Back to School

This year I am teaching seven classes called Explorations into Technology. Together with my fifth and sixth grade students, we will explore everything from Digital Citizenship and Netiquette to Computational Thinking and Computer Science. I'm most excited to bring computer science to our district although my new role comes with the trade off. Instead of focusing my time on helping teachers to integrate technology into their teaching and learning, the majority of my time will now be in my own classroom working directly with my students. Now, I will need to lean on my colleagues for guidance in writing my own curriculum and facilitating these new classes. Lucky for me, I work with an amazing group of educators.

For my first week of school, I brainstormed a series of activities which I planned to run as stations with each group of students. My goals were for the kids to learn about the classroom space and curriculum while they helped each other solve problems and have fun completing simple tasks. After talking to some colleagues about my ideas, I decided to scale things back which turned out to be a win-win. Scaling back helped me provide a simple and meaningful lesson while affording me an opportunity to store some extra activities for future use.

Thanks to the suggestion by my colleague Caitlyn Morris, who I can't wait to present with at the MassCUE technology conference this fall, I decided to create a simple classroom scavenger hunt. I designed my questions to get the kids moving around, talking to each other, and identifying key information around the room, e.g. fire drill procedures, bathroom sign-out book, finding supplies, and learning about each other. Getting them out of their seats to find the information themselves, was powerful! Not only were they learning about our classroom but they were learning how to find the information themselves. Everything worked out perfectly, even with the practice fire drill during one class. With this shortened class, I had to give this group a quick tour instead of a scavenger hunt. Although not ideal, it was a necessary change and everything worked out. They did get to meet and help me save a praying mantis from being trampled during the drill. Always learning!