Uncle Reuben's Journeys Part 5 - The Time-line

Uncle Reuben lived to be 100 years old; “and 1 month,” a student would usually remind me. What a great number for 2^nd graders! Time-lines were being introduced in the math chapter we were working on so we decided to make a timeline display of Reuben’s life. We would be able to develop skills for working with time-lines as well as number lines. I had a few pictures to contribute to the board and stapled a strip of white paper, marked off in 5 year segments, and the pictures to the board for them. A second strip was placed below to represent the 10 years of travel that he did starting in 1924. I then began handing the project over to a group of students.

Every child in the class illustrated some part of Uncle Reuben’s journeys. The group began organizing the pictures. I noticed some girls working with the illustration cards on the carpet one day. Our carpet has a large map of the United States on it. They were placing the illustrations on that giant map and telling the story of his journeys to each other. It was interesting to see what they remembered and whether or not they could find the places on a different type of map. (They could!)

Two students, and several helpers, typed captions for each picture and illustration and those were printed off, cut apart and taped in place. Here is a picture of the finished timeline.

The timeline became a very useful tool and was referred to often when a date would show up in something we were reading. 

Uncle Reuben's Journeys Part 4 - The Model T

The pictures I’ve posted so far show about half of the class so some of you are probably asking, “What were the other students doing while this was going on?”  They were busy!  I had just shown the class how to make a video with pictures, text and music using PhotoStory3 but I hadn’t let them work with it on their own yet. 

Not long before, I had run across a Model T Coup like the one Uncle Reuben had ridden in, all the way up into Canada, following the harvest. It was sitting right next to me, in the showroom, while I was waiting on my car to be serviced one Saturday. Ignoring the looks I was most likely getting from other “waiters”, I pulled out my phone and started taking pictures of it from every angle. I wanted the kids to get an idea of how small it was; especially to hold three twenty-something young men for more than 1000 miles along bumpy, dirt roads. We had already watched some videos I had found online of a Model T going down the road so they were familiar with the car and the way it looked and sounded.

We loaded the Model T pictures onto a computer and I let some students work together to move the pictures around, edit them and add text and music while standing around the SmartBoard. It worked great and they got to practice their PhotoStory3 skills before they started on their individual video projects at the end of the year. They got skills and I got future trainers to help everyone else learn! What fast learners! We didn't get a finished product but they learned the basics.

Uncle Reuben's Journeys Part 3 - Counting the Miles

Lucky for us, Uncle Reuben kept a journal during his traveling years. We divided his journeys into 30 parts and started mapping them out with colored yarn. We used brown for train travel, red for motorcycle, green for car and blue yarn for steamship and canoe. The questions kept coming! 

Teamwork!

Lots of discussion!

The next step was to figure out how many miles he traveled. That was a big job but my students dug in and, enthusiastically, got to work! They each made a “map measurer” using a gift ribbon and a marker. They marked 100 miles 10 times according to the legend on the map giving them 1000 mile measuring ribbons.The first group began measuring using their estimating skills. One person stood at the board and wrote the miles for each leg of the journey. Another group measured the next day and either agreed with the measurements or wrote their miles next to the first miles. A third group settled 2 measurements by measuring again. The discussion I heard as I passed these groups was wonderful! I was so happy to see evidence of their growth as learners and inquirers!

Measuring and Recording Data

Another group determined the type of transportation for each trip and coded it with a letter; c for car, ca for canoe, m for motorcycle, etc., on the board.

Transportation Team

By this time I was ready to have my board back so I decided to set up three laptops facing the board and assigned students to type the information we had compiled into Excel. Each typist had a partner to check, point and help make sure they weren't skipping data. Some traded places after awhile.

Working in Excel and adding up the miles.

When they were finished, I combined the three files into one. The class was excited when we put the data up on our Smartboard and I showed them how Excel lets us sort and filter. They used their calculators to add the miles of each mode of transportation. When we were finished, they had figured Uncle Reuben traveled about 19,200 miles between 1924 and 1934. Now they could display the miles according to transportation!

[As a side note: I was curious to find out how close they got to the actual miles with their little ribbons. I took the data file and compared it to actual miles using http://www.freemaptools.com/how-far-is-it-between.htm . I just about fainted when I finished adding them up for myself. They had gotten within 200 miles of the actual mileage! I don't think the kids actually understood how cool that was but I'm sure they recognized the look of pride on their teacher's face!]

I think I found my twin! I didn't write this but I could have!

Putting the Nerdy Teacher Back in the Classroom - Let Project Based Learning Begin

Sep20

The most wonderful thing happened to me this year – I lost my job.  After several years in full time tech integration, budget cuts landed me back into the classroom.  Isn’t that a strange twist of fate?  Yes, I was a bit bent out of shape at first, but quickly (and I mean in just a few days) realized how amazing it would be to take all the training I’ve been doing with teachers and directly give it to the students we’re trying to impact.  What would it be like to actually run my own 21^st century classroom?  What tools would I need?  What projects would I want to run?...

more at:

http://mrssmoke.onsugar.com/Putting-Nerdy-Teacher-Back-Classroom---Let-Project-Based-Learning-Begin-5147479

20th or 21st Century Educator?

I read over my list of things I didn't have last time I had my own classroom today and realized that most of them are technology based. I didn't have a lot of technology in my last classroom. Over a decade ago, I had one computer for 26 students and a teacher. Even though technology is important and necessary for teaching in today's schools, there is much more to being a 21st century teacher than bringing out a piece of technology and then trying to "work it into" my lesson.

I will soon have a chance to step into the many roles of the 21st Century educator. It won't be easy. I expect to have times when I fall back into traditional methods but I will try to stay in the correct century and engage my students in a way that will help them learn best.

Technology provides many of the tools but teachers provide the opportunities to learn and apply 21st century skills. The diagram below will be my map for the next year.