Listen. Connect. Empower.

Inspired by I Am (Not) Scared  by Anna Kang and illustrated by Christopher Weyant , I created an opportunity for my students to think about how they are not too small to be brave and do good (and big) things. We started our discussion by sharing what we are afraid of now or were afraid of "when we were little."  (I love this discussion with my 6 year olds that are so "worldly" now...)  Several students shared fears of the dark and a variety of bugs. Taking a close look at the cover of  I Am (Not) Scared  students noticed that the characters looked rather scared, despite the title. (*Spoiler alert*) We read the book and students joyfully pointed out the juxtaposition of the last page.  We talked about how doing scary things can make us feel brave. Next we read Morris Mole by Dan Yaccarino . Morris was not like his brothers in size and ideas, but he managed to "dig" their family out of a big problem in his own unique way.  We brains...

Last summer I took the plunge I had been contemplating for years and I genre-fied the fiction section of our library. I weighed the pros and cons: Pros Easier browsing More student-centered More student independence "New" books of interest are developed Cons Why ditch Dewey?  This has worked for many years.  Why reinvent the wheel? The system is well-established.  Shouldn't I be helping my students use a system that they will find in other libraries? What ultimately pushed me to do this was the impact that I envisioned this would have on students. Students would be able to browse independently and discover more books in the genres they were interested in.  No longer would they need to wait for me to travel with them through the fiction shelves and pull handfuls of books off the shelf that were "funny" or "scary."  Our collection would be browse-able and student-friendly.  The inspiration I had done some relocating and re...

I was inspired at EdCampSEMass  to try BreakoutEDU .  I was under the misconception that this was more for middle and high school students.  After hearing how a 4th grade teacher used this in conjunction with her read aloud I was inspired to give this a try in my own school. When a 5th grade teacher approached me for a book recommendation (a mystery), I jumped on the opportunity to present BreakoutEDU.  She wanted to introduce the genre and this would be the perfect opportunity for her class to manipulate and decipher clues. My first "breakout" was on my own children.  I used a pre-made activity from the BreakoutEDU site and practiced on my own children before I had the teacher breakout. My test subjects - my own children Once she had the experience, she was hooked.  It was time to create our first BreakoutEDU experience. We met to determine the content of the experience.  We decided to use current 5th grade topics of study Planets...

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...

Building Windmills Our library class time has been dedicated to thinking about how we can make our community better. (See my previous posts ).  However, I was not done with  The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind  yet.  I was inspired by my colleague  Alice Johnson  to carry these ideas into our Makerspaces. I planned to have students participate in the "Windmill Challenge" and build their own windmills with everyday materials. I knew that I needed some dedicated time (and recess would not do it).  I also knew that extra hands would be needed.  I invited students to join me after school for an hour and enlisted in Alice's help to recruit High School students to help us.  11 elementary school students and 3 high school student "coaches" together created windmills.  We had a great afternoon of building and cooperative learning. Starting supplies Students started with supplies and a video about how to create a pinwheel So...