Finally getting settled: Week two went by crazy fast, but was much less chaotic than week 1. I am finally getting a handle on who these kids are and what they can do. Last week we spent getting all signed up (finally) for all the personalized learning resources (quizlet vocab, typing club, etc.) . It can be frustrating for both the students and for me to do all this logistical information, but now that we are all set with that, should be pretty smooth sailing. We also got a chance to play a few games (kahoot and quizlet live), which was a nice break after getting all registered. My favorite part about last week was that I finally got to really get to know the students as we made and finished our get to know you projects. The 5th grade worked on a shared class google slides show, and they go to take and share a little about their "Selfies". The 6th grade used media (videos, pictures, etc.) to share about themselves on a platform called padlet. With 300 students I have met in the past week, I was so thankful to really begin to see who they are as people. So far, I've got some pretty amazing students. Coming up this week: tech timeline in 5th grade, and exploring STEM careers in 6th.

This week was spirit week, homecoming week, my favorite week. I was also very busy running around filming our WE ARE FAMILY school wide video, which I cannot wait to share. We began our next projects in class, exploring the tech history and future. 5th grade is taking a look at the tech history by doing a timeline. Each group is assigned a different technological advancement, and completing a graphic organizer about the technology. Then they will be completing a slide show of their invention and we will make a timeline. I have noticed that the students need more help with the research than I thought initially. They are used to just Googling questions and taking the answer Google gives rather than using it to find sources to read and deduct their own thoughts based on the information. We are working on this concept of not just finding information, but reading and using it. In the 6th grade, we are looking and technology from the lens of the future. The students took an interest survey to determine their best suited career clusters. Then they are using onenet.com to research salary, duties, etc. for that job. After they have done that, they will create their future stem career FAKEBOOK profile. I noticed that the students are also struggling with answers that require them to go beyond just finding the information and copying it. I am hoping this exposure to more critical research questions helps the students in the future.

This week we continued our timeine and careers projects. I am noticing that these projects take much longer than expected. The students are working hard though and are beginning to enjoy going beyond the research portion. Hopefully they see that the more boring, research portion is all worth it when they get to do something interesting with the information. For the 5th grade, I gave them essentially a blank slide template, because they struggle to be able to troubleshoot and figure out platforms with out specific directions, and I want the kids to be empowered independent learners who can critically navigate multiple platforms. They are not used to struggling through things and making/recovering from mistakes. I want them to understand that trial and error is not always a bad thing if it helps them to learn. The will need to independently function on technology. The 6th grade really enjoyed making their "old me" avatars for their FAKEBOOK template.

This week we finished up our tech history/future units and began to move on to our next unit. The students were able to play a couple games of quizlet live and kahoot while students worked to finish their templates if they were behind. I learned this week that I have to put a lot of planning into the pacing of this class. Students work and finish at such different paces, that my next project is to work on extension stations for those that finish early so that they have something enriching to do, and so that the other students have time to finish these projects.

This was the last week of volleyball and thank goodness. I will miss this girl and it was an amazing season. Go Norskies!! In class we have been working on our digital citizenship units. The fifth grade is putting together a padlet, which is basically a virtual bulletin board, where they will pin their work and resources about digital citizenship, including videos, recordings, websites, comics, and superheroes. In the 6th grade we are working on Canva, a graphic design website, to create an info graphic about the different elements of digital citizenship. Next week we will finish up the digital citizenship unit, and begin our next units of infections detection for 5th, and web and video design PSA unit in 6th.

Mold: Amazing how something so small might completely turn your school upside down. We relocated to the library for a couple weeks, completely took down and set up my classroom (again), missed two instructional days, and of course, got behind on our professional blogs. I can't complain too much, as we got to use a pretty cool learning space and what can we say, never a dull moment. Just to give you the long story short, the 6th grade did PSAs and they were amazing. Check out my Norski Network Youtube channel or the video here to see them. I was so proud to see them care about such big things and get creative with media. It was a little rushed, but with only a semester class and some external curriculum, it was still meaningful no matter how resourceful we needed to be. After the PSAs, and a move back to the classroom, we started our 5 cycle station work. There are so many cool materials to use and explore, but not enough to do it as a large group: Hence, station work. This allowed me to give each cycle a theme and for three days, they would visit 3 stations each day for the theme: Fundamental skills (vocab, typing, reading), Code.org personalized learning, and the exploration station where they explore resources and materials. The first 3 cycles were Art/Music apps, Prezi, and Virtual Reality. When we return from break we will explore robotics, circuit playgrounds, and coding assessments. The 5th grade, who focused on coding and introductory programming while in the library, were finally able to start their Project Lead the Way curriculum. They started as investigative scientists exploring a real work problem of germ spread. They investigated, participated in simulations, and explored technology that tracks the spread of germs. These are all providing background knowledge, conceptual understanding, and problem solving practice for the project. The students will use Tynker to program and design their own computer simulation to solve the problem. I am very excited for this!

From mold to snow to cold: This year has certainly helped all the students and myself practice the art of flexibility. As I am writing this, I am coming off of our 4th snow day in the past couple weeks. You know what they say, though: Absence makes the heart grow fonder. So what happened in January when I did have the pleasure of seeing those bright, smiling, faces? The 5th grade students absolutely dominated our Tynker simulation project. They all coded their own dodge-ball game, and then progressed into a less guided project to make their own simulation of a dinosaur ecosystem. This required students to think on their own and problem solve, practicing the logical thinking that goes into coding. They are adjusting to the mindset that mistakes and debugging is okay and part of the process, rather than shutting down when they meet each small failure. The last step is to utilize the technology they created to learn and solve a problem. They will be modifying the parameters of their simulations and testing which parameters affect the outcome of the simulation and drawing conclusions from there. They will also take a vocabulary test and a Tynker skills quiz to independently demonstrate their learning. Based on my observations during the projects, the students will nail these assessments. The next unit we will tackle after we close off Modeling and Simulation will be Automation and Robotics, also through project lead the way. This will be a very engaging and complex unit where the students combine their programming skills and construction and mechanical skills to design and construct robots.

For the 6th grade students, we have just completed the final exploration stations cycle, robotics and programming. The students were able to explore and play with various robots such as the Ozobots and the Spheros. They also were able to program thermometers, light and sound shows, and even Harry Potter Sorting Hats on the circuit playgrounds. Finally, they were able to demonstrate their progress on code.org by completing a project through the website. I particularly appreciated the "Dance Party" projects, where they programmed a dance routine.

Looking to the future, the second semester of this 6th grade class is structured as a Project Lead The Way app creator course. This course is designed for 6th-8th grade students to learn how to design, program, test, and possibly publish their own app that solves a problem. Please visit this website to learn more about this curriculum and being a PLTW school. Project Lead The Way Gateway Programs This course is completely created by Project Lead The Way to be the entire curriculum for one quarter (one semester for us, since we only meet every other day). Therefore, they will be working on this unit almost every day, but will have a warm up to practice their fundamental skills and vocabulary. Project Lead the Way courses are specifically designed to provide the student with challenging and engaging lessons and projects that require students to work together, problem solve, analyze, lead and create at their own pace. It follows an instructional model called "Project Based Learning". Here, through collaboration, real world resources, guidance, and problem solving the students learn by doing and exploring. This is different than many of the traditional models of education in that the teacher functions as the facilitator of learning rather than the deliverer of content, while the students direct their own progress. This method requires a growth mindset. Often struggling and problem solving is part of the process. There is not always one right, expected, answer in these projects and that can be unusual and frustrating for some students. Part of this structure is working together with the student to help them problem solve, rather than tell them the answer. Considering this, students are not punished or assessed by their ability to simply complete the assignment. Rather, since they are working at their own pace and encouraged to not be disheartened by mistakes and to take the time to solve them, they are only graded on the processes that went into the projects, not their completion or correctness, and projects that they do not complete in lesson 2/3 due to time do not affect their grade. The curriculum is divided into three lessons, all with activities varying in difficulty within. The first few activities of lesson 1 are more guided and will be addressed in large or small groups in class. These build background knowledge and practice skills. From there, the students will then begin the less guided activities and projects alone or with partners and will work and be assessed at their own pace. At the completion of lesson 1, they will take an independent assessment and vocabulary quiz to make sure they are understanding the fundamental and benchmark concepts. Lesson 1 will all be assessed for all students and they should have time to complete all of it not matter what their level is, but not all students will get through all of lesson 2's activities. Therefore, they will be graded on lesson 2 activities only as an extension if a student is able to pace themselves to complete them, but the grade will not count if they do not have time to get to all the lessons. The final lesson 3 is the final project where they design, model, test, program, and possibly publish their own app and their app is completely up to them. For this, all students will work within their own abilities to demonstrate the problem solving and design skills they learned throughout. I have been taking a class to be certified and trained to teach this App Creator course and I am so excited to share this material with the students and see what they can create!

The weather really decided to rear it's ugly head this month, but we certainly have trucked through it and made it to March: and back into 5 day weeks, and the homestretch until spring break. For the 5th grade, we finished our Tynker and parameters projects and the kids really impressed me with their coding abilities. They had to pull from prior knowledge to demonstrate what they have learned about Tynker and simulations. For the past week we were able to take a break from the complexity of Project lead the way to do a SECRET STEM CHALLENGE SERIES. This was a super fun mini project where they students practiced using the design process to solve a number of stem problems. This was an exercise in problem solving thought process and the idea of model, test, and evaluate. The students choose random secret hands-on challenges and solved them. See our gallery for some pictures of what they were doing. This mini-project was to prepare them for our robotics and automation unit, which begins this week. It will require team work and problem solving, as well as organization of materials and directions to ultimately create robots that could clean up a toxic waste spill and solve a world issue. I am so excited to see how they do. For the 6th grade students, we have had such a great start into our App Creators curriculum. The students have learned about liniar and conditional algorithms, made some basics choice apps to practice navigating MIT app creators, and have started working on designing and programming and app that would help volunteers who are helping with a natural disaster learn about diseases associated with crowding. Up next, they will program their own game upp for studying germs and body systems.

Finally Spring! The weather is getting nicer, which means so am I :) We are also in the homestretch of our school year and our journey in digital literacy. The fifth graders, since returning from spring break have been living and breathing robots. They have really worked through many challenges of working with a group of four to complete and construct one, super intricate robot. See our gallery for some pictures of building and race day, which was a massively fun success. Now they are on to part two of the robot unit, where they (Finally) get to build creatively and design an addition to the base robot car that can complete a challenge of moving blocks to a safe zone in a field. For this one too, they could choose to work alone or with a partner if they agree. I am very excited to see what innovative solutions they can come up with. I am also excited for myself in that I do not have to try and make 4 fifth graders share one robot anymore. :) For the 6th grade, it has been absolutely amazing to watch them master this app design unit. They have really accomplished things which I don't think they thought they could do. They have programmed a game complete with a timer, sounds, a dragged image sprite, and changing backgrounds. This was quite the feat, and they nailed it. For their final project they got to choose to make a drawing app to demonstrate proficiency, or to do challenge app 1.8 from PLTW to try and demonstrate an advanced level. Their final option was to design and program their very own app idea, and the students have some really great ideas. I cannot wait to see what they come up with.