Listen. Connect. Empower.

World Read Aloud Day has a long history in our school.  We typically spend the week Skyping with students from around the country (and sometimes outside the country).  It is a week of great books and connections.  And then came 2021: pandemic, snow, power outages. Introducing: Virtual World Read Aloud Day/Week! One page of our virtual document Our staff members decided that a classroom celebration would be in order this year (not a library activity).  I created a set of virtual bookshelves with staff reading books.  Staff members read a book which included an introductory video.  This is a great way for students to "visit" with a former teacher or "meet" a future teacher.  Students are accessing it this week, at their teacher's discretion.   My takeaways:  Things look different this year, but that is not going to stop us from celebrating!  I hear it through the grapevine that teachers are very appreciative of this resource and whene...

This week we celebrated Read Across America Day.  Yes, we celebrated.  Our school has historically used this day to spread the love of reading by inviting students and staff to dress as their favorite book characters.  In our school, the day is more of a celebration of READING rather than a celebration of a single author. Our week had several parts, but all were student-centered and student-led.  Our activities for the week: All classes participated in a Dr. Seuss BreakoutEdu. We celebrated as a school by dressing up as favorite book characters. We gathered as a school to celebrate reading, hosted by our Student Council.  The assembly featured a teacher costume contest (with student judges) and a video of student costumes, with our Reader Leaders as event photographers. Here I reflect on our school-wide celebration. Collecting photos Students and staff were invited to dress as their favorite book characters.  In the morning, I enlisted in ...

This week we celebrated Read Across America Day.  Yes, we celebrated.  Our school has historically used this day to spread the love of reading by inviting students and staff to dress as their favorite book characters.  In our school, the day is more of a celebration of READING rather than a celebration of a single author. Our week had several parts, but all were student-centered and student-led.  Honestly, it was an exhausting week of trying to stay one step ahead of activities (like racing to relock the Breakout box), but the independence and leadership that I saw in students made it all worthwhile.  Our activities for the week: All classes participated in a Dr. Seuss BreakoutEdu. We celebrated as a school by dressing up as favorite book characters. We gathered as a school to celebrate reading, hosted by our Student Council.  The assembly featured a teacher costume contest (with student judges) and a video of student costumes, with our Read...

We began our year by connecting with our summer reading and our Public Library.  Our second class of the year took the reading categories that our Public Library created and required students to interact with one another and have discussions about them. We began class by playing Human Bingo .  I created a bingo board with the reading categories and supplemented with several fun categories like "I read in my pajamas" and "I read something that wasn't a book."  Students had to find someone in the class that read or had the related experience and write their name on their board.  The goal was to fill as many boxes as possible and to accrue as many "bingos" as possible. When time was up I took inventory on how many "bingos" were achieved and how many boxes were filled.  I also wanted to know which boxes were hard to fill.  The most common responses were: History Science Fiction Science/Math Reading something that wasn't a ...

As I continue my reflections on last year's new activities and learning, I return to BreakoutEDU .  I blogged about my first BreakoutEDU previously . It was a positive experience for the students, teacher and myself.  Since then I have had the opportunity to work with other classes using BreakoutEDU and I am thrilled to report that it's value exceeded my expectations and inspired me to reshape how I frame next year's work. I used the same activity with three classes and each experience was new.  Activities that stumped one group were easily solved by the next.  I saw many different interpretations of the same clues.  I loved how each experience was unique. In my last BreakoutEDU activity of the year I challenged a class with an activity that included a red herring - there were four locks, four groups, and five clues (but they didn't know which one was the red herring).  This added a whole new level to the activity. Students reporte...

As we begin a new school year I reflect on several ideas and activities that I thought made a large impact on my students.  At the suggestion of Todd Burleson I investigated Pen Pal Schools with a group of 4th grade students.   For 6 weeks students joined me for a collaborative learning adventure.  A student explains what we did: "In Penpals Schools we get to chat with people around the world, the people I’m talking to are from, 1 from Australia, 3 from the US, and 1 from New Zealand. We also get to watch videos that help us learn, and we read stories about the problems, and we type, and help get ideas on how to stop the problems." They wrote heart-felt responses like these:  Students had deep discussions and debates around which issues were the most pressing (in their opinions).  Several reasons follow for why this was such a powerful learning experience: They were engaged in authentic learning - they had a real audience to interact with ...

Our 3rd grade students learn about the history of their town and take walking field trips every spring to local historical sites.  This year I chose several books and activities that would focus our thinking on community art, ultimately leading them to a classroom project where they create a symbol for the town based on what they learned.  We began with the book Maybe Something Beautiful  written by F. Isabel Campoy and Theresa Howell and illustrated by Rafael Lopez . Part 1 - Laying the foundation (reading the book) After reading I asked students why people create community art.  Overwhelmingly students decided it was to make the community more beautiful and to make people happy, but students had questions.  Was this considered graffiti?  What was the difference between art and graffiti?  We ultimately decided that if someone had permission from an official source, it was not considered graffiti. Part 2 - Digging deeper (meeting the illu...

My colleagues and I wanted to share our Boy Who Harnessed the Wind project with the community (see my previous posts ).  I worked with Ingrid Mayyasi and Alice Johnson and Dedham TV to create a video about our experiences: To wrap up our project I shared this video with my students and had them take a self-assessment.  I wanted students to dig a little deeper and reflect on their work. I gave what I thought was ample time to complete this but not all groups got to finish All 1st grade students and many 2nd grade students were assigned a drawing.  Other classes got to choose (time constraints) Expectations are posted on the SmartBoard for every class so everyone knows what is expected of them even if I am occupied with a student or a group The final question had students finishing the sentence "Mrs. Garland should know that..." We worked hard We should do this again My team loved it so much It was fun and I'm looking forward to doing it...