I remember reading -- some years ago -- the first chapter of "Beyond Monet", by Bennett and Rolheiser, and thinking, “hey, this makes sense”.  What stuck out in my mind was the idea of layering instructional strategies, thereby achieving a sort of synergistic boost that would come from combining already effective tools, tactics and organizers, one on top of another.

At the time, I was still a fairly novice teacher, but I already had a few reliable standbys that I used regularly while teaching.  Over the years, I have deepened my understanding and effective use of a few old favourites (for example, “think-pair-share”) and broadened my repertoire to include a few “new” instructional strategies as well. 

But I often forget how effective it can be to combine strategies, a-la-"Beyond Monet"....

The other day, I merged think-pair-share, wait time, effective questioning, visual cues and concept attainment during the “minds-on” phase of a math lesson I was teaching, introducing fractions to my Grade 3s.  The result was a class full of focused, engaged learners, ready and eager to absorb the concept I was unveiling before them, and a teacher who was calm and collected as she did said unveiling!

In my quest for useful home schooling apps, I've been checking out the "Hello Drawing" series by Raysoft.  Specifically, I downloaded the "Hello Crayon" and "Hello Pencil Crayon" apps, both of which include an array of colours and a few options for drawing and colouring with fingers, namely crayons, pencil crayons, markers and water-colour-like paint, as well as a smudger, which I first thought was an erasor.

The series seems aimed at children; the apps include both blank paper and a colouring book with a limited selection of outlined images to colour (additional options may be downloaded for 99 cents a "book").

Both the apps I downloaded feature a row of intuitive buttons along the top: Included are things like "new", "save" and the all-important "undo"!

I decided to try this app out in my classroom this afternoon, and let a few students loose with it. 

We'd been using pastels to create Koru Spiral Plant-inspired images on large sheets of paper.  The results were splendid, but rather messy:  Bits of pastel were crushed into the floor and smudged across the tables.  Students' hands (and in some cases, faces) were covered in pastel.  The clean-up was laborious at best. 

So, After two students finished early, I sent them off with the iPad to try their (clean!) hand at some Koru Spiral art using the much neater virtual pencils and crayons offered by the "Hello Drawing" apps.

Given that this was their first time using this medium, I think the results are decent.

I especially like how work can be stored and saved for later completion, without taking up all kinds of premium real estate in the classroom.   And the best part... NO PASTEL ALL OVER THE TABLE, FACE AND FLOOR SURROUNDING THE ARTIST!!!  (Yes, yes, I know it's important for students to have the kinaesthetic experience of the actual medium, but still, sometimes it's nice to have minimal clean up after a project!)

When I got home, I used the program with my own kids, as simple virtual paper so they could show their work with a math problem they were working on.  They loved the ease with which they could sketch out their solutions, and "undo" careless errors before "submitting" their finished work to Mommy!

I'm definitely going to try to integrate this app more into my program, both this year at school, and next year when I am home schooling the boys in Argentina.

Just as I had hoped, the seeds we planted last week finally started sprouting!

The Monday morning rush to the window sill was soon followed by squeals of delight, as the vast majority of the students discovered tiny shoots poking their tender green heads through the over-watered soil of the clear, plastic containers into which they had been jammed by the over-zealous, would-be gardeners in our room last week. 

It was a challenge to steer students back to the coat hooks to hang their coats and backpacks, and to get started with the morning Literacy routine.  Only a few poor souls whose plants had not yet sprouted were sitting sullenly in various corners of the room, apparently deeply engrossed in their reading.

For those readers who pray, please add the not-yet-sprung seeds and their forlorn owners to your prayer list this week:  Despite the fact that I ensured each student planted at least two seeds in their "pot", sometimes we need a miracle to ensure everyone feels like a master gardener in this first precarious introduction to plant growth!

My daily walk down the Kindergarten hall made me pause and take a joyful look at the latest goings on in the 4- and 5-year-olds' minds:  Facebook and Twitter were on the "media" agenda this past week, and if you click to enlarge the photos below, you can see what makes news in the world of Kindergarten...

All roads lead to music, it seems...  we were building schema again in my classroom this afternoon:  The students were working on an information package about trees.  Towards the end of the class, they were asked to write a few sentences about what they had learned.

One student wrote an extensive (read: "run-on"!!) sentence about willow trees.  Some of the others wondered what a willow tree looked like, so we pulled up some photos on Google images, and described what we saw.  The kids were very impressed with the long, wavy branches!

I couldn't resist playing a little Dinah Washington and some Louis Armstrong/ Oscar Peterson for them as they tidied up and got ready for recess....

It's that time of year again... our one token day each year, where boys are encouraged to wear pink, and we get to focus on a specific type of bullying.

It's PINK DAY!

Once again our school's climate committee put on an excellent assembly, inviting students to sing along to a Kids Helpline remake of Cindi Lauer's "True Colours" (see video below) as well as organizing a flash mob dance, which multiple students led, and all participated in. 

Andrea U'Ren's Pugdog was also read aloud; it's a nice little story about a poor pup who gets gender stereotyped in misery, but is eventually understood again by his/her well-meaning owner.

It's neat to see how this day has grown over the past few years, and nice to observe the learning that goes on in various schools and community contexts.

As usual, though, there were some students whose parents intentionally kept them home, and I worry about the subliminal messages of intolerance those students are learning by such a move.  :(

I'll be honest... Science is not my thing.  My Math program this year rocks, and Literacy is also swimming along nicely.  Art, when I have the time to cram it in, is great fun and very enlightening for the students, as we explore many different artists and a variety of media.  Oral Language and Social Justice are fully alive this year, as part of an intentional focus on rich mentor texts planned in our curriculum map last spring...

But Science?  Well, not so much.

It's not that I don't believe in the importance of this subject area.  Quite the contrary:  I believe that fostering a sense of wonder in the natural world, and encouraging students to ask questions that examine how things work is critically important.

Alas, there are only so many hours in a day, and a good, rich science program is so labour intensive, with so many materials to prepare and organize and set up... there just never seems to be enough time!!!  So, I typically resort to "integrating my science program in to my literacy program", which is edu-babble for saying we read about some stuff, but don't actually DO science, most of the time!

Not good, I know.

But the Science Police would be proud of me these days:  In addition to running an experiment with celery and food colouring, we recently planted radish, pea and marigold seeds, and are looking after them in the classroom and they sprout.  It's really, hands-on stuff, and the kids LOVE it:  One student hugged me after planting his radish earlier this week, and exclaimed, "THANK you, Ms. Teschow, for letting us do this FUN thing!!!"

Then, today, we went outside to collect and categorise some leaves and other "tree treasures" we could find.  Students also wrote descriptive riddles for their peers to solve, using the words they had collected to describe their treasures.

Yes, these "real" Science activities took some organization, several shopping trips, considerable set up, and a bit of a mess in the classroom.  But it was worth it.

Now, when we read about plant growth in our guided reading groups this week, students will have some real schema to connect to!

And suddenly, they’re 9!

A pretty exciting birthday, this one, with some rather incredible gifts...

From a friend of Trevor's got some of Mommy's old records, which I had forgotten about, but which he had safely tucked away (all we need now is a record player!)

Grandma, Grandpa and Daddy chipped in to buy the boys a WiiU, which not only excited them tremendously, but me, too, because I am the beneficiary of the old Wii, and I already have plans to develop a raffle-based probability unit in Math for my Grade Threes (my colleague and I will raffle tickets to students in our Grade 3 classes, and donate the money raised to a cause linked to our curriculum map in Social Studies and Science -- it’s gonna be great!!!)

But -- oh yes -- this blog post is about the BOYS’ BIRTHDAY, not my classroom, lol!

This year, they’re having their first ever sleep over party: Five silly boys to play video games, pin the tail on the donkey, eat birthday cake and watch a movie together before (hopefully) drifting off to sleep in their sleeping bags on the floor.  So exciting!

They also each got iPad minis from a very generous friend -- WOW!  They were pretty shocked by it; as Simon said to me this morning, “Mommy, when I saw it in the bag, I thought, wow, cool, an iPad Mini, that’s not for me… I wonder who it’s for?  Neat!” 

But it WAS for them, lucky boys! 

EACH of them got one, complete with a cover in their favourite colours (red and blue), and pre-loaded with some math games and German apps, and of course, a few of their favourites, which they quickly added to with their birthday money (at 99 cents an app, they felt like millionaires with the $25 cheque they had rec’d from a friend of my mother’s in the mail that morning!!)

Not that I’m some big expert, but I know enough to realize that you can’t just throw a powerful machine like this at an 8-year-old without setting a few parameters.  So, we parents laid down the law(s) right up front (“begin as you mean to go on”):

Alex and Simon are pretty stoked about the whole thing.  So am I, as we’ll be using them next year in Argentina, when I home school -- they  really are ideal tools for blogging, and for virtual manipulatives in Math.

My favourite part of the birthday weekend so far, though, has not been the iPad minis.  Rather, it was when Alex sat down to play “chest” (as he calls it) with a family friend who is a VERY accomplished chess player, after dinner last night.

This was his first game with a "real" player.

Motivation is a pretty amazing thing...

For my birthday last week, my girlfriend gave me a lovely orchid.  It really was quite visually stunning.  But we both agreed that more than 3 days in our home would be a death sentence for said plant, as neither of us are particularly green of thumb. 

I decided, therefore, to take the lovely orchid to school. We'd just begun a unit on plant growth in Science, and were in the midst of examining flowering plants.  The timing was perfect.

My grade threes were pretty excited about the orchid, and we decided to hold a contest:  The student who wrote the most persuasive letter convincing me that s/he could provide a good home would get to keep the amazing plant.

I could not believe the quality of the writing!!!  Although the assignment was optional, within an hour, I had 16 well-written letters on my desk.  (A sample follows below; please click on any photo to enlarge.) 

Some of the letters made me laugh:  One student wrote about ensuring that she give the plant some "personal space", while another tried to persuade me with tales of her (allegedly) 116-year-old grannie who loved plants!

Others tugged at my heart strings: "I usually never get anything beautiful like this", wrote one student, "and so I would really like to have the orchid."  It was hard to keep reading with dry eyes...

But what amazed me once again was the difference between some students' "regular writing" and the orchid letter:  Truly, there is no comparison; when students have something real to write about, the quality of the penmanship, the organizational structure of the writing, and just the engagement factor to the reader increase exponentially, as in the two examples below, both written by the same student (the sample on the left is a regular writing sample, from about a week or two ago, the other is the same student's orchid letter) -- WOW!

I love the opportunities presented in these unplanned but very effective "moments"... I really must find ways to make my program authentic for my students in a more consciously planned-out manner.