FlatConnections Project

Once again we have a classroom participating in a global project communicating and collaborating with students across the U.S. and in some international settings. This year Laura Wetmore is participating with her class and they are posting to the project wiki. All classrooms are posting a multimedia greeting (called a "handshake") and a View from Our Window project. The project schools are divided into three working groups to collaborate on a topic, this year the topics will be Sharing Stories and Celebrations. Teachers are communicating via. email as well as a project "ning" and students are using Google Earth to "travel" to the various locations. This is an example of a project that meets the new Global Awareness theme of the updated Social Studies Framework.

This is a map of the schools in the project.

Lego WeDo Exploration

Grades: 3
Teachers: Grade 3 Team, Cathy Wolinsky
Subjects: Science, Math
Project Name: Lego WeDo
Resources: Yarmouth Education Foundation funding for materials and kits

Third graders are exploring the Lego Education materials called "Lego WeDo"during a set of class periods. The Computer Lab provides an open setting for students to work in pairs to select one of twelve projects. Working together they follow the directions to put together the blocks to make the project. Then they connect it to a computer so that the motor or sensor can follow a program students made using the Lego WeDo software.

This video shows the students working on their projects.

Hour of Code

Grades: 1-12
Teachers: Morgan Cuthbert, Mike Arsenault, Cathy Wolinsky, and Alice Barr
Subject: All
Project Name: Hour of Code

Resources: Yarmouth Coding Resources and Code.org

Thank you to YEF for their support in helping find volunteers to come in to classrooms and talk about working in a computer science field.

All students in grades 1-12 had an opportunity to participate in an "hour of code" activity that was appropriate to their grade level. This is a slide show of some students at Rowe using iPads and YES using laptops with assistants from HMS:

This is the slide show from the High school activities

iPads in the music class? Let me count the ways!

Grades: 2-4
Teacher: Karen Renton
Subject: Yarmouth Elementary School Music
Project Name: iPads in the music class? Let me count the ways!

The iPad has made a powerful presence in the YES classroom this year. Let me tell you about a few of the ways we have been using them. iPads for music learning have come from the Yarmouth Education Foundation (YEF), the Yarmouth Music Boosters and we also borrow the set from the YES Computer Lab.

CLASSICAL KIDS APP – This app is a story telling app that incorporates historical facts about various composers in an interesting part fictional story format, complete with lots of GREAT classical music. We have heard about Tchaikovsky, Bach, and Mozart’s Magic Flute. I find that these stories have worked really well in chapter type format, and also allows me the luxury of resting my voice and being able to step back and watch students.

THE STATES APP – This is very simply a map of the United States and it’s growth since the 1700’s. I used this first when we were learning the 50 Nifty United States song in the 3rd grade. Recently I used this app in the 4th grade when we were learning about the history of African American spirituals. It helped to show the split between the North and the South and the Ohio river, referred to as the Jordan River in so many spirituals.

PIANO GAMES APP – We used this app in both the 3rd and 4th grade when we were learning about beat and tempo. It tied in beautifully with the 3rd graders who study Countries. This app is a game that helps you to learn to play the National Anthems from various countries.

PIANO FREE APP- This app is simply a piano keyboard, and worked really well with the 3rd graders who have been learning to read 3, 4 and 5 note songs on various pitched instruments.

EXPLAIN EVERYTHING APP – This app worked really well with the 4th graders when they were learning how to write BAG songs for the recorder. Not only was it helpful with students that were absent and missed the initial instructions, but this app also allows you to take pictures. I was able to take pictures of all of the songs and then we were able to play all of them as a class! Way cool!

iAUTOHARP – I haven’t had a chance to use this app yet, but I’m looking forward to using this with 4th graders. They will be able to play chords on this autoharp app to accompany others who are playing recorder.

Science Exploration Recorded on our iPad

Grade: Third Grade

Teacher: Todd Abbott

Subject: Recording Science Exploration with our iPad

Project Description:

We created "rocks" using Epsom salts and container lids. Our panel of scientists will tell you more about that:

Quite impressive, aren't they?  Photos were brought to you by our Class Photographer Paige. Now we know how easy it is to make "How-To" videos using Explain Everything on the iPad!

Blogging Around the World 12/12/12

Grade: Third Grade

Teacher: Nicole Colfer

Subject: Student Blogging Day

Project Description:

Starting from an invitation by a teacher in Louisiana student bloggers from all over the world have joined together to list 12 of their FAVORITE things on 12.12.12! Also, it's 12:12pm Eastern Standard Time when we started this blog post! Here are our favorite things:

1. Favorite Video Games: Sky Landers, Super Mario Brothers, Up, Pac-Man, Angry Birds, FIFIA Cup 13, Derby, Indiana Jones 2, Star Wars, Just Dance Kids 2, Red Redemption, Lord of the Rings, Sponge Bob, Earth Movers.

2. Favorite Foods: sushi, chicken, shish kabob, chinese, chili,calzones, pancakes, waffles, plums, mahi-mahi, pizza, lobster, meatball soup, hot dogs, candy, raspberry, cheeseburgers

3. Favorite Places to Visit: Martha's Vineyard, New York, England, Sugarloaf, Canelli's, Florida, Shawnee Peak, Yarmouth Elementary School, Vermont, Boston, Washington, Monkey-See-Monkey-Do, Lego Land, Disney World, Italy, Crayola Factory, Alabama.

4. Best School Activities: Math, Lunch, Library, Music, Computer Lab, Gym, Recess, Writing, Reading, Art, Science.

5. Favorite Books: Mustard, Wings of Fire, Zoo Break, Because of Winn-Dixie, Socks, Captain Underpants, The Earth Dragon Awakes, Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, Stella Bats, Baily School Kids series, Super Diaper Baby, Harry Potter, Warrior series, Matilda, Jack and Annie, Mallory, Goosebumps, Bad Kitty series.

6. Favorite Things: kittens, cats, dogs, family, video games, sports, stuffed dog and animals, Crossfit Beacon, hockey, making comic books, basketball, making snowflakes, blankie, rocks, swimming, biking, soccer.

7. Favorite Movies: Because of Winn Dixie, Star Wars, Finding Nemo, Top Gun, Scooby Doo, Harry Potter, WillyWonka and the Chocolate Factory, Ralph S. Mouse, Indiana Jones, The Princess Bride, Avengers, Wreck It Ralph, Animal Planet.

8. Favorite Heroes: Underdog, Percy Jackson, Batman, HonSolo, Spiderman, Kit Fisto, Captain Underpants, Luke Skywalker, Hulk, Iron Man, Superman, Black Widow.

9. Favorite Villains: Lord Voldamort, Joker, Hacker, Wicked, Darth Maul, Darth Vader, Dr. Octopus, Goo-Man, Lizard Man, Boba Fett, the Penguin, Zurg, Dirty Bubble.

10. What to do with $12, 000,000?:  shopping spree, toys, motorcycle, buy a castle, snowmobile, limo with a hot tub in it, Ferri, iPad and iPhone, give it to charity, food, anything technology, buy one of everything, put it in the bank to get interest.

11. Favorite Christmas Present: ipod touch, iphone 5, ipad mini, littlest pet shops, high heel boots, keyboard, dirt bike, legos, candy maker, how to build a tree house book, DS 3, violin, gaming chair, Wii, Macbook Pro Laptop, play mobile set, Butterscotch the horse, and a pony.

12. We wish everyone a very Happy Holiday!!!!!  

(See the post and comments at: http://mrscolfersclass.blogspot.com/2012/12/blogging-around-world-on-121212.html)

Mrs. Colfer's Crew

Nexus 7s in Fourth Grade Classroom

Grade: Fourth Grade
Teacher: Kate Parkin
Subject: Pilot 1:1 Nexus 7s grant
Project Description:

The Nexus 7s arrived in Maine on Friday afternoon and we were able to give them to students just three days later. Kate Parkin (4th grade teacher) and Cathy Wolinsky spent time preparing for the devices, exploring apps, becoming familiar with various resources like Edutecher and Android4Schools and thinking about how to bring this to the students in the most productive way. Some weekend work went into charging, updating and preparing the tablets with each student's Yarmouth Google account. We were pleased to find that there is a Content Filtering Setting that should modify any suggested apps and materials to keep them appropriate for students.

As teachers, Kate and Cathy planned for the physical realities of having the new set of devices in her classroom. Consistent with our district practice with student 1:1 laptops we ordered cases to protect the tablets. At the time we ordered they were $6.95 each and they have the added feature of putting the device to sleep or waking it on opening. We set up 4 bins in the classroom with plug strips nearby. The strips only allow 3 plugs at a time so we will be rotating overnight charging.

Once we did the planning and getting the room ready it was time to rollout the tablets. We invited parents, our building principal, Alice Barr (integrator at Yarmouth High School) and a college student who has helped us move ahead with technology since we was a student at YES. We planned an hour and a half at the end of the school day for the rollout. We started by giving each student a label to decorate so that s/he could easily identify her/his own tablet in the bins. We affixed the labels to the cases with plastic book spine labels to help them last through the year.


The slideshow above shows a set of photos from the preparation, through the labeling, to unboxing the Nexus 7s, changing the wallpaper and widgets on the devices. Once the students had done some personalizing and exploring the screens available Kate used the document camera to project her Nexus 7 onto the screen and showed students how to download and install a set of apps that we had previewed. We looked for an assortment of apps that allowed students to create simple projects, take notes and practice math facts as a start. In the slideshow you can see the students working from this list of apps.

Apps to download:

Skitch

Evernote

Free Rice

50 States

Google Drive

PopMath Lite

NASA

Space Images

Math Workout

Sudoku Plus

Math Maniac

Countries of the World

Note Everything

SimpleMind Free

Kitchen Timer

Camera Launcher

ListNote Speech to Text

This video gives a quick glimpse of the classroom once the students are exploring apps:

Many thanks to all who helped with this successful rollout and especially to Mark Wagner and the EdTechTeam for donating the devices to our school. An additional post about the arrival of the Nexus 7's is posted on Kate Parkin's classroom blog.

Educational Passages Miniboat Project

Grade: 4 Communications & Math Lab Groups

Teachers: Molly Smith & Cathy Wolinsky

Subject: All

Project Name: Educational Passages

Resources: Educational Passages Endeavor Wiki

A group of 4th graders who are in the Communications and Math Lab groups with Molly Smith (Talents grades 3-8) have taken on the task of following one of five drifting miniboats that were launched this spring. The boat was launched Saturday, May 12 by the crew of the State of Maine (Maine Maritime). The kids are in contact with the captain and they are working on latitude, longitude, rate of speed and some of the other concepts of navigation.

Based on a workshop session at a conference on Science and Literacy held at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute a few months ago we decided to look for a way for our students to participate in a "miniboat expedition". For more about this project, see the website and articles below:

• http://www.educationalpassages.com
• http://bangordailynews.com/2011/04/15/news/hancock/students-to-launch-tiny-sailboats-from-mma-ship/?ref=relatedBox
• http://bangordailynews.com/2010/07/26/news/miniature-boat-from-maine-completes-extraordinary-journey/?ref=relatedBox
• http://www.pointseast.com/template.shtml?id=EkllZkuEAyqFSjcWAp&style=story

This project costs about $1500 a boat, but the volunteers who run it (Dick Baldwin, sailor; Lyman-Morse Boats; Maine Maritime Academy; Midcoast School of Technology, etc.) do all the work for free and the cost to our school is $350 for the GPS unit that travels on the boat and a monthly fee to monitor it. There will be opportunities at YES and HMS for that small group of students to share the project with others as it connects to curricula, we bring in guest speakers, etc.

The GPS unit on our boat connects to a company that will show the track of the boats in the project (at http://www.nefsc.noaa.gov/drifter/drift_ep_2012_1.html). We don't know how many months to expect the boat to be en route, one boat arrived in Ireland after 5 months, another one took a year to travel from Puerto Rico to Portugal. The hope is that if a boat makes it to Europe the students can connect with the school that retrieves the boat.

As of May 30th the miniboats have been moved by hurricane winds are are all beached on the Carolina coasts. Today there was an article in the Hatteras newspaper about the people who found the Yarmouth boat on the beach and the next steps for getting it back out onto the ocean.

http://islandfreepress.org/2012Archives/05.29.2012-MaineStudentsSailboatIsLostAndThenFoundOnHatteras.html

Update: October 8, 2012 from the project Newsletter:

5 Maine Maritime Launches

The “State of Maine” training ship launched 5 mini-boats approximately 250 miles north of the Bahamas on May 11^th.  Within 10 days these boats got “battered” off the Carolinas by tropical storms Alberto and Beryll which blew all 5 boats across the Gulf Stream and on to the Carolina beaches.  A charter fishing boat captain told us in his 46 years he had never seen the seas so rough.  One of our boats was found by surfers on Cape Hatteras, two ended up on uninhabited islands and another went ashore on Myrtle Beach.  The 5^th boat stopped reporting several miles off the beach and probably founded coming ashore.  Four of the five boats were recovered undamaged with their rigs intact attesting to their solid construction and their ability to transit our world’s oceans.

        

Two boats were taken to Charleston, South Carolina and put back aboard the “State of Maine” to be re-launched off Cape Hatteras, another boat was re-launched by surfers, and the 4^th boat was released by the School of Coastal Studies on Cape Hatteras.  These 4 boats traveled up our east coast to Newfoundland where 2 made landfall and are currently being repaired and readied for re-launching in early October and the other 2 appear to be on their way to Europe.  All these boats can be monitored at http://www.ne fsc.noaa.gov/drifter/drift_ep_2012_1.html.

Fourth grade Book Group makes a Movie

Grade: 4
Teacher: Rosie Lenehan
Subject: Social Studies/Reading
Project Name: Biography

The Marvelous Munchkin book club recently read a biography of Harriet Tubman.  As they discussed Harriet Tubman in one of their meetings, they arrived at the conclusion that when she was alive, Harriet Tubman was relatively unknown.  They were troubled by the lack of recognition that she got when she was alive, especially given all that she did.  We talked about the reasons for this and we also talked about how it is that people become famous.  I gave them some options for individual or group projects they could do around the idea of making Harriet Tubman famous, and they decided to work together on a newscast.  This is entirely student-written, student-filmed, and student-edited, completed in about 2 hour-long blocks.  Also, it was done entirely using an iPad!  Enjoy!

(cross posted at http://room301classpage.blogspot.com/2012/04/book-club-project.html)

iPad Pilot in YES Classrooms

Grades: 3 & 4

Teachers: Rosie Lenehan, Nicole Colfer & Kate Parkin

Subject: All

Project Name: iPad Pilot

It seems like every day there are conversations buzzing about how we can support learning with the single iPads that are in classrooms at YES. The teachers whose classrooms received the YEF grant iPads are using them connected to the projector for whole class instruction, for individual student use and as a center for a small groups of students. Additional teachers are using iPads that are their own.

• One class recorded the field trip to the State House in Augusta by creating aVoicethread using the mobile app. The camera on the iPad made taking pictures easy and then students added narration with audio or video clips to describe what they had learned. The kids seemed to enjoy how easy it was to build the slideshow and the iPad made it possible to do everything on one device. 

• Students are using the ShowMe app to write math procedures and record their descriptions of what they are doing or teachers are creating blog videos for explaining an algorithm.

• Dragon Dictation is helping some students with writing as they can speak into the iPad microphone and the app turns their voice into text. This text can be emailed to the teacher who can help the student continue the document.

Some other thoughts for exploration are spelling apps, voice recording of reading fluency, math practice and TumbleBooks online. Also, we added an "eprint" color laser printer this week in the YES Lab for printing directly from the iPads.

There is excitement in the air as we explore ways to use this "touch" device in ways that supplement and expand the technology access we offer to students at YES.

(cross posted at http://ipadsyes.blogspot.com/)

Readers' Theater Performance Videos

Grade: 3

Teacher: Kate Parkin

Subject: Language Arts

Project Name: Reader's Theater

Resources: Class Blog Post