March 6, 2015

Curriculum Connections...

TGIF to everyone (and Happy Snow Day because technically it is Thursday when this is being published). I hope we all had a wonderful first week of March! It was a busy week with so much great stuff happening. I hope everyone has some fun plans for the weekend. It is great to see the weather starting to warm up a little bit... maybe some of this ice and snow will finally start to melt (after this last snowstorm of course)! 

In other news, congrats to Caylie, who will be taking over for Janine during her leave. Caylie, we know you will do an AWESOME job and Janine we will miss you!

I am not sure how many of you watched the Oscars a couple of weeks ago but the one speech that resonated with me was by Graham Moore, who struggled with being gay in his teens, but framed it in such a positive way here...

Let's remind our kids that it is OK to be WEIRD! Thank you to my friend Jay who shared this quote with me last week and was the inspiration for sharing it with you today. 

One of the focal points we need to be considering for next year is the idea of teaching our children about digital literacy and citizenship. This will be a critical opportunity and focus for us as our integration of various technologies, including devices, Google for Education apps and students digitally publishing their work, increases, we need to be proactive and teach our children the skills they need to be successful in a digital age... that continues to grow and evolve. I would like to make a few suggestions... 

• One would be putting a vertical team together (one representative from each grade level & any interested specialists) to help develop our own digital citizenship curriculum using the many online resources that already exist (we are NOT reinventing the wheel). This team could meet a few times during the remainder of this year to come up with a rough plan, which will continue to evolve... this won't be something set in stone... it will be a living document. Although I know we barely have room to "add anything else" this is another aspect of character development and social and emotional literacy we need to be addressing that can replace other "stuff" or be incorporated into reading workshop, writing workshop or even social studies. It can also happen in the computer lab during your scheduled times or in addition if that works better... whatever the case, we will figure it out but it is imperative that we are proactive in this area;

• A second component would be increasing the opportunities for us to model appropriate digital citizenship for our children - our modeling is critical. Whether we walk our students through composing a tweet (they can all do this with a little supervision) so they can begin sharing the stories in our classrooms or allow them to comment on each other's work using Google Docs (some of our kids are already doing this too) or showing them how to write an email, we need to model for our kids whenever possible!

• Finally, I am suggesting everyone check out the Common Sense Media Scope and Sequence for Digital Citizenship and maybe even try a couple of lessons. This is broken up between Grades K - 2 and then Grades 3 - 5 and beyond. It is some basic stuff and not that many lessons - definitely worth trying a lesson or two at some point during the remainder of the year to see if it is something that would work well for our children.  

This week, as I walked around #Cantiague this week, I spotted the following #EduWins...

• Karen took a risk and took her kids outside to play in the snow this week - what an awesome time! It was so great to see the kids just being kids and having fun running in the mountains of snow, building snowmen and just having a good time. In my mind, these are the moments that define the elementary school experience... I hope more of you might be willing to try some fun in the snow (please inform the parents in advance so the children are prepared). 

• Kudos to our Grade 3 team for taking the #GeniusHour experience and making it a family event during their Open House this week... it was really AWESOME! Although all the families were experiencing Genius Hour, it looked a little different in each room, which is what makes it even more awesome from my lens. Whether the families were redefining a brown bag, transforming a paper plate or taking on the marshmallow challenge, they were all really actively engaged. I can honestly say, it was one of the most engaging Open House events I have ever witnessed... families were not allowed to sit back and be passive audience members. They were building, cutting, pasting, discussing and having a GREAT time. BRAVO! 

• In kindergarten the children are in the midst of a poetry study in writer's workshop and this week I had a chance to hang out in Ally's class and work with a small group while they tried to generate a poem about a marshmallow (lots of marshmallows going on this week)! The children were challenged to create a list poem and I was so impressed with the words they were using to describe the marshmallow... squishy, tasty, yummy, soft and white just to name a few. I was totally blown away by their vocabulary. They were having such a great time coming up with the words and of course, in the end, they had a blast eating the marshmallows (yes, I had some too)... AWESOME!

Tech Tip of the Week...

As we continue to consider the ways we can use Google in the classroom, check out this resource: 5 Ways Google Tools Can Make Education More Exciting!




SCHEDULE OF THE WEEK... 

Monday, March 9

"B" Week
Happy Monday & Happy World Language Week!
Gr. 3 - 5 Math After school Test Prep

Tuesday, March 10

PTA Meeting at 9:30am - Our kids will be talking debate/argument writing!
Full staff FEO @ 3pm in the Library to finish our activity from last time and discuss Innovation Day... May 14th 

Wednesday, March 11

Gr. 3 - 5 ELA After school Test Prep

Thursday, March 12

CST @ 1:20pm
PTA Game Night @ 6:30pm - please join us!

Friday, March 13

Happy TGIF!
End of the Second Marking Period

Kids' Korner

Last week I had the chance to play CandyLand with some kindergarten students (definitely one of the highlights of the week) and during the game they were clearly kicking my butt (I never came out of last place). Anyway, right before I left, one of them said to me, "Don't worry Mr. Sinanis, I think you're a winner!" That might have been one of the sweetest things EVER!        

Pics of the Week...

Check out Cantiague's Week in Tweets - click on the following link to see our Pics of the Week...

WEEK IN TWEETS