Blogging in My Classroom with Seesaw

After reading AJ Juliana's article about taking risks, http://ajjuliani.com/risks/,I felt it was time I shared this site with my class. I also felt as though I'd been blogging with my students all along.  I started combing through last year's Seesaw archive for a particular student's video posts, as I thought he'd been modeling blogging all along. Sure enough, Matson was blogging and didn't know it - the problem was, neither did I! A great opportunity slipped through my fingers!
                                      Click here to see Matson's Game

It was an awesome way to share his learning, in a personal way, and he felt very empowered! This was "HIS" site! He must have posted 6-8 videos ending with, "Thanks for watching."

Now, after reading the article on taking risks, I told my students I want them all to use their Seesaw account as their personal blog.  We will still only post their best work, but what a great conferencing opportunity this creates for myself and my students! We can view their work together and decide if it should go "live" into their account.  Sometimes I happen to see them recording live, so I can approve the work without having to view it a second time, but we usually do, as a lesson in editing (you never know what the sound quality is like, for example).
We are first graders.  Our videos are far from perfect.  Sometimes saying goodbye at the end of videos gets silly.  Cameras zoom in and out, faces get really close to the cameras, voices change during the last 10 seconds of recording.  It's all a part of creative expression and style - and learning what your audience wants (or what your teacher will tolerate, lol). Time to talk about building digital footprints!
By the way, I will blog about the video you watched - the math lesson I did with my students  - later.  It was FANTASTIC!!! :)
Happy Blogging!!!

Lessons Learned in Genius Hour Studies

Hello! Well, I was super excited to have Genius Hour with my students this last Friday.  I had loaded a video for each of them into their Seesaw account.  Yes, it was a bit time consuming, but SO worth it! I found the videos on YouTube, copied and pasted the link into SafeshareTv, and then into each student's Seesaw Genius Hour folder.  I love SafeshareTV, because that's all the kids can see - what I put there.  No links, no side bar graphics, etc. This is what my students saw when they logged in:

Some of the animals my students were researching were more difficult to find videos than others.  But that was the least of my problems :)

I did not think I would have WiFi issues.  We were the only class in first grade, and very likely the only ones using WiFi in our building (10 classes of 1st grade and 9 classes of kindergarten).  The time of day we do Genius Hour is between 2:00-3:00 on Fridays.  The high school and the middle school are done at 2:20.  The bandwidth should have been pretty open.  BUT.... only about 1/2 of my kids could get their videos to load.  I did eventually get everyone able to view his or her video, but it took until 3:05 - time to pack up to go home - before we got everyone done! INSERT SAD FACE HERE!!
Lessons learned - always lessons learned!
1. Plan on having around half of the students go online at a time.  The other half of the students can be researching with books, looking for pictures to add to their work, drawing features, or working on another project.
2. Pre-teach a few students how to help problem-solve basic problems which may come up.  For example, how to access the file (some forget how to find their video, and end up watching someone else's video).  This will save you lots of time, and help your students feel empowered!!
3. Teach two students a new technology tool, and have them teach two students, and so on... Again, empower, empower, empower!  You do not have 21 brains, 21 mouths and 42 hands to help them all in the time frame they want.  I've been there! This technique will limit the number of questions you will get tenfold!  This last Friday, I used this technique to teach my students how to take screenshots, and how to upload the photo to Seesaw.  It took me 3 minutes to teach two students.  Like wild fire, they taught the class and told others to teach someone else after they'd practiced it.  Will they have it perfect? Not everyone.  Will they remember it the next time they need it? Most will, but I will have to remind a few.
I will make a book of experts for each of the apps.  The kids can see who the "Go To" kids are for each app.  Eventually, we will be able to offer our expertise as  "Kid Tech Team" for our building, helping other classrooms when needed and asked.
4. Here are some examples of the QR code helpers I use, the guides my students use (if they want)for animal research, and some "live" Genius Hour projects in progress.  We will work 1 more time researching before we put our research into a presentation, using Shadow Puppet Edu.  You'll notice in my students' journals that they've cited (or it was on a previous page I didn't photograph) the book they used for their research.  I've made it very clear, even at the first grade level, the importance of citing work.  It may not be APA format, however, lol!

These are the supplies we use for our animal research Genius Hour projects, in addition to library books and iPads.  We will also use Chromebooks to research, with the same websites bookmarked on the toolbar.''

  

All of my students listed the facts they knew about their animal first, before they picked a book from the library.   This student listed all he knew about cardinals first on the paper, then as he learned NEW facts, he added them onto post-it notes.  I modeled this procedure for them using bats as an animal to research.  I wrapped up the research phase last week, and will model how to make a presentation in Shadow Puppet next week.
Shadow Puppet is not the only way my students can present their learning, but for their first project, I want all of my students to learn one complete process the same.  After this Genius Hour project is complete and everyone has shared his or her project with the class, I will model different ways to share projects - I'll save that for a different blog post! :)

Other examples of my students' projects.
This is my go to for great animal researching!  I have the students bend the paper back, so only 1 QR code shows at once.  You just need to have a QR reader loaded on your device.  I have QRJump on the iPads.  There is a Chromebook extension for a QR code reader if you use Chromebooks, and QR readers are available on android platforms as well.

The next pages are from a great friend and master teacher, Sabrina Peterson.  She shared them with us when she worked in our school a couple of years ago.  I miss her so much!!

I've used these pages with my first graders for 3 years, but usually in May.  It's a bit hard for many of them to read all of it this time of year though.  I made it optional, and not too many used it.

Reflection is always important for teachers to do. After each lesson I do this - with the students and again after they are gone.  I asked them about the problems we had, and if there were any things we learned from our frustrations.  One of my kiddos said, "It's ok, Mrs. Heikes.  Sometimes it's like our Smart Board.  It's an ornery board.  So we just had ornery iPads today."  Patience is a virtue!  Bless his heart!! We learn from each other every single day!

Genius Hour Resources

I recently did a webinar with the my friend, Angela Gadtke from @Seesaw.  We talked about how awesome Seesaw is to use with Genius Hour.  We've both taught Genius Hour in primary grades (Angela in kindergarten and myself in first grade) this past year.  During the webinar, someone asked what my favorite websites were to use to support my students' researching.  I have to be honest, I was not prepared for the question, and after a 12 hour day, and 2 weeks of recovering from pneumonia, I was shot.
So, I am posting my favorite sources tonight! :)

If you have students researching animals, here are my top 3 choices:
National Geographics - Kids

A-Z Animals

San Diego Zoo for Kids

If your students are looking for projects to make, here are a few sites:
DIY - for kids

Instructables

You Tube -You may find videos for your students yourself, but remember to put it into SafeShareTV for them to view safely.

I will post a few other resources my students are trying out for me - after we use them.  We are trying a more guided Genius Hour project for our first project this year, so my students know HOW and WHAT to report and share.  I will post samples of their work this next week, as they are working on their projects on Monday.  They are very anxiously waiting for Monday to come!  They were able to choose any animal to research.  I modeled the process with bats.  We wrote on post-it notes (thank you, 3M!!!) and put our notes in columns - CAN, ARE, HAVE.  As we learned NEW information through reading books, we added new post-it notes with the info. listed, but the post-it notes were of a different color.  This helps my students visually see we learn new information. Next week we will look at our notes and see if some of our original ideas of bats were true or false.  If the notes were false, they will be eliminated.

At the end of each working session, I will have my students take a picture of their journals and talk about what they learned that particular day, and what their next step would be.  This is something I was missing last year, and I learned from Angela.  Webinars, Twitter chats and other blogs are great ways to learn from each other!
Keep learning and keep moving forward! :D

Genius Hour Wrap-Up

The end of the Year was CRAZY!  I'm so sorry my end of the year post on Genius Hour is so delayed.  As far as Genius Hour goes, we were still working on projects right up until the last hour of our last day of school!! Don't do that!!!! ;)
Here are a few pictures of our projects, and a few closing thoughts for next year.

Some of the projects were green screen technology-based.  We used DoInk for them, though the large production was hard to do in DoInk, so I ended up with it in iMovies. This is just one of the scenes we shot.  My student's Genius Hour project was actually directing the movie.  She caste the movie, developed the props (with help of her classmates and her final approval), and then ran the production.  She was adorable!  If someone forgot lines, she would duck under the camera and run to them to whisper the lines to each of the actors.
https://app.seesaw.me/pages/shared_item?item_id=item.9b8250f8-fd04-4acf-a0fe-a3faef3de525&share_token=s5q40kzWTPaoMMecqR6CmQ&mode=share

Two students painted with acrylics.  At the beginning, one of my sweeties called her canvas her, "easel".  So much learning went into the project, including mixing, color temperatures, which parts to start with, and most importantly, our guest artist stressed the importance of creativity!!! Huge thanks to Tara Kilian, former colleague and dear friend who took time out of her day to come and spend it with my students!

This young fellow wanted to learn how to weld!  Yes, weld!  He'd already had some experience, so going to the  high school to do some hands-on welding was certainly a treat for him!

https://app.seesaw.me/pages/shared_item?item_id=item.a8795557-5c90-484b-9147-979bb36d852c&share_token=ZUzuWX87Q0mnbk4kNvrIfQ&mode=share

 I invited a staff member who
 is a master gardener in to work with two of my students who wanted to  learn about gardening.  My students looked through books to decide what they wanted to plant, then I went to Walmart and took pictures of their seed racks.  I let them choose which variety of seeds to choose from the pictures, if there was choice (color of flowers, variety of carrots, etc.).  She would stop every couple of weeks to check on the plants and make sure they were doing ok, thin them out with my students, and let them know what to watch for next.

 
 We had many sewing projects.  Luckily, I had a parent who was willing to come in and volunteer her time and talent.  While she is a stay at home mom, she is also busy sewing diapers for stillborn babies.  She sends them to hospitals all over the United States, donating them.  They had a stillborn baby themselves, and saw the need and felt the desire for helping other parents through such a difficult time.  Just a side note. as we don't always get to hear what our students' parents do for work, let alone for hobbies and interests.  She rapidly became a superhero to me!!  She came several times, bringing her sewing machine each time, and her two little ones, who were incredibly well-behaved!!  She even took a project home to work on, to get it almost completed so we could put the final stitches in at school during the last few days (we knew we were not going to get it completed otherwise).

In addition to this wonderful mom, I had a high school helper who was a wonderful seamstress as well.  She helped on the days she came (every Tuesday and Thursday).  She also helped with the green screen productions while I monitored behaviors and video taped other projects.

How can you not LOVE the excitement Genius Hour brings to students????!!!!!!!

https://app.seesaw.me/pages/shared_item?item_id=item.58dcfc53-50a5-4154-b16c82a3a50d51e2&share_token=v4k1bSl_Tsatxgz33aP8vQ&mode=share 

Two of my boys wanted to learn about the Vikings.  They did research of different plays, how many players are on the field at one time, how many games they play, and things like that.  Because so many classmates were doing projects, we decided to have them make pennants, so they had something to take home as well.


















https://app.seesaw.me/pages/shared_item?item_id=item.b82cc86c-45e2-4900-8e2d-2f9134da049a&share_token=ndCNce2zS5SAm1f27ocDKw&mode=share
This student wanted to learn how to build a robot.  When he found that would be just a little too ambitious for a Genius Hour project at school (too costly for us, for one, too time consuming for another), he began looking through the robotics book for an alternative project.  He found a recycled pop bottle car project in the book, but it had no directions.  He researched it on YouTube, made a list of all the materials we would need, and we began collecting materials.  The only item I needed to buy was the motor (which ended up being too heavy for the car).  His Genius Hour helper is one of our IT technicians for our district.  He had a blast, as did my student!  If you watch the video clip, you'll notice the battery had run out of power.  I ran and got a new battery, which worked, but the car still didn't run very well at school.  My student and his dad worked on it at home, and with changing the aerodynamics of the fan on the car, they got it to work much better!!

Other projects not shown included more green screen projects with Leogs, Minions, and Avengers; a tie blanket for a student who moved shortly after we began Genius Hour, and research on an angel shark.
I kept the materials which were donated and were not consumable.  Most of the students understood that next years students would be using the materials for their projects as well.

At the end of the school year, I asked my students to complete pages in Seesaw to document their "Favorites" during the year.  Here's just a couple samples of favorite things we did in our classroom.  Many students said Genius Hour was their favorite part of their whole year this year.  They loved the projects they got to choose for themselves.

https://app.seesaw.me/pages/shared_item?item_id=item.88debc82-6b03-42f7-b8ba-df991841d98d&share_token=skg0LtYMQDCbRilAcan6_w&mode=share

Genius Hour  was a success for many reasons
* I let the students choose their projects
* Students helped each other, but asked first if they could
* We connected with families, community and staff from other     buildings to complete projects, building upon their knowledge and strengths

Things I will do differently next year
*start sooner with a more controlled project first
    -I want to teach my 1st graders how to become good researchers, to know where to best look for answers with a controlled subject so when they choose their projects, they will have a solid base to turn to.
* Broaden my community involvement in the projects my students choose (depending on the subjects, of course)
*Try to blog the culminating data and photos sooner and more often.  I believe sharing with other teachers is important.  We learn from each other.

I hope this has been helpful!! Feel free to email or tweet me with questions!

Genius Hour and Community Involvement

When I first thought about trying Genius Hour in my classroom, I thought, "Ok, I can do this and I'll just keep this within my four walls.  That way, if it doesn't work, no one will need to know."  How many teachers think this way when trying new things? Well, that thought lasted all of 15 minutes for me!  I am a teacher who wants learn from my mistakes.

Well, now I've really opened it up!  I've invited many people from the district and the community to come and help us with our Genius Hour projects.  So far I have a student going to the high school to weld with the instructor (which I will video tape for him and Periscope), an instructor from a local business called, The Paint Factory to work with two students to do acrylic painting, and a teacher from the district who is a master gardener to come and plant container gardens with two students. We've invited a technology specialist from the district to come and build a car from a recycled pop bottle, but we haven't heard back yet (we invited him on Friday afternoon), and we are sending emails on Monday to two local business to help with the green screen work (I have 3 students who are working on DoInk projects).  We will email parents to ask who can come and work with studetns who are working on sewing (four students, and two of them are challenging projects!).  If I can't get parents to help, I will ask the Middle School and High School teachers and students for help.  My final emails I'm working on are to a professional football player to ask if we could Skype for 10-15 minutes with questions they receive ahead of time.  Wish us luck!!!

My purpose of blogging about Genius Hour is simple: 

• Try Genius Hour, and think BIG!!  
• Get the help you need to make it all work.  
• You definitely want extra hands in your classroom when you are doing Genius Hour in primary grades.
• Video as much as you can, or ask someone else to come in and video it for you.  It is awesome to go back and see their excitement and watch their learning happen!

By the way, when I was at Walmart, explaining to the employee cutting all my fabric what it was for, he was LIT UP!  He kept saying, "Why couldn't I have had you when I was in first grade.  I would have loved to learn about things I was interested in!"  

FIND THAT PASSION, PEOPLE!!!! :)

Shopping For Genius Hour Projects

Over the past week, I spent several hours shopping for my students' Genius Hour projects.  How did I know what to get them?  Here what I did:
1. The students had written letter to the stores asking for donations (March)
2. After we were given gift cards (whoop-whoop!!!!) from Target and Walmart, I went to the stores and took pictures of the fabric bolts, seeds and pots so the kids could look through my photos and make choices of their own.
3. I returned to the stores and made the purchase.  Yes, there were glitches.  Some of the fabrics weren't the right kind, knit vs. broadcloth, Thomas the Train blocks that LOOKED like Legos in the pictures.  Some of the Legos were sold out when I got tot the store (we had made choices from Target online).  Luckily I had parents who called me back while I was at the store and helped me fine tune my purchases.
4. I had to make some purchases online.  For example, several of my students wanted to research animals and football, and we did not have books available for the specific needs.  Because Target has a fantastic online book selection, I was able to order all four of the requests of my students.

On Friday for our Genius hour time, I had my students use Seesaw to talk about their projects, and the materials they've received so far.  Some items are still arriving, and one little sweetie will have an experience with a project, so no items will be in our classroom ahead of time.  Here's a link to his Seesaw post:https://app.seesaw.me/pages/shared_item?item_id=item.a8795557-5c90-484b-9147-979bb36d852c&share_token=ZUzuWX87Q0mnbk4kNvrIfQ&mode=share

Here's another post from a student who will be planting seeds.  We researched several variety of flower seeds before she settled on her final two.  She's SO excited!
 https://app.seesaw.me/pages/shared_item?item_id=item.9ba8136e-131c-4938-b95f-53a3e26869f1&share_token=eSe1OakiRvugVAbvRWC5vA&mode=share

Here's a link to a video another student made about his Genius Project.  He is going to make a Minion movie using DoInk.  I've got a high school student who taught him how to use the app this past week so he can begin his work.  https://app.seesaw.me/pages/shared_item?item_id=item.36322f93-5c61-4c2f-99f2-aa1d5e41f2f6&share_token=FNwKTE9dRDWmjDQUSTo59w&mode=share

I will post in a little bit another exciting addition to our classroom Genius Hour, which I am thrilled with the reception in the community!! Stay tuned!!

Great Resources

I have some resourcse for you!! Most of you probably already have this, but if you don't, you MUST STOP what you are doing and CHECK THIS OUT! If you like to teach without books, check out this resource!!
Ditch That Textbook is a wonderful resource, loaded with great ideas for you to think outside the box, to stretch your teaching.  Take your kiddos on virtual field trips - they will LOVE IT!!!!
If you haven't started to move toward digital teaching, I challenge you to make small steps.  This is how I did it! Try a new app or website each week or month, depending on your comfort level.  Talk to your students, letting them know you are trying something new. Tell them you need their help to give you their feedback afterward, so you can improve upon it for next time.  I've done that for Seesaw, Mystery Skype, Google Classroom, Shadow Puppet, Periscope, ChatterPix, PicCollage Plickers, and many other of my favorite apps.  We are not completely digital in my classroom.  I still have students writitng on paper every day.  You don't have to be a 21st Century Classroom to make this work.  I started with just one iPad, and now we have five iPads and five Chrome books.  I have a DonorsChoose request out for another iPad, as I feel a few more iPads would be a better fit for my classroom
Take the plunge!  Make the move toward digital!!!!

    I will be blogging about my most favorite app, Seesaw very soon!  Watch for it!!! If you want to check it out before then, here's the link: Seesaw 

Let's Talk Social Studies!

I want to talk about a passion of mine, since I've been talking about my students' passion projects lately  I.Love.Social Studies!  In particular, I love teaching children about our world.  When I was growing up, my family traveled.  We drove through almost every state and saw so many beautiful places. I have so many memories, including post cards in a collection from the states we visited.  I remember getting my Raggedy Ann sent through the mail to me from Kentucy, where I had left her in a motel, feeding the mynah birds on our hotel lanai in Hawaii, trying to save a jellyfish off the coast of Oregon and swimming in the Great Salt Lake after getting lost trying to find the "best" copper mine in Utah (thanks for that, Dad).                                                     

                                                                                                                                                                                                                          You can tell by my map (made at Map Loco), we travel a LOT

growing up. We were lucky. We learned a lot about our great country by 4 tires and 4-arm air conditioning (for those of who didn't know, air conditioning used to NOT EXIST!!!  It was windows down and your arms up in the windows, thus 4-arm air!) We did eventually get air, then vacations were a lot more pleasant!

 Here's my beautiful mom standing in a giant Sequoia tree.  This was taken before I was born, but it was very fun to share with my students when I read, My Adventures with Fluffy, a big book in our Literacy by Design reading curriculum.  In this story, the main character visits the Sequoia National Park, the Joshua Tree Forest, the desert, and the beach.  

I brought in several of my own pictures of a recent trip to the Grand Canyon, with a stop (or three to get the PERFECT picture of a dead Joshua Tree) along the way at the Joshua Tree Forest near the Grand Canyon.  It's funny, as we got closer to the Grand Canyon, the trees looked familiar to me, but I couldn't put a name to them.  Then it hit me!! THOSE ARE IN MY STUDENTS' READING CURRICULUM!!! MR. HEIKES, STOP THE CAR!!! I don't know about your spouse or significant other, but my husband totally understands and accomodates my need for the right picture, even if it's only a picture for ONE student. :)                                                

I HAVE to have it!

                              

So I     wanted needed the dead Joshua tree, at the angle it was at, and at the size it was, so we could do a Venn Diagram, comparing it to the Saguaro cactus picture a former student took for me several years ago on a family vacation. She took the picture because of a connection she made to the story I read, The Cactus Hotel, by Brenda Guiberson. It's an excellent text for students K-2.            

And of course, IF you give a teacher a story about a cactus and she's lived in the desert, she'll have to read another story about the dese

So I read, Roxaboxen, by Alice McLerran.  I lived in Yuma, Arizona for two years, where I taught in a Migrant Even Start, a program we called, Primeros Pasos, First Steps. 

Here was a chance to show how the campus of a school in a warm climate was very different than a campus in a cold climate.  From there, we launched into an idea of what it would be like to tweet to other schools and ask what their schools look like.  We didn't get many replies, but it's the asking and beginning connections we've made to hopefully connect again later.  We also had a Time for Kids magazine on schools, so the connections made through my lesson weren't lost. :)

  

Here's an extension from a study of animal habitats I've done.  The boy in the bottom picture is the son of a friend of mine.  They are in South America!  Robert was so surprised when this Humbolt penguin came up to him and started pulling on his pant leg!!  He wasn't sure what to do - he also wasn't sure why - do you think it was because his black pants had a white stripe on them? My students were wondering... My friends Karen and Robert brought back a shell, a penguin feather (white - downy) and a coin from South America from their trip to see the penguins. I also have several more pictures and a video clip of                                                                                                                                                   Robert with the penguin, but it is a family video
so I am not posting it here. By the way, it was a VERY windy day when Karen and Robert were there, and if you notice the strings along side Robert, there are walk ways for the visitors to stay within.  The penguins are free to roam as they wish, and that's how Robert got to meet this charming  Humbolt penguin, haha.










For George Washington's Birthday, have you ever considered reading the obituary to your student? Sounds odd, but the vocabulary is very unique! My students found it very interesting, wanted to learn more, and wanted to know if there was an obituary for Abraham Lincoln.  Archiving Early America is a great site for America's life and times of the founding years.

In my classroom, I read a lot of Magic Treehouse books.  These are rich with history lessons, and can be linked with so many teaching themes.  If you haven't considered linking them in with your social studies lessons before, it's time!

Here's another great connection I made to Women in History, tied to another Literacy by Design story about Jackie Mitchell, The Strikeout Queen, a 17 year woman who pitched for the Chattanooga Lookouts, who (may or may not have) struckout Babe Ruth.  A friend of mine took this picture of one of the "Lipstick League" collections.

One of my resources for ideas has been the book, Social Studies That Sticks, How to Bring Content and Concepts to Life.  I took a class a few years ago for post grad work, and fell in love with many ideas in this book, implementing many ideas right away.  A take away idea was to go digging in my own photo collection, helping my students make connections to the learning through my personal connections every chance I could.

Also, utilize your students' families.  They have so many experiences they can share as well.  An activity I've enjoyed with my students is having them bring in (or email to me) pictures of places from around the world they have been (or grandparents).  We mapped them out and learned what we could about each place. I wish I had invited the travelers in!!!

From wherever you pull your inspirations, keep social studies alive for your students.  Don't let them think it's less important than any other area of study. Use maps like books and launch lessons from there. If you go to my Twitter page @MrsHeikes, you'll notice right away, I've got two maps as you walk into my room - a United States map and a World Map.  As we tweet, Skype or do a Google Hangout with anyone, we make a post-it tab and mark it on our map. It's fun to see my students using the maps during Daily Five to Read the Room - of COURSE you can read the maps!!!!! :) Makes my heart soar!!!!
Check out the great resources below!  One of my favorite places to find and curate materials is Participate Learning.  Check them out - you won't be disappointed.  You can also join all your favorite chat groups through their site, with all links automatically curated.  AND, questions are always posted, so you don't have to scroll up and down through the tweets to find what question you're on!

Have a great week!!

Resources
PBS Learning Media
gosur.com
Center for Interractive Learning and Curriculum
Participate Learning
Archiving Early America
Using Google Earth with Literature
Google Lit Trips
Symbaloo Social Studies 1st Grade

Genius Hour Donation Letters

Yesterday I was on a mission!  I took my students' letters (which they had been working on for the better part of two weeks) to local businesses to ask for donations. Here's a link to the letter I created to take to the businesses. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8Xum7mi5c_jNWY5VzdKcVg4NVk/view

We had researched thoroughly what was needed for each project - I told them to leave NOTHING out.  So...some included needing water for their gardening GH project. :) I DID say EVERYTHING, did I not?! So after a little rewriting (we mastered SO MANY writing standards in this 2 week time period, people!!!!), we had letters were ready to go.  I have a few students who still struggle with legible handwriting, and a few students with spcial needs who needed to copy their letter after dictating it to me, but I was able to put adorable letters, handwritten in the businesses hands. You can't tell me THIS can't help!

                      

        

I made this last one a bit bigger, because I want to make a point.  Don't discourage any idea.  Find a way to make it work!  At first my thought was, "Ugh! How am I supposed to do this?" Then my little guy's dad came to me, just as excited.  He said he could bring in the welder.  My heart melted, and I thought, "How can I stop anyone from learning what they are passionate about?" It's not my decision WHAT they want to learn about.  I am the faciliator.  I help them find materials and resources. I couldn't find a book locally, so we ordered a book on welding for children.  I am getting in contact with Hutchinson Manufacturing, to see if they have someone who can show my student what can be done with welding beyond the basic welds (they do some amazing projects, including very cool art).  I will coordinate with the high school welding program to actually do a welding project.  Fortuanately, I have a student teacher, so I will be able to go with my student.  I will Periscope the event, which he can then add to his Seesaw presentation.

I have two boys who are researching football.  I know a guy who knows a guy.... - I have no DOUBT we will be Skyping with a MN Vikings player for them!!! :)

My student teacher is learning SO MUCH!  Connections, people, connections!!!!  Call in your favors (believe it or not, your contacts get just as much enjoyment out of helping!!), utilize your PLN on social media, phone a friend. I plan to use Periscope as many of them as I can, so my students can add them to their Seesaw presentations.

Here's what I learned about Genius Hour and donations from local businesses yesterday:
1. Target and Walmart are very receptive to donating, and will most likely help us out via a gift card. They have a meeting on the first of each month and decide who to donate to each month.  If you are looking at a project in which you need a timeline, keep this in mind.  They have a simple form (you need to know your Federal Tax ID number for Target's form) for you to complete.

2. Jo-Ann Fabrics and Menards will also most likely donate, but their process is a little more involved.  I have to fill out a little more paperwork.  Menard's application gets mailed off to Wisconsin.  I'll update you on the timeline.  I was hoping the inside connection with my student's Grandma Patty working at Menards might help. ;)  We'll see.

3. I keep my families informed on all we are doing, and will go to them for donations for what we don't get from the community.  My wish was to bring Genius Hour to life within the community and get people talking about all the great things our school is doing.  If we are doing great things and don't share what we are doing, the community doesn't know, right?  I don't want the glory as a teacher, I want the kids to have the praise.  It's pretty cool to be doing research projects in first grade, right?  We will be sharing GLOBALLY when we are done!  We have a classroom blog site (we'll use Shadow Puppet and Seesaw to present, and Seesaw is our Blog) and we have a classroom Twitter account.  Our projects will be shared there, as well as with our families and classmates.

4. We are learning as we go!  If you are just starting Genius Hour, or whatever name you give it, jump in!! I've seen so many versions out there, and all are fabulous!! I'm excited to see my students writing drafts, rewriting with corrections (and not even complaining about it) and pumped about making presentations.  My students used to STRONGLY dislike getting up and presenting any learning in front of others.  Now, they can't WAIT to share!  They do their best work (or try their best) and are anxious for Genius Hour day to come!

Here are a couple of references for you to get started researching projects!
What is Genius Hour?
Genius Hour Blog
Kiddle - Safe Intermet Search
https://diy.org/
http://www.instructables.com/
Seesaw