5th Graders Learn To Use Google Sheets with Formulas & Graphs

At the beginning of May, our 5th grade teachers asked if I would be willing to help them teach a math standard around creating a spreadsheet. They wanted me to focus on teaching students how to create and use a spreadsheet to find averages: mode, median and mean.  I jumped at the chance! I am a bit of a nerd when it comes to spreadsheets, and I knew that our 5th grade teachers would also find this information helpful.

We began by gathering simple data points from our students  - their favorite ice cream flavors!  What could possibly be more important.  We covered the most basic concepts of spreadsheet cells and cell addresses. Students began by entering their data points, highlighting the data, and creating and editing graphs from this data. It also created an opportunity for us to discuss graph styles (circle, bar, line graphs) that best match the data.

We then moved to the average temperature for Lakeville, MN.  With the data points entered, students highlighted their data and used the formulas for mode, median and mean (average).  First we inserted the formulas using the available pull down menus in Google Sheets.  Once we tried that, I taught students how to type in the formulas directly into the cell/formula bar and highlight the data. We practice changing the temperatures and watching how it affected the averages.  Voila! Students thought it was cool that the spreadsheet would do their math functions for them!

Checking Out More Than Books At The Oak Hills Library! Maker Tools!

A few years ago, I was so proud of a new makerspace that I added to our library.  We didn't have much to start with, but with the help of our fabulous OHE PTO, I was able to slowly add maker tools to this area for our library. I wrote about my dreams for how students could grow and learn from this addition to library in my blog post: Small Changes Bring Big Results - Finding New Ways to Enhance Our OHE Library!

As time passed, I realized that my original dreams for a makerspace in the library needed to be revised to better fit our needs at OHE.  I needed to embrace the Maker Mantra: I Try, I Fail, I Learn, I Try Again! Our students and teachers found it difficult in their schedule to add maker time to their weekly book checkout time.  Our students rarely, if ever, had time to leave what they are engaged in with their class to wander into the library for makerspace time. So I tried a different approach.  I put library barcodes on the makerspace containers and began to let teachers checkout the makerspace tools & toys for their classroom.  Teachers liked the ideas behind giving student time to be creative builders with these tool, but they needed to be more intentional about making it work with their daily schedule. They also needed the flexibility to move a maker time into their classrooms so they could fit it between other parts of their schedule. Now, I am happy to report that our maker tools are checked out of the library weekly, with times when I  don't quite have enough...so that will be the next goal. Oak Hills students LOVE being makers!

5th Graders @oakhills194 Learn Tinkercad Design & Print With The OHE 3D Printer

Over the last several weeks, I began introducing Tinkercad to our 5th graders, giving students an opportunity to design in Tinkercad and print with the 3D printer.  This is our second year with a 3D printer (Makerbot Replicator+) at our building, thanks to our PTO! This year, our work has gone a little more smoothly than last year as I have mastered my own learning curve.  I created an introduction slideshow to kickoff our unit, teach a few basic concepts about the potential uses of 3D printers in the world, and demo the “how to” of basic cad design.  (positive and negative space, grouping, aligning, print bed) Not only does this unit align well with math and geometry, it promotes design and creative thinking. Students also get more experience with the soft skills of perseverance and problem solving with the maker cycle:

Time working with Tinkercad and students has taught me that there are a few things we have to manage. I have to make sure students don’t grab designs that are already designed within Tinkercad. Though this crowdsourcing option in Tinkercad is fabulous once students understand how the design tools work, it can short change them initially by not forcing them to use the tools to create their own design. Once student have their own creation, I go through each design looking for common mistakes like accidentally pulling the design above the print bed and creating areas that are too thin for the 3D printer to successfully print. (nothing below 2-3 mm) These are things I had to learn from trial and error by working with students last year. Happily our students are gaining valuable experience that will help them as creators and designers!

Celebrating Spring With New Books for the OHE Library!

The Winners of the Oak Hills March Madness 2019 Tournament of Books!

We had two winners of our 2019 March Madness Tournament of Books, announced in the beginning of April!  These students were so proud of their perfect brackets!  They each won a book of their choice from the OHE BOGO Scholastic Book Fair in May.  The school's winning book/play this year was Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.  

Mrs. Lorenson's 3rd Graders Create Digital Book Hooks & Share Using ClassDojo

Mrs. Lorenson wanted to get her students writing or journalling more regularly, so she asked me to suggest a digital tool that would provide her students with an easy way to write about their books.  She had several requests for this routine writing activity. She wanted student to be able to use an image of the book cover in addition to writing a summary. Finally, she wanted the final products to be shared on ClassDojo so all of the students and parents could read the book hooks! Because our students are used to logging into their district provided Google account, I thought using something from the Google suite might be easiest. This would also give students much needed practice with word processing.  We decided to use Google Drawing with a text box for the summary/book hook.  This web app should provide Mrs. Lorenson's class with some good writing opportunities, while creating a nice finished product.  I also taught students how to take a screenshot on their Chromebooks (control+shift+the window switch key). Once they had their book hook saved as an image, they were able to easily upload it to their ClassDojo account. This allowed them to read each other's book hook and share with parents.

Mrs. Lorenson's students will be doing these frequently, so that will give me the opportunity to suggest improvements.  I didn't have students add color to the background. As a result, you can see the checkerboard background of Google Drawing.  This is easily fixed moving forward by simply adding color.

3rd Graders Make Connections To Content & Each Other As They Study Ancient Egypt With Thinglink...

Recently, Mrs. Pettis asked for my help in selecting a digital tool that would allow students to gather information about topics from Ancient Egypt. She uses a teaching technique called the "jigsaw method" where students research and create sharable content around a single topic from a larger body of information. Once each student finishes, they are responsible for teaching the rest of the class about their single topic area thus giving every child the opportunity to gain information about the entire topic, in this instance, Ancient Egypt. (family life, structures, food, clothing, government, farming etc.)

Mrs. Pettis and I considered a few digital tool options, but in the end, Thinglink seemed to fit the requirements best.  Thinglink allows students to add information (text, web pages and online videos) to a single image making it highly interactive.  When a cursor passes over a bullet on the image, the content appears. (Check out the student Thinglink image above!)

Before we began, we set up Mrs. Pettis with a class in Thinglink, which created a code for students to join her class.  It only took a few minutes, but made things go smoothly when we introduced it to her students for the first time.

The end result was an attractive and sharable image loaded with content for students to explore. It was an excellent way for students to share their knowledge so others could learn the content as well.