BreakoutEDU, Kindergarten Style!

-
This fall several of our teachers participated in The Global Read Aloud, working with classrooms across the United States to read the same books and share our thoughts and ideas about them.  One such partnership was with Ms. Cain, a librarian in North Dakota who is working with one of our kindergarten teachers, Ms. Thomsen.  Our collaboration takes places mainly through Seesaw where we share pictures and thoughts on the books we have read during this project.

Ms. Cain suggested doing a BreakoutEDU activity that was created specifically around our Global Read Aloud author study. BreakoutEDU with kindergarten?!  I had only done this with adults (and Ms. Thomsen had never even heard about it)!  Luckily, I had recently purchased a kit which made this the perfect opportunity to dive right in with students.

While the instructions for We Are Readers were well done and thorough I still modified some to make the activity run smoother for our little learners.  Following are the accommodations and lessons learned.

Planning

  • We decided to place the students in groups, and give each group a puzzle to focus on.  Since this was their first experience with an activity like this we thought it would help the students focus more and make sure everyone was engaged and had a role to play.
  • One of the puzzles involved students reading a narrative about travel and determining which direction the traveler went.  As students new to kindergarten there weren't many in early November that could master the paragraph so I made a recording and had an iPad available nearby with a QR code linking to the audio.  I also created a mat with 4 arrows so that they could easily manipulate each arrow as the traveler moved instead of having to memorize 4 sets of directions in sequential order.







  • The word lock involved the students solving a puzzle and then guessing the word the puzzle represented.  Again, to make this easier for our first time we decided to create a word list for the students to choose from.  One note:  the word list is in lowercase letters whereas the lock has all capital letters.  This made it difficult for some of the students to read and will be something we will make sure we address the next time.






Take-Aways

We introduced the activity, each lock and the puzzle that accompanied it.  We talked about working together, persevering and how we would guide them but not give them answers.  In all, the students broke out in a matter of 25 minutes!  The activity was highly engaging and successful.  It was a wonderful way to wrap up our author series.








 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Twenty Years is Worth Two Cents

-
Image
Time It’s been an interesting year.  My twins entered middle school (time flies).  My mom died unexpectedly leaving me parentless with probate and a house built by my grandfather in 1948 (time stands still).  Oh…and CPS is shuttering my school  (time to move?). The school I’ve built my career at and spent the last twenty years with students. I sat in the library with my colleagues and was read two scripts; one by my principal and one by a Chicago Public School Central Office employee.  With that, it was done (or in the beginning phase of 'done'). Teachers were told to “have a good day of teaching and learning” (one of our daily mantras) and were sent off to teach their students after just being told our school was not remaining open after this school year but our building would remain open with a new faculty and three student bodies.   George Leland school would inhabit our building while May Community Academy and Louis Armstrong Math & Science...
Read more

Water the Flowers, Not the Rocks: Tips from 10 Years of Instructional Coaching

-
This June I wrapped up ten years of instructional technology coaching. Soon (tomorrow, in fact) I will begin a new journey in my career where I will still utilize my coaching skills but in a different capacity. This new opportunity has caused me to reflect on lessons learned throughout my time as a school-based coach. If you are a coach or aspire to be one following are ten tips I've learned during my ten years in the role. Be a model . Practice what you preach! If you want your teachers to join Twitter make sure you are already there. If they would like to try a new tool or lesson familiarize yourself with it first in order to lend additional support. Be honest . If you don't know something, say so. As a coach, your faculty will look to you as an expert. There have been several times throughout my career that I've said, "I don't know that tool/concept/strategy but let me see what I can find out about it." If you are a former classroom teacher, remind peo...
Read more

Understanding Plagiarism

-
Image
Our middle school is 1:1 with Chromebooks so students spend a fair amount of time researching topics online.  A teacher noticed there is a lot of copying and pasting of information by students and asked me to come in and have a conversation about plagiarism.  I developed a Prezi with an accompanying notes guide for the students to complete as I presented the content to them.  The Prezi and notes guide are below.  As we wrapped up the students were able to use their Chromebooks for a bit of fun (with a topic that isn't so fun).  We played a Kahoot game where they reviewed concepts about plagiarism from their guide.  They loved it!  What I loved is that Kahoot also provides a summary of student responses to the game- I can see which students missed specific questions which allows me to follow up if needed. Resources used in the presentation (good for teachers and students): http://www.plagiarism.org http://en.writecheck.com (this has a plagiarism...
Read more