And it starts....

I am referring to the craziness of having both boys in Spring sports. Chris' knee has healed from surgery and he started playing Lacrosse again this past weekend. They had a tournament in Republic and we went 3-1! This was a huge weekend for Chris because the kid that was playing backup Varsity goalie for him has been kind of a punk and refuses to listen to advice and I guess seems to know everything there is to know about Lacrosse....and our team went into last weekend dead last with a record of 0-6. Chris did an amazing job and the last game of the tournament was his best yet! He is hoping to go to college and play Lacrosse.

Chris #38 - Lacrosse Goalie

 Chris #38 - Team Captain

Chris #38 - I love this picture! 

At the same time Lacrosse season so is baseball! This year we moved Kyle to a different baseball team. He started playing for the Midwest Nationals 13U Red. When we first tried out for the team we had no intentions of leaving our other team, we wanted to see what his skill level was compared to area baseball players his age. Well his coaches (dad coaches) got wind of it and thru one of their son's informed Kyle that he wasn't invited back to play baseball for his old team. One of the dad coaches accused me of not teaching my kid what it means to be loyal, which is very ironic because his kid had the worst sportsmanship on the team....so......we happily walked away.

Boy are we glad that we did! The Nats as they refer to themselves actually pay their coaches and the exposure the older boys get to scouts is amazing. 

Kyle is L-O-V-I-N-G it! His teammates all get along with each other, no one thinks they are better than anyone else and they are encouraging and supportive.

His nickname as given by his teammates is BEAST. With his other team he played mainly 3rd base and catcher (until the coaches kid needed a place to go and then we lost out on catching). The Nats have said that Kyle is an Utility player and they have had him on every base with a main focus on Short stop. He doesn't seem to care as long as he gets to play!

This is our last weekend home together as a family because for the next several weekends one of the boys has games in one state while the other has his games in another state. I couldn't imagine having three kids!

Code.org where have you been my whole life?

If you have not checked out www.code.org and are wondering where to get started in teaching your students or your children how to code....this is the site for you.

You get a free account!

You set up your classroom and add your students for free!

You get to send them a link to sign on with their own username and secret password for free!

You as the educator get free lesson plans to help walk your students thru the basics and they are aligned with Common Core standards for free!

Your students have access immediately for free!

THIS WEBSITE IS.....FREE!!!!!!

I may have just peed a little in all the excitement! 

So I am one of those people that learns something new or gets something new and instead of waiting patiently and figuring out all the nooks and crannies before I roll something out....

I just right in and take the approach that we will all be learning this together so let's see what happens. Now there are pros and cons to this approach which I learned a little yesterday while throwing my ENTIRE class into the world of Coding!

PROS: 

This engagement level, buy in level was thru the roof!!!! (and of course no one came in to evaluate during this process but instead they wait until the worst possible moment and decide to join my class....has that happened to anyone else?)

The excitement and eagerness was amazing. When discussing the different aspects of the program I had total engagement and about 106 questions.

Leverage...those students that usually do not get their work completed or who lolli-gag around and waste time. Totally got their work done since I told them that they would not be allowed to participate.

CONS:

They lost their minds with excitement. Classroom management went out the window a few times because they were so excited and had 106 questions. With the questions they had they also dropped their brains and decided that everyone needed to shout out their questions at the exact same time.

Skill levels- I have some that can barely sign onto the computer and others that flew thru the first course. So this is only in the CONS section because of the lack of control it offered since we are all learning this together.

How I Rolled this Puppy Out...

For you control freaks....you might want to look away at this point!!!

I rolled it out first by discussing my expectations.

I explain to them that my number one responsibility is to teach them 5th grade standards. I even went as far to say that I legally have to do this since the state requires me to teach certain standards. I went on to say that if they cannot keep up with their 5th grade work then I will not be able to teach them the fun stuff even through I can tie it into the standards it is not required by the state. Further more I explained to them that my principal (who is amazing and so very open to new ideas and concepts, #myprincipalisbetterthanyours) will only agree to this if I can prove to him that they are getting everything they need.

Then I started them with paper lessons in the classroom. When I set my class up I got to pick which course I wanted to start them with. 

I chose Course 2 for two reasons: #1 the age group fit and #2 it says to start with course 2 for students that can read. Finally a decision that didn't take a lot of thought process!!!!!! Bonus!

On the Teacher Dashboard there is an option of Lesson Plans and Resources:

This is where I printed out our classroom lessons for the day before they moved into the computer program.

If I had to do it over again in a perfect world I would have started the paper lesson plans on Monday and worked thru several of those before putting them on the computer. But I rolled this out on a Thursday and we have computer lab on Thursday.

Stay tuned for more information about this program...this post is getting long! 

RCET Conference in Springfield, Missouri

Yesterday was day 1 of the two day RCET Conference.

I love going to this conference because I get so inspired. I come out of the breakout sessions with a fire to hurry up and apply what I know in my classroom. 

On the first day I attended three breakout sessions. Session one was a little disappointing because it was more like a sales pitch about surveys and assessments then it was about helping bring technology into my classroom.

My second breakout session was awesome. The speaker was a teacher from Fordland (which is a small town school like mine so I felt like she could relate). I was really shocked to hear her say that the superintendent at her school has made technology their number one priority and they are moving to a 1:1 school. But wait....our school now has a $3 million dollar football stadium for our 28 player football team....insert sarcastic tone.

Her breakout session was on her favorite apps, websites, and Google tools. Let me just say that my head was about to explode with ideas when I left her session.

My first idea that I think will be easy to impliment is having students create a website on Weebly for their American Revolution project instead of creating power point presentations and hard cover books. And as I am typing this an idea popped in my head to have them display this during the Spring Literature Fair....can you feel the excitement coming thru the computer? OMG....I cannot get started fast enough.

My third and last breakout session was a math session and let me go on record as saying that I HATE teaching math. Math was always my worst subject in school so I feel like I struggle to make it interesting....insert TECHNOLOGY!!!! 

One take away that I had yesterday was CODING!

Talk about getting someone excited about life....coding for kids!

I rushed out and bought two Ozobots and a Sphero so that I could take them back to my classroom and get my kids excited about math and science.

http://ozobot.com

I am still new to this so I am still trying to figure everything out but I do know that when I brought it home last night that my boys (ages 17 and 13) played with them and laughed and kept saying how cool these were.

The website has lesson plans already made up so you can get yourself and your students started right away!

ch 1-2, 2016 ~ Missouri State University