Happy Holidays 2016

Happy Holidays!
Steward School had a sing along on the day before vacation. Here is Mrs. Willa, our principal leading the song the 12 Days of Christmas in her rewritten version "And the Principal Singing Off Key"
Here are the words for the song: Twelve, students running
Eleven, whiteboards wiping
Ten, pre-k’s weeping
Nine, teachers dancing
Eight, desks a-spilling
Seven GA GA Balls Flying
Six children playing,
Five school days off,
Four phone calls home,
Three Band-Aids,
Two pencil grips,
And a principal singing off key.-CarrollWilla

Click below to hear the adapted version of Twas the Day Before Vacation
Click below to see all the students trapped for the holidays. Click below to see the Help Desk Holiday Fun.

When the green screen comes out we are all ready for some fun!

Tech Tip:

Set up the green screen and take a class picture with students.

Have background pictures saved to you camera roll on your iPad.

Open the app Green Screen by DoInk. 

Lower level place the background image.

Middle Level place the class picture. Use the masking tool to erase any unwanted parts.

Top Level may add other images such as Happy Holidays.

Pinch to size in the spot you want.
Use the mask too to erase any unwanted images.

For fun app smash with a writing app. I use explaineverything.

Add the the top level for class name or date.
Pinch and place where you want the added detail.
Check out this google doc with picture directions.

Let's Explain Multiplication

Mrs. Corliss' Third grade class has been working on the concept on multiplication. In grades one and two students learn that multiplication is repeated addition. 7+7+7+7+7+7  = 6 groups of 7                          = 6 x 7                          = 42 Using the app explain everything Mrs. Corliss' students wrote out a multiplication story and worked through the explanation. Try to solve the problem before the answer is revealed. Click on each project below to hear their math thinking:

Gingerbread People Exchange

What started out as a simple reading of a blog post late one night turned into a most enjoyable experience for the First Graders in the Tri-Town Schools. During the month of December first grade classrooms cut, glued, and decorated gingerbread people of all shapes and sizes. Each class also wrote a letter about their class and school. Both of these things were packaged up and sent off to all the other first grades who anxiously waited for their mail to arrive.

As the packages arrived students soon enjoyed a new and unique gingerbread person along with a letter from the creator's class. Classes were so creative and even shared QR codes, scribble press books, book creator tales and ideas about their classrooms.
This sharing across towns was very exciting.

A few of the Gingerbread People that traveled across the towns.

Directions:

1. Students decorate Gingerbread People.

Optional template was included. Teachers were free to create their own design as well.

2. Write a short letter from your class about your classroom/school.  

You may even Print out a class picture to send along with your Gingerbread Person and letter.

A special thank you to all the TriTown teachers who participated in our first Gingerbread Exchange!
Check out these teachers' blog posts for a peek at their Geingerbread People Exchange experience.

Miss Klipfel, Mrs. Thomson, Mrs. Holt, Mrs. Russell

Check out more pictures of the project on Twitter with #TTUGingerbreadExchange.

Click here for the original blog inspiration: Gingerbread Man Exchange Inspiration

What Do You See?

Mrs. Rogers' Kindergarten Class had a lot of fun with the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? They adapted this story into their own creative version. Using the big green screen, Mrs. Rogers recorded their visions of what happens at night.  These clips were then put in the app Green Screen by DoInk and iMovie for the final project.

Look at the video below to see what these kindergarten students see on a dark, dark night.

Hour of Code is Complete

The Hour of Code may technically be over but students at both Steward and Proctor School are still enjoying coding.
Enjoy this video of all the problem solving moments of engaged learning we had this month.

Holiday Recipe Book

Tis the season for some recipe sharing. Mrs. Boucher's class asked family members to help share a family favorite recipe. They began this writing in a google doc as homework.  Using the app book creator students then copied and pasted their ingredients and recipe on to a blank page in the app.

Once each student had created their own page the books were airdropped and combined into one final book.

Warning you will want to make all of these recipes soon!

Click on the scroll bar in the PDF version below. Click on the video version below. You may download our story on any electronic device to add to your digital library or you can view our book as a PDF for reading or printing on a computer.

Digital Option: Add The Boucher Way Recipe Book to your digital library (for iPad or tablet reading).

Click on the link  Boucher Way Recipe Book

Then click on Download.
Click Open in iBooks.

Hour of Code

The students have enthusiastically begun The Hour of Code!

One of the coding activities had the students write the code for their own Flappy Bird Game, Stars Wars Game, or Minecraft Game.

Have some fun playing our games. Remember the rules may not be what you think they should be!

Mrs. Klipfel

Flappy Bird

Noah

Flappy Bird

Andrew

Flappy Bird

Jack

Flappy Bird

Sarah

Flappy Bird

Ava

Flappy Bird

Megan

Flappy Bird

Ben

Flappy Bird

Trey

Minecraft

Lincoln

Stars War

Avery

Flappy birds

Gabe

Minecraft

Alice

Flappy Bird

Matthew

Minecraft

Enjoy the reaction of Mrs. Murphy's Class after they finished their first Hour of Code.

Author Jarrett Krosoczka

Author Jarrett Krosoczka is coming to Steward School next Tuesday.
All the classes in library period with Mrs. DeFrank and Mrs. Jones have spent time looking at his books, visiting his website, listening to book trailers and creating projects as they anxiously await his visit.

Student had a lot of fun looking at the Lunch Lady books.

Click below as we were inspired to create our own short video to thank our Lunch Ladies.

BrainPop

Students and teachers have been exploring the site BrainPop as a resource that provides much more than animated videos featuring the characters Anne and Moby.

Once a teacher sets up a class, the students are then invited into that class with a special code.

Students create an account with a username and password and then are ready for assignments from their teacher.  By logging in all, student work is saved for easy access.

The first assignment was to watch the video, Food Chains and then take the graded quiz. When those assignments were completed and submitted, students played the Food Chain Game in BrainPop.

Working with the Make A Map feature challenges students to reflect on their new knowledge and share it in a visual format. We discovered how to add arrows to join ideas, as well as how to color code the connecting boxes. Students loved this feature.

Click on the picture below to see what these activities look like. Watch the video, take the quiz, and play the game.

• How are animals and plants dependent on one another?
• How is energy transformed and transferred as it flows through the food chain?
• How does studying cycles help us to understand natural processes?
• How do living things adapt to the environment?
• How does energy flow within an ecosystem?
• How is energy transferred and transformed as it flows through a food chain?

Mrs. Lampe's Class Creates New Creatures

Grade 4 students in Mrs. Lanpe's class were given the challenge of creating a brand new animal. They had to think of all the adaptations and features of the new creature.
What is its habitat?
What are the prey and predators?
What adaptations does it have?
In CLIC students molded their new friend into a 3D representation.
Students created very imaginative animals.

Slothem by Anthony

All the new creatures ready to be photographed.

Trying to get the right angle for a photo.

Using the app ExplainEverything these new animals come to life. Click below to learn more about each creature.

Tech Tip:
The rubric for this assignment was placed into google classroom so that students may reflect on their own work. Mrs. Lampe then added her comments as well.
Animal Project Rubric

Global Read Aloud 16

Mrs. Rogers and Mrs. Papillo joined their kindergarten classes and had a google hangout with the PreK class in Middleton, MA to talk about the book Yard Sale by Lauren Castillo as part of  Global Read Aloud 2016.
All the students enjoyed this special event. Mrs. Papillo even got to visit with some of her students from last year.

NPEN

This week, I had the pleasure of presenting at NPEN 2016 with Miss Klipfel.

The Northeast Professional Educators' Network sponsors a full day of professional development for educators in specialist areas. Library, Technology and Media specialists all met at Wilmington High School on election day and had the opportunity to choose from a wide selection of PD offerings.

Our first session was to introduce the app GreenScreen by DoInk. This hands on session, asked participants to take photos and short videos in front of three large green screens set up around the room. We then showed all the features of the app as participants used their own devices to create green screen magic. Because it was election day there were a lot of White House photos!

The next session was an opportunity for networking. All the library, technology, and media specialists met in the auditorium and mingled and chatted. I designed  NPEN BINGO and everyone was engaged in conversations around library, technology  and all things teaching.  At the end there were even raffle prizes!

This padlet was one of the choices on the BINGO card. Click and add your own thoughts.

Our last session was the introduction of the app ExplainEverything. Participants were very excited to learn all the possibilities of this app in all areas of the curriculum to help students "explain everything".

This was the second year of NPEN and I look forward to next year's session.

Talking Treats

The day after Halloween is the perfect time to have some fun using the GreenScreen by DoInk app.

Students first thought of their favorite treat. Then then wrote a short script in google docs, first from the perspective of the treat and then another script from their own perspective.

Once their scripts were memorized they recorded the two short segments.

Click on each picture below to hear the "talking treats".

Tech Tip:

This project is done in multiple sections.

1.First find both the background and the candy image and save to the camera roll.

2.Record the treat person and in DoInk add the candy on the bottom layer with the recording on the second layer. Save as an image and as a video.

3. Record the person with hand out. Save as an image and as a video.

4. Layer all these pieces in the order of the script. Using the images to fill the space on the recording sections. Use the masking tool to edit any unwanted background.

Happy Halloween 2016

Every time I  take out the big Green Screen everyone gets so excited. You can hear all the speculations as to what will be happening. The first discussion is all about, "Who is wearing green?" The students giggle and laugh about the fact that wearing green will turn them into a floating head.
Well, I have been thinking about floating heads and how to use this concept in a green screen project.

I set up multiple green screens in the library and invited every grade 1, 2, and 3 class in for a quick recording. I used a poem that I always used in my classroom, The Spook Book by an unknown author as the basis of the video. Each class practiced their line and we then did a quick recording. All the green screen clips were finally added to iMove where the captions and music were added.

Using the app Green Screen by DoInk we created a spooktacular Halloween video. Enjoy the video below. All the floating heads are adorable and not too scary!

Meet the Members of the HelpDesk

 We having been using google classroom for all our assignments and here is today's work.

The HelpDesk today explored the FREE site RECAP. 

Students explain their thinking on video.

This site gives students the opportunity to record them self as they answer the assigned question.

Why are you excited about HelpDesk?