Genius Hour is up and running at DuJardin School!
Check out this guest blog post from an awesome 3rd grade student! #soproud I am really excited to start my genius hour project and my topic is the harmful things in makeup. I started looking into makeup but the more I looked into make up I found a lot of toxic chemicals and ingredients. This surprised me and made me feel sad for people that are using some of these products. According to Sound Body Life, some toxic chemicals and ingredients are Methylparaben, Butylparben, Ethylparaben, Propylparaben, Isopropylparaben, Isobutylparaben, and Benzylparaben. Did you know that some harmful lipstick brands are:
Mrs.E used to use a harmful brand until I shared my learning with her. The point of my genius hour project is to educate people on what choices to make so they don’t endanger themselves. Stay safe... and beautiful!
0 Comments
Today's TMSG is the inspirational learning that is taking place at DuJardin School. As I roam the hallways and classrooms, I find myself constantly AMAZED at the work our staff and students are doing. They are truly top notch! As this fourth grader so brilliantly writes, the 2020 Word of the Year = INSPIRE. The DuJardin Jaguars are living that word already :)
Anybody else guilty of pursuing the fancy out there when sometimes it's just best to stick with the simple and familiar route? I sure am. In the world of educational technology, there are so many different apps, add-ons, extensions, websites, programs, etc. that have similar purposes. It's easy to not only get lost, but also to look straight to the latest and greatest flashy new thing to create meaningful learning experiences for students.
In preparing for our January Tech Buddy activity, we decided that researching and fact/opinion were skills to focus on for the Kindergarteners. With this in mind, we took a peek at the related curriculum and thought that the "Places Around the World" study would be perfect to tie in with these standards. Our Kindergarten teachers are AMAZING and really believe their kids can do anything! One of the uses of Google Slides that is often forgotten (guilty, again) is the collaborative nature of a slidedeck. Instead of pushing out an assignment via Google Classroom as "Make a Copy For Each Student," how about creating a CLASS BOOK, where all students had their own slide to design? When finished, students could browse the book and learn from the work of their peers. With Google Slides, it's simple to allow editing access for all students at once (pre-labeling the slides for younger kids with names is a game changer, FYI). Before designing our own template, a colleague once shared an awesome pre-created one (shoutout to Nanci Greene) in the format of a digital ABC book! Special thanks to @ShaunyK for developing the outline for this creation. We customized the template to meet the content for our students and we were ready to go! One more quick tip/tool for ya: remove.bg. Green screens are all the rage (and totally awesome), but sometimes, we don't have the time or resources to get this fancy. Remove.bg is a website where you can simply upload an image and then remove the background so it gives the whole green screen effect, without the hooplah. Take a peek at this ADORABLE ABC "Places Around the World" Class Book! BEFOREAFTER
As our first graders learn about parts of speech, they do a deep dive into adjectives. As a formative assessment, they showed their current level of understanding using Google Drawings. This activity involved labeling with pre-given adjectives (yellow boxes) as well as creating their own adjectives (red boxes) to describe the picture chosen. Not only could we assess their knowledge, but we also observed their growth mindset as they engaged with some pretty intense tech skills for first grades (right click, sending objects to the back, etc).
These kids totally persevered and were able to demonstrate new levels of understanding during this quick digital check in. Based on this data, we know where to head next!
(note that the pictures and adjective labels will show up once clicking the "Use Template" button)
|
AuthorArchives
March 2020
Categories |