Those that Inspire Us

I visited with Dean Mantz on Friday when I attended an area Technology Integration meeting at ESSDACK. Dean works for USD 376 as an IT and instructional technology integrationist. He also teaches a class at Sterling College entitled, Technology in the Classroom.

Dean recently wrote a blog post about people that inspire us. Dean was kind enough to mention my name along side some women that I respect and consider to be my mentors. Dean, Kevin Honeycutt, Glenn Wiebe, Bentley Richert, and Adrian Howie are just a few male tech integrationists that inspire me. Ginger Lewman, Tammy Worcester, Tuanua Swartz, Dyane Smokorowski, and Mary Fraizer are some of women that I highly respect.

I wanted to pose the question to you. Who inspires you?

Looking for a way to integration this post into your classroom?
Use the above question in your classroom as a digital storytelling project to find out who inspires your students. Re-read this past post for ideas.

BeeBots

While we have been giving our state assessments, my primary students have been in the gym with Dylan learning basic programming with our five BeeBots. Testing has been underway all week in our elementary lab. So primary classes were moved to our gym, where we had lots of room to use our Beebots. We received our BeeBots by participating in a grant from Wichita State University.

I downloaded and printed BeeBot cards from Sparklebox. We have copies of shapes, colors and the alphabet. We have used the BeeBots before, so students were asked to group the 6in cards together. Then the programmers told their partners where the Beebot would stop. If the programmer was correct, they earned a point. We designated one person in each group to keep a score. The kindergarten/turtles did not keep scores, they just took turns being the programmer.

Students were also asked to lay the alphabet cards down in one line. Then practice their spelling words by using the pause button on the BeeBot to signify a letter selection before moving on to the next selection.

With number cards, student can practice solving math facts. I would suggest using flash cards and asking the programmer to send the Bee-Bot to the correct answer.

Our third grade teacher, Emily Schmidt, uses the Beebots quite a bit in her classroom across the curriculum. She has several resources and video clips of using the beebots on her Weebly page.

BeeBot Resources
Kent ICT
BeeBot Wiki
SparkleBox 1000's of Free printables
Emily Schmidt's BeeBot resources

Save the Words: 5th grade vocabulary lesson

Wondering where I have been? Sorry, I head up scheduling for our state assessments. And, we are in the middle of giving state assessments. It has been a busy two weeks. This week will hopefully wrap up our reading and math assessments. Yeah!

Today, I wanted to share a fun, simple vocabulary lesson. Open your web browser and head to savethewords.org I read about this site a few weeks ago on freetech4teachers. Save the Words is a collection of words that have been removed from the Oxford Dictionary due to a lack of use. The website lets you adopt one of these forgotten words and bring it back to life.

The site is actually very interesting. So, I made sure to allow time for my fifth graders to look through the site. Then, I asked my students to select a word to adopt. We did not go through the online process of adoption and entering email addresses. Instead, I had my students email their word selection to their classmates using ePals. Each student had to persuade their classmates to help them save their selected word. Basic requirements included having to list the chosen word, give the definition and use it in a sentence. A quick and simple assignment that can turn into something complex if you so chose. Step it up a notch by having students create videos or podcasts persuading the audience to save the word. Even having a debate and letting the audience pick the winner could be another fun option.