As a result, I have been building a variety of Virtual Exploration Rooms around content topics. These rooms allow me to easily share materials with teachers that they can share with their students in an engaging format. Students have a variety of resources presented to them in these rooms and they also empower choice in their learning. Take a look at some of the rooms below to see (or use - they are all available FREEELY!) or even step into the Relaxation Room to just simply engage in some mindfullness and relaxation.
Recently, I have been exploring different ways to engage students in content. There are many tools and strategies available, but sometimes something new or even a different way of presenting a variety of resources for students to explore is just what teachers need.
As a result, I have been building a variety of Virtual Exploration Rooms around content topics. These rooms allow me to easily share materials with teachers that they can share with their students in an engaging format. Students have a variety of resources presented to them in these rooms and they also empower choice in their learning. Take a look at some of the rooms below to see (or use - they are all available FREEELY!) or even step into the Relaxation Room to just simply engage in some mindfullness and relaxation.
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Well, we are at home and Mom School is in full effect. I have a 5th grader and 2nd grader of my own and now I running school activities at home for them as well as trying to stay on top of my own school things. It is only Day 3 and I am exhausted. I am grateful my daughter's teacher sent things home, but she does need extra supports at school, so working with her at home is extra important, but draining for me. My son has done well with activities I have given him and hasn't fought me on it, so there is a blessing there. I know we will find our new normal soon, but until then, you can find me in bed by 7:30. Ha ha! But for real though... In the mornings we have academic time with brain breaks and "recess." I am allowing my kids to play outside with the neighbors, but no playing inside at each others' houses. It was a balmy 34 degrees yesterday (thank goodness for sunshine!), so I decided to read a book to the neighborhood kiddos and do a STEAM activity outside. We read the book, The Gingerbread Man and the Leprechaun Loose at School. After some fo-fiddley-fee reading fun, we designed some leprechaun traps with what we could find in nature. Kiddos ranged in ages from 2-11, so some worked together and others on their own. It was a fun activity for St. Patrick's Day and I wish I had stayed awake long enough to mess with their traps, but, you know, 7:30 hit and I was D.O.N.E. :) As we move towards St. Patrick's Day, I knew I wanted to do a couple of weeks of St. Patrick's Day stories. There are so many good ones to choose from! Because of the AMAZING generosity of people recently with the #FillEveryShelf campaign from DonorsChoose, I was able to get some new STEAM books, one of them being "How to Catch a Leprechaun." I love this series of books and have used several with my younger students this year. In planning though, I wanted to steer away from the traditional "make a trap for a leprechaun." There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, but I know a lot of classrooms spend time doing that and tie it to books, so I wanted to change things up a bit to give them a different St. Patrick's Day building experience.
In the book, they mention one of the traps was the "Leprechaun Be Gone 3000TM." I thought this provided the perfect opportunity for my students to engineer their own Leprechaun Be Gone 3000! We used the Engineering Building Blocks again not only because they have been asking since our sloth bed-building, but also because I feel they lent themselves really well to building a robot. They loved the activity and came up with some great designs (including using the wrenches as part of their designs)! As St. Patrick's Day is approaching, I knew that I wanted to share my son's favorite book with my Y5/T1 class. The Littlest Leprechaun is such a cute story that is not about trapping a leprechaun, but rather finding something you are good at to help others. All the kiddos really enjoyed the story and did a great job using the Maker Mat to build things from the story. They really spent a lot of time building the family in particular and then many shared stories of their own families. It was a great time seeing what they built and really even more satisfying to see how far they have coming in their building, working with a partner to create one thing (instead of each person making their own and just sharing materials), and being able to tell a story about their creation. My littles are growing up! :) Last trimester, Kelly McGee and I worked with the 6th grade Science teacher in our middle school to do a STEAM activity during some scheduled 1/2 days. The students had so much fun and the teacher saw so many benefits that she asked us back for the end of the 2nd trimester! As St. Patrick's Day is not too far off, we decided to do a St. Patrick's Day themed activity. We rounded up LOTS of our STEM resources and wrote out a little storyline with embedded building concepts. The STEM resources we had available for students to build with were:
We intentionally wanted to give the students lots of choice their design as well as see what kinds of resources they liked building with. We found the most popular building resources were:
In ActionI love how learning can be messy. Some of the classes had messier learning than others, and that is totally okay with me as long as they were on task! You can tell the messier tables had a lot of building and rebuilding and trying different tools to see what would work best to execute the idea in their heads. I wish I had taken more pictures, but I often got caught up in conversation with the students and hearing about their building process. One of the groups not only completed the storyscape, but figured out how make their cart move by rigging it with magnets and using the same poles of the magnet to push the car. I wish I could have captured what they had shared - they were so proud and excited! Speaking of resources, it is always interesting to not only see what the most popular resources are, but how they are used during an activity. I think it is safe to say the students favored the green, yellow, and white Plus Plus pieces! :) This week, St. Patrick's Day is celebrated in many places. So why not celebrate in the classroom with a little QR code fun! Below you will find a link to my QR code listening center resource.
Downloading NoteYou may see this image when you try to download the file. No worries! Just go ahead and click the Download button. It is just a big file and Google Drive cannot provide a preview for the document. There are many book resources after all!
Please leave any comments below on how you use these in your classroom or any other ways you use QR codes in the classroom. I always love hearing new ideas!
Padlet
There are so many different things that I love about Padlet. Probably the thing that I love the most is that it is very user-friendly. In a matter of minutes, you can have a Padlet wall set up and ready for students to use. Padlet has many customizable features for walls, but one that you can utilize to make your wall unique and personal to your instruction is that of making a custom background. To make a background, I simply used a Google Slide presentation (you could also use PowerPoint or really any graphic editor) to create a slide. I saved the slide as a .png image. Then over in Padlet, I created a wall, went to Settings, and then added a background wallpaper for wall. Easy-peasy!
St. Patrick's Day Padlet Wall Haven't used Padlet before and want to play around by contributing to my wall (or have used it and just want to play along)? All you have to do is just double-click anywhere on the wall, or click on the little pencil in the lower left-hand corner.
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