End of First Quarter Fun!

Happy 31st Day of October! That means in less than 24 hours, October is over and we're already in to November. This Friday, November 4, is the end of the first quarter. I can't believe how quickly our first quarter went; everything is awesome--the students are all working hard to accomplish the tasks I set before them, and they are rising to the challenge!

For some fun today, we're going to be working in Google Drawings with "magnetic poetry." The words are easily dragged around the image, and kids can create their own holiday-themed poems! Here's my example:

As I mentioned above, the end of the quarter is Friday, so please go through Google Classroom with your children and make sure they have each assignment turned in. If all students have their work turned in by Thursday and Friday this week, we'll do a BreakoutEDU.  What is Breakout, you may ask? It's inspired by "escape rooms," and give students chances to solve puzzle to unlock a box. Here's a video by the official Breakout people on what it's all about:

Hope we can get to that point by the end of the week!

As always, if there are any questions, clarifications, or things with which I can help you, do not hesitate to contact me!

Have a great week!

Digital Citizenship Week

Happy October, friends and family of JWP STEM!

First, let me apologize for not updating the first post this month earlier - I got to spend some time learning with other people! Over MEA weekend, I got to spend two days up in the Twin Cities: one day at the Target Headquarters learning more about computer science education, and another day at a Math and Science EdCamp. Both situations really helped solidify that we are doing awesome things here at JWP. The weekend prior to that, I was again in the Twin Cities learning from the great educators at ITEM - Information and Technology Educators of Minnesota. While mostly geared toward librarians, there are a lot of great STEM items that were shared there. Again, it was good to realize that JWP is on the forefront of helping our students get the most opportunities for learning.

One of the ways that we have been learning this week is using a tool called Nearpod, which is a hyped-up way to present slides to students. Nearpod teamed up with Common Sense Media to create lessons about Digital Citizenship and online safety, and gave them away free to media specialists. (We love that word!) 4th through 6th graders worked through a Hyperdoc that had media resources on Oversharing, Strong Passwords, Cyberbullying, and thinking before they post on social media. The culminating project was a poster or digital item that helped people hear the message of positive digital behavior. There were lots of great submissions! Come through the hallway by the STEM room to see lots of them, or enjoy a snippet in the examples below.

Our younger students are working through a hyperdoc of their own teaching them to "Pause & Think" before they do anything online. The video and song also remind students to help others have a positive attitude, to stand up to cyberbullying, and to balance their time between online and offline activities. We then used a tool called Buncee to create graphics of some of our online safety rules. Enjoy a sample below! Click the arrows to look through a few slides.