Year in Review

As 2018 comes to a close, I like to look back then forward.

My most popular post was my post last January on the WQLN Reading Competition!
Here is the link: LINK

My favorite new lessons were the Rubix Cube Mosaics and the marble design challenges.

I was able to get new materials from Donor's Choose as well.

So what do I have in store for 2019????

I want to pick my "new" word for the year, start a 365 picture book challenge, and continue to find new resources for my school.

I explain the "One Word" idea in last year's post - Patience

or you can check out this awesome website and book - Jon Gordon's One Word website

My new word is "Creativity".  I want to find ways to update my house (decoration and organization wise).  I want to be creative in my instruction and program at school.  I want to model and expand my personal creativity!






For my 365 book challenge, I plan to try a new app called "One Second".  It takes a picture or 1 second video each day and creates a montage at the end of the year!

One Second






What are your goals for 2019?

Holiday fun 2018

Kindergarten is working on their first engineering design challenge.

Student read "12 Sleighs of Christmas".  Then they had to design a new sleigh using 1 straw, 1/2 piece of construction paper, 1 pipe cleaner, and 1 egg carton section.

The challenge was in getting Elmer's glue to dry and stick on the Styrofoam.  I think that we could have skipped this material.

The goal is to get them to slide down a "zip line" since Santa's sleigh needs to fly.  I gave them 10 minutes the first class, 40 minutes the second class, etc...

Another challenge was storage!  How do you store 100 gluey sticky creations flat?

Overall, the students are having fun and I am seeing their unique personalities!

A Sleigh is started here

Can we test our sleighs like engineers?
Great question from this student!  So we created a second make shift zip line.

Sleigh in process!

This student thought outside the box then inspired/helped friends!

Engineering is a messy process of trying to figure it out!

1st and 2nd graders are working on the basics of coding.  I have not done coding so soon and they are ROCKING it!  First we read "How to Code a Sandcastle" for background.  This was much more readable for this age level.

Next, we started with Snoopy Snowball Battle from Hour of Code and Code Sparks.

Snoopy Snowball Battle
Finally, this week started doing Google's Santa Village website.  It has several coding games built into it for first grade. 
Here is the link to Santa's Village
Second grade is trying out Grinch Hour of Code.  Two of the students in second grade completed all 20 levels in less than 1 hour!  They loved seeing Wattsburg School district on the "Hour of Code" website.
Link to Grinch Hour of Code
Link to Hour of Code

Finally, third and fourth grade completed the Binary Code ornament activities.  I did this two years ago.  I felt like that it went so much better this time.  I understood the topic, more organized, and had better video resources.
You can see my previous post here - Binary Ornaments 2016

In addition, I updated my Sway presentation with new videos and fun videos!  Pictures to follow soon

Binary

Holiday Ornament

Go to this Sway

This week, we are doing more holiday fun and finish up the activities above!

Marble run wrap up

The marble runs were such a successful project that I wanted to build in time for other skills.

Students got a chance to present/show off their creation to their peers.  I loved watching the group dynamics.  Many students had to get over a true fear of speaking in front of others.  Everyone got up with their group and we got see all of the projects.  Only 2 projects got "lost" in the week between book fair and thanksgiving break.

The next thing that most of the students got to do was a survey about the project.

I found the data fascinating.  We will use this later to create our own forms online later.  I also discovered a way to make the survey tell me each child's answers and how to make them all anonymous.  Pros to sign in was the accountability piece while the con is the time to sign into office 365.  Pros to the anonymous was the quick access to the survey.  Con was that I do not who said what in the open ended responses.  A few classes missed the survey for a few reasons - 2 hour delay, high absentee rates with a crazy weather day, musical practice, etc...

Here are some of the survey highlights:

Question 1 was a star rating of the project,   Here is the snap shot of the results:

The open ended responses were equally interesting.  Many showed thought and reflection.  One student wanted it quieter to work.    Good thing to think about next time!

My favorite was a little boy who said - "seeing it work" was his favorite part!  YES.  This is the best part - seeing your success :)

For the question, what would I change.  Again, some were brutally honest - a different partner.  Some had predictable answers - more materials, more time, more ways to decorate it, etc...

Finally, I asked if they wanted to share anything else with Mrs. Hedderman.  Here is my favorite answer:

"I loved this projcet! I think you should do this for every class/every year! I hope the other grades love it! I mite do this at home! I love it so much! I can't stop talking about it! I'm so happy that I can do this at home.My brother can't wate to try to make one! Or my mom!My aunt loves crafts and so do I !So I am going to teach her how to make one!"

My take away is a better way to store the projects, a better way to take home projects so that there are less upset students.  


It worked well for the first project!   We also found the online marble run website.  It works best it on Google Chrome.  Our IT department had to "white list" it.  There is a build mode and a gallery mode.  

https://www.marblerun.at/tracks/new

Now onto winter/holiday projects.