A Second Grade Teacher’s Blog

This post is cross posted on my classroom blog at http://harju.edublogs.org

Once again the 2nd graders have written and illustrated Spooky Stories. Inspired by the Spooky pictures they created in art class, the children wrote and edited a story that begins with the phrase – One Dark Night…
Five students are sharing their stories in the video below. You can view the rest of the students’ stories by visiting our class wiki.
http://harju.wikispaces.com/Spooky+Stories+2012-13

I just uplopaded my tenth item to my Teachers Pay Teachers store.
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Patti-Harju-18

I added 10 of my favorite Blogging Templates for use with elementary students. I am excited about this new way of sharing how I use technology in the classroom and hope to reach a new audience of educators. My other items on TpT are some math practice sheets that I created as well as a couple of literature response journals, for
The Stories Julian Tells and Ramona the Pest.

I plan to continue to add more of the ways I integrate technology into my classroom in a teacher friendly format to Tpt. I would like to help other educators with easy to implement lessons and ideas. It is fun to know that you are helping other teachers and also to know you may make a dollar or two as well.

Please check out my Tpt store and spread the word! Thank you.

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Along with my fellow DEN Star Mary Carole, we have created a Collaborative Project called Literacy Superheroes. It is a project where classes will create digital books on the iPad to be shared with classrooms all over the world. Our hope is that these classrooms will also connect via Skype or another video chat tool to learn more about each other.

We are recommending four Book creation apps on the iPad for this project. They are
Book Creator
Scribble Press
My Story
Story Patch

To learn more about the Project, and to register for the project, please visit the Literacy Superheroes wiki.

 This post is cross posted at http://harju.edublogs.org/.

We have been meeting many of the other schools involved in Rock Our World through Skype Chats. We enjoy getting to know the other students and teachers and learning about where they live. We each choose one of the states we have Skyped with so far and wrote about that state on our Kidblog.

Oklahoma - We Skyped with Mrs. Park’s 2nd graders in Howe, Oklahoma. They sang us a song! We know that Oklahoma City is the capital and the state is shaped likes a pan with a handle. Howe, Oklahoma is in the pan part, not the handle.

Florida - We met Ms. Snyder’s 2nd Graders from Oneco Elementary in Bradenton, FL. We learned that the Orange Blossom is the state flower and the weather is warm there. They are also near Disney World.

Pennsylvania - We talked to Ms. Abernathy’s Ponderous 5th Grade Pandas. We learned that they have 8 class pets! 4 chinchillas, 3 bearded dragons and 1 ferret. We told them that we have a pet rock that Mrs. Harju keeps outside. We learned that Pennsylvania is the Keystone state and they have a state dog – the Great Dane.

Wisconsin - We met with Ms.Huttner’s 3rd grade students at Glacier Edge Elementary in Verona, WI. They only have 8 students in their class and they told us they have a class rabbit. They also speak Spanish and English. We know that the state bird is the robin (just like Michigan) and that the capital is Madison.

We enjoy sharing facts about Michigan and telling a few jokes in our Skype Chats. We tell the other classes about the fruits and vegetables grown in Michigan and how the lower peninsula of our state is shaped like a mitten. We always hold up our hand to tell them how to find Grand Rapids.

We can’t wait to meet more students in the US and around the world!

Next week we hope to visit North and South Carolina and Poland!

I was honored to among the many wonderful presenters at this year’s MACUL conference in Detroit, Michigan, March 17-18. MACUL stands for Michigan Association of Computer Users in Learning. My presentation titled, “Wikis and Web 2.0 in the Elementary Classroom” appeared well received, although one cannot always tell as teachers in an audience are so quiet! My presentation ppt is below and I am happy to share it as well as answer questions.

I give credit for my “Wow” tech moment to Julie Myrmel from Hudsonville. It was 5 years ago that I attended her MACUL session, “Wikis and Blogs and Podcasts” and my teaching has never been the same! I was thrilled that a teacher approached me after my presentation to tell me that this was her “Wow!” teaching moment. I am so happy to pass on the Wonder of Wikis and Web 2.0.

This is my first post written on an iPad. I have my own and One will be donated to my classroom in the next couple of weeks. I am very excited to use both iPads in my classroom. Yes, I am going to let the children use my personal one. My hope/plan/dream is that when parents/admin see the amazing things that will happen with the iPad (and it will be amazing!) that more funds/iPads will be donated for not only my classroom but all classrooms! (If you are going to Dream, DREAM BIG!)
So, here are some of the Apps that I have on my iPad. A few are just for me (Angry Birds!) but most are ones I will be using with my students. I am most excited about Timed Reading, BrainPOP, TanZen, Counting Coins, Drawing Pad, QuickVoice, Mobile Mouse and will be checking out Air Sketch next.
The screen shots were taken with the iPad and I used the Photobucket App to insert them into the post. (so cool, so easy!)

Rock Our World, founded by Carol Anne McGuire is an amazing project! I have been involved in this project for over 8 weeks and my students are loving every minute of it!
The first part involves creating a drum beat using Apple’s Garageband. Once I played around with the program, it was easy to figure out. The students and I worked together to create the drum beat. Large group collaboration is not easy, but a great experience. We add the weekly instruments to the tracks in the same way. We always take time to dance to the music we create as well.

The second part revolves around the the theme of PEACE. We are working with Animation-ish software provided by Peter Reynolds and creating a class animation video sharing our ideas on how to promote peace. We had fun creating a Peace Sign animation that we set to our Drum beat.
The third part of this project is connecting with classrooms all over the world. We have Skyped with students in Iowa, North Carolina, Florida, and Pennsylvania, and internationally with students in Poland, Canada, New Zealand and Peru.
The children are learning about music, other parts of the US, other countries, learning animation, practicing communication skills and so much more.
We finish the project with a Family Day where we will share our music, a short video and our reflections with the other schools in the project via a Live Stream and iChat. While the project may be over soon, we will continue to benefit from it! We will continue our relationships with many of the schools, we will continue to promote peace and we will continue to make music!

This entry is crossed posted on my DEN blog.

I attended my first DEN Summer Institute last week at Bentley University in MA. Met many amazing educators (DEN Stars!) and learned a great deal. Lodge McCammon‘s all day workshop taught me many new (and simple) ways to use video (Flip cameras) with my students. Can’t wait to have them create their first Paper Slide video or act out a math concept. I am working on finding lower elementary songs to use in concept music videos Lodge Style. Had a great time making the video on Plant Cells with the whole group.

Matt Monjan did a great job showing us all the new features of the Discovery Education website, especially the Builder Tools. I look forward to using the Assignment Builder, Quiz Builder, and Writing Prompt Builder with my class this year. I had fun showing these features to some teachers this morning and it was fun to watch their amazement and excitement at using these tools. One of the teachers kept texting another teacher while we were talking to share the site with her.

I enjoyed meeting Peter Reynolds and visiting his Fablevision studio. The Fablevision website has many wonderful resources for educators. There are Flash versions of some stories as well as a free download of Benjamin’s Bowtie in the Fable Library. He was nice enough to autograph a copy of So Few of Me for each of us. He also autographed my copy of The Dot that I brought along. His books are perfect springboards for lessons on creativity and caring and it will be fun to plan lessons around them.

Hall Davidson joined us later in the week and shared Web 2.0 tools and great tips for making movies with Green Screen and DE Streaming. His presentations are always filled with many great tips/ideas/websites. I enjoyed talking to him about the ways I have used Green Screen with my 2nd graders.

We used Edmodo as a backchannel during the Institute and it was a great way to learn how to use this tool. We had fun putting up polls, questions, links and images. It still is being used by the DEN Summer Institute attendees to share our trips home, reflections, ideas, links.

Loved all the free stuff – Discovery Blanket, Book signed by Peter Reynolds, DE T-shirt and Glogster T-shirt, great note cards from Florida (Thanks Francie), Hyperstudio, etc.

I enjoyed this first DEN Summer Institute and hope to attend again in the future. I know many people put in a great deal of time to make it happen and I am very thankful. I met Lance Rougeux and many of the DEN leaders for the first time and am impressed by their hard work and leadership. Lance and the DEN crew were there to make sure we had a wonderful and educational experience. They were amazing!