Learning & Teaching

Students in Room 126 are in the process of creating a web site for their classroom teacher, Mrs. Sullivan. It is very rewarding helping them learn about all that technology has to offer.

In the meantime, I continue to read a variety of classroom blogs and collect information about how other teachers are using them.

Here are some links to classroom blogs I enjoy reading:

Mr. C’s Class Blog                                                                                         

5th Grade Class at Noel Elementary School in Missouri

Room 231                              

Grade 5 classroom at International School Bangkok in Thailand                         

This Stairs to Success rubric was created by Mr. McGuire to help grade student blogs.

Finally, I love this quote from The Thinking Stick about why blogging is important for students.

“It’s not the blogging we feel is important of course, it’s the power that publishing to a wider audience that in 2010 will surpass 2 Billion Internet connected people. Not only is there engagement power in publishing to this audience but also authentic power as students realize they are writing for someone larger than their teacher. That an assignment is not just an assignment but an idea to be shared with others.”

Recent milestones, to name a few:

• my mother’s death
• my summer job
• bringing my oldest daughter to college
• long-overdue surgery

So, bear with me as I stumble a little, back onto my path of self-reflection!

Fifth graders in Massachusetts really got the short end of the MCAS stick.

Three days of standardized English Language Arts testing in March and April. Two days of Math testing last week. Two more days of Science testing to look forward to this week. And, in previous years, two additional days of History and Social Science testing would intrude upon our learning time.

Luckily, this year the history testing in grades 5, 7 and 10/11, as well as the graduation requirement for high school students, has been suspended. According to the Mass DESE website:

“I have not come lightly to this decision, and I am deeply committed to the teaching and learning of history and social science as part of a well-rounded curriculum,” Education Commissioner Mitchell Chester said. “As we increase requirements for graduation, we need to ensure that districts are adequately resourced to provide support for students, particularly those who may struggle to meet the new requirements. I believe that it would be imprudent to add history to the graduation requirement at a time when budgets are so tight that funding for academic support and other services for students is likely to be scaled back significantly.”

Ah, sunshine, blue skies. What more could I ask for on mother’s day. Flowers, homemade cards, and most of all: time spent laughing with my kids.

I’ve been aching to get outside and putter around in the yard, and the sun cooperated today. Raking and yard work are the only exercise I get! And, it feels good. Yes, I even like to mow the lawn . . . with a push mower! If I had tons of money, I would have a lovely yard, cottage gardens and herbs, natural meandering paths, vegetables and flowers, boxwood hedges, and moss-covered stone planters. But for now, I mow the weeds, rake the leaves, pick up the sticks.

Best of all, I was outside in the sun absorbing the mood enhancing goodness of Vitamin D.

Last night I woke up in the middle of the night having left the TV on. There was a man blathering about the conspiracy to suppress the healing powers of natural cures including Vitamin D. I swear he talked about studies that report a 50% reduction in the incidence of cancer for people who take Vitamin D supplements. I don’t usually believe any of the things I hear on TV in the middle of the night, but I do know that being in the sun improves my mood, even when there’s no reason for it to improve.

I’m just so happy today because my hair stylist thought he was older than me!

I knew he wasn’t, and sure enough, he’s two years younger. And, that means I look YOUNGER than I really am!

We talked about the power of positive thinking and about giving something away for free when we are feeling financially insecure.

Anyway, here’s my haircut. I love Orfeo who is also a phenomenal artist. Check out his paintings which I also love. One day I hope to own one.

I also had a good visit with my mother in the hospital today. By good visit I mean, I didn’t want to kill her. She didn’t growl at me or tell me to shut up. I had a compassionate dream about her last night and then we had a good visit today. I’m learning to take things “one day at a time.” It’s all about aging gracefully, with inspiration and compassion.

My best friend is studying beekeeping.

With that lovely shadow-mustache, I told her she looks like Boris-the-beekeeper.

Watch out here comes Boris to tie those dastardly bees to the railroad tracks. Curses, foiled again! Or is that Snidely Whiplash’s catchphrase?

I digress.

Here are some things I learned about honeybees last weekend during my visit to the hives:

• There is only one queen bee (everyone knows that) and her main purpose is to produce more bees.
• All the worker bees are female (no big surprise!) Females go through stages with different jobs depending on their age. For example, young females clean the hive and feed the larvae. Older females take flight from the hive and typically spend the rest of their lives foraging for pollen, nectar, and water.
• The sole function of the drones or fertile male bees is to mate with the queen. At the end of the season they are considered unnecessary and driven from the hive to die.
• In recent years honeybee colonies in western countries have been experiencing declining numbers. This is thought to be due to a number of variables such as global warming and changes in agricultural practices.

Honeybees certainly are fascinating creatures. I’m also a fan of the book/movie The Secret Life of Bees.

Today I was ambushed in science class. Ms. McP enlisted my help with an experiment about sound energy. I had been dutifully photographing some other hands-on demonstrations for our classroom blog when I was directed to the front of the room. To her credit, she did warn me that I would look foolish. (I could have declined!) She even handed off my camera to a student to ensure the moment was captured forever. (Thanks, my friend Jillian!)

So, here I am: two pieces of string wrapped around each of my index fingers and attached to a dangling metal fork. I’m instructed to lean over and insert said fingers into my ears while the fork is struck with a metal knife.

I must say, the sound I heard through my fingers was more like cathedral chimes compared to the tinny, little ping heard in the classroom when the utensils made contact.

Happy Birthday To Me!

• Best cake ever: angel food cake, sprinkle with rum, layer of dark chocolate pudding, top with whipped cream (my kids said it tastes like “poison”)
• Yes, we use Hanukkah candles because we never have any birthday candles
• Spring flowers from co-workers
• Subway napkins—hurray, subs for dinner!
• Kids bought me Blogging For Dummies; I won $20 on a lottery scratch ticket from my parents; I treated myself to a bottle of Olay Regenerist—whoo hoo; and went out for seafood with my aunt and uncle and sister last night

Someday soon I’ll write about school again. When my regular life settles down a bit…

…on the last day of February 2009.

What?

I’ve made a startling discovery since I started to blog about four months ago. Am I nuts, or has blogging improved my reading stamina? It seems to me that I have actually strengthened my aptitude for reading online during this time period. It has intensified to such a degree that I’ve been blasting through my Google Reader subscriptions at the speed of light until I’m bleary-eyed and linking off into the stratosphere. (I even managed to read a couple of real, actual, hardcover books during this time, too!)

Much of the time online, I’m just browsing, trying to determine whether to follow a blog or not. But, on topics of interest (education reform, 21st century learning, Alec Baldwin : ), my ability to read deeply and thoroughly online has amazed me. I know it’s not supposed to be that way. According to some, reading online is not the same (not as good as) reading real-text-on-paper-in-your-hand-books.

Recently I discussed this issue with my teenage daughters, griping about how difficult it was for me to focus and read anything substantial from the internet unless I printed it out. Last summer, I (printed out and) read Nicholas Carr’s article in The Atlantic, Is Google Making Us Stupid? (So much for saving paper.) I wondered whether reading online, texting, and instant messaging would prove detrimental to young learners.

I couldn’t disagree more with Carr’s assertion that because of the Web, “The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.” Quoting Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist at Tufts University and author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, he writes:

Wolf worries that the style of reading promoted by the Net, a style that puts “efficiency” and “immediacy” above all else, may be weakening our capacity for the kind of deep reading that emerged when an earlier technology, the printing press, made long and complex works of prose commonplace. When we read online, she says, we tend to become “mere decoders of information.” Our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged.

Am I just weird that in my experience I have found just the opposite to be true? Having so much information available to me online is exciting, and the more blog surfing I do the better I seem to get at it.

Maybe it’s because I had a head start when I cancelled my newspaper subscriptions a few years ago in order to pay for high-speed internet service. I’ve been reading the newspaper online ever since.

And, as far as research is concerned, the web sure beats dragging my weary butt to the library to wrestle with the microfiche machine.