Looking for a cool place for educational games for kids?  PBS has a site called PBS KIDS Lab which has many games for students to play and learn. But that’s not all.  There’s a collection of activities for classrooms and home use.  The lab includes online games, games for mobile devices, Interactive White Boards and Augmented Reality.  Check it out here!

” Failure is not an Option”

“FAIL, First Attempt In Learning”

You’ve probably seen this video circulating recently…Best Motivational Video Ever

Go ahead take a few minutes and watch that one, its quite good and help makes my point.

 

 

I think we have been looking at the quote “Failure is not an option” as a negative, when really failure is a necessary step to being  successful.   All of the people mentioned in the video failed before they did something great.  Even one hit wonders fail many times before achieving success.

What’s this have to do with schools and teaching?   I think schools and teachers need to allow their students to fail more often and recognize that failure is an important step towards to success.   Now I don’t mean let students fail by giving up on them, but allow them to try new things, make mistakes when practicing  (grading homework and not allowing students to retake tests when they’ve worked to learn the material, come to mind here).  Schools need to allow teachers to fail as well.  Without failure there will be no innovation and in this world of doing more with less, innovation is going to be absolutely critical.

What do you think?

Have you ever found success before failure  (looking success up in the dictionary doesn’t count!)?

Living Math Book List is a website that collects books and stories that can be used to introduce, teach or review math concepts. Everything from Addition to ratios to weights have books or stories that can be used for teaching. Using the site is simple, on the right hand side of the page their is button marked Search Categories. Click on this button and the box below lists all of the math concepts they have books.   When you select a topic it lists the books and includes a link where you can get the book from Amazon.  A neat idea would be to build a school or classroom library that includes books that teach the hard to learn math skills for your particular grade.  

Fablevision Learning, home of Peter Reynolds who wrote and illustrated “Ish”, “The Dot” and most recently “I’m Here”, is running a Twelve Days of Holiday Gifts Promotion.   If you click on the link below you can find out more about it.

Technically speaking I am just  a fifth grade teacher at my school….

As we all know there are more responsibilities that go with any teaching position in a school.  Most of mine happen to be technology related.  So I created a website to help handle those responsibilities.

Technically Speaking: https://sites.google.com/a/emanschools.net/techspeak/

I created a couple of Google Forms to assist with problem solving for a few of the applications we run at our school.  I also added a humor section and some sites I thought would be interesting for our staff.

Updated: January 5, 2012

Some of my posts here will be cross-posted there as well.  I recently added a page with SIOP resources and a page on iPad Resources.

 

 

 

 

 

My students start their morning as follows:

1. Put their things away in their lockers.
2. Pick up their breakfast.
3. Eat while talking with their friends or working on school work.
4. When done, clean up and put all trash away.
5. As they finish they come up and sit on the floor near my desk.

As students finish, I allow them to use whatever iDevice I’m not using. I always have my iPad and iPhone with me, and try to remember to bring my iPod Touch when possible. This leads to having a possibility of three devices to share with my students.

I generally pick out the app or interactive book I want them to use. Sometimes I will allow them to choose from a particular folder of apps. They must remain seated on the floor (keeps the devices safe) and must share. Its neat to see how engaged they are when using these devices. My students don’t have access to these types of devices very often otherwise.

Two of their favorite apps are Stack the States and Stack the Countries. They also like to play some of the Everyday Math apps.

The students respect the devices and appreciate the opportunity to use them. Behavior, damage or theft are not a concern. When we’re ready to start the rest of our day, the iPhone goes back on my belt clip, the iPod touch stays in my pocket and the iPad is stored in the stand I use. Occasionally students will use one of the devices to look up a word, or look something up.

I had the opportunity to help lead a trek to the Northern Tier High Adventure Base this past summer. We had a fantastic time and this is the poem I wrote when we got back to base.

There’s a magic in the silence and the beauty of the Northern Tier
In the song of the loon and the eagles dancing across the sky,
Where the fox plays on the shore and the beaver crosses the lake,
The majesty of the night sky, and the gentle waves of lakes lull you to sleep
There’s magic in the silence and the beauty of the Northern Tier…..

I am working on my masters degree at Saginaw Valley State University. For my curriculum class we are exploring what curriculum means.  I have created a survey using Google forms and I am looking for participants.  If you are interested in participating here’s the link:

https://docs.google.com/a/emanschools.net/spreadsheet/viewform?hl=en_US&formkey=dHBySmRWRzdYSFJKWGNkcWd6dlF5eXc6MQ#gid=0

Thanks!

This is what teaching should be about….

Follow your heart,
Can you discover the light that burns bright in you?
Follow your heart,
Always remember there’s no one that shines like you.

This is from “Follow Your Heart” a song from Night Ranger’s latest CD “Somewhere in California”. Teaching and school should be about helping students to find their talents (the light that burns bright in you). It should also be about giving them the strength to remember that they are unique and valued.