10th Teaching K-6 Carnival

Welcome to the November edition of the Teaching K-6 Carnival. I've been vaguely aware of all the posts being submitted this month and it has been great to finally sit down and take a closer look at them. This month I share with you a number of great posts to enjoy. Be sure to check them out and spend a little time looking at other posts of interest from these bloggers.

Brain Strain

Melissa Hedding from Finds For Families shares some thoughts on the importance of teaching moral discipline early in life in her post The Moral Intellect. In her opinion, "Obedience and self-control are the first morals that a child learns".

Nightwalker shares his Tips To Improve Study Skills at My English Pages. These are a range of skills valuable to learn for students of all ages. This may be a useful list to send home with students early in the school year.

Gripes and Brags

As Erin explains, There ARE Some Students Who Struggle, But Do Not Qualify for Special Education. Her post provides information to parents in the US so that they may seek additional support for their child.

Rachel Lynette of Minds in Bloom encourages teachers to Get your Students to Tell their Parents What they Learned Today. This is a great post to use when reflecting with the class and to share with parents to improve the discussion about school and learning.

At Technology In Class TIC calls for student-centered teaching in The Failure of Teacher-Centered Teaching in A Serious Man. Here he shares some lessons that can be learnt from the movie "A Serious Man".

Andy Burtone from Andy and Ann reveals The Best Tricks to Make Your Middle School Students Happy. It's such a great read that I'm not going to give you any clues. GO READ IT!

In the News

The arrival of swine flu instigated a renewed vigor in teaching hygiene and disease prevention. Matthew Paulson wrote about Child Safety: Preparing for Flu Season at American Consumer News and Lorenzo Crocker shared 7 Facts and Myths about Washing Your Hands posted at online lpn to rn programs. In Addition Quirky Momma shares Glitter Germs: Preschooler Learning posted at quirkymomma.com.This is a great activity to help make invisible germs more concrete to your young learners.

Innovate - Beyond the Slate

This month Mathew Needleman from the Open Court Resources.com Blog shares Questions About Independent Work Time and Beginning of the Year Pre-Assessments. These resources are helpful for pre-assessing, planning and teaching in the literacy classroom.

Jim McGuire presents a convincing argument for student blogging with his post: Goals and Benefits of Student Blogging posted at The Reading Workshop. He describes just how engaging the blogging process can be.

Over at got audiobooks? John Mastro shares his experience of The Educational Benefits of Audiobooks and Children’s Learning. Whether at school, home or out an about, anyone can enjoy the luxury of being read to through an audiobook.

Though a little late now, Kakie presents literacy resources to send home for parents and kids in September is National Literacy Month - Free Resources! posted at Bur Bur & Friends: Community Park.

Tom DeRosa presents Ultimate Number Line Game: Number Sense on a Massive Scale posted at I Want to Teach Forever. This is a great resource for helping students to calculate mentally whilst learning kinaesthetically. It looks like a lot of fun too!

My contribution this month is Space Spectacular where you can read about the activities and resources we have used during our unit of work on Space.

Look No Further

Top 10 Education Wonks to Follow on Twitter

100 Blogs Every New Teacher Should Read

100+ Google Tricks That Will Save You Time in School

10 Historical Speeches that Every Student Should Listen To

100 Best Open Source Apps for Educators

Top 10 Free Open Courseware Classes for Special Ed. Teachers

50 Excellent Blogs About Education Reform

100 Free Tools to Tutor Yourself in Anything

Why not submit your post for the next carnival?

The Teaching K-6 Carnival is posted monthly on the 7th. I will be collecting submissions throughout the next month, looking in particular for posts that discuss and exemplify innovative teaching and the integration of technology in the K-6 classroom. I also invite some discussion around education related news articles and a few "brain strains" to keep our minds alert and challenged. Please submit only articles of which you are the author and refrain from using this merely as a sales pitch. For full details, please read my call for submissions.

If you have a relevant post that you would like to submit to the next edition of teaching k-6 carnival use our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

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Technorati tags: teaching k-6 carnival, blog carnival.

Numeracy Education Day

On Friday we had our Numeracy Education Day. Students were organised into mixed-aged groups for a series of activities moving from one classroom to another. Teachers prepared a 50-minute lesson that they presented 3 times during the day - two before lunch, and one after recess. This ran similarly to the Literacy Education Day we had for Book Week.

Teachers selected math activities involving space, measurement, problem solving, and chance and data. The activities were predominately hands-on math tasks with students working in pairs or small groups. Those working with 2D shapes created pictures using tangrams or other shapes. Some students went out to measure distances in the playground using metre trundle wheels. Others created a spinning colour wheel using instructions and measurements in centimetres. One group tried to solve brain teasers like matchstick puzzles.

My group was subjected to another Circle Time! This time related to chance and data. The group consisted of children from Kindergarten to Grade 2. I organised it as follows:

Check in: Students said their name, their class, and then coloured in the appropriate square, above their classname, on a graph. We then discussed what we can determine from this graph. Which class had the most members in the group? Which had the least? etc.

Mixer: One student stood in the centre of the circle and said "I like [McDonalds]". All children who agreed with the statement changed places in the circle. The person in the centre had to try to find a spot, leaving someone else standing in the centre. The game continued until everyone was mixed up.

Activity: The Car Race - I made another graph with numbers 1-12 along the bottom and some cute little pictures I found of cars. Students then worked in pairs to roll the dice and add the two numbers together. They then coloured in the squares above this number. The 'winning car' was the first one to reach the top of the graph (where I had some cute little pictures of checkered flags!) Before beginning, I got the children to choose which car they thought would win the race.

Debrief: We went around the circle and each group told me which car won their race, and how many spaces car number one moved. We then discussed why car number one didn't get to move at all. (It is impossible to roll 1 using two dice!) We then looked at the chances of rolling the other numbers, paying particular attention to the "winning car" numbers.

Energiser: I found a toss-a-coin tool on my Smart Board, but could have settled with an 'actual' coin! We then played a game of Heads and Tails. Students put their hands on their heads if they thought the coin would come up heads, or on their tails if they thought it would come up tails. Students who got it right stayed in for the next round. Play continued until one player was left and declared winner.

Check out: Students checked out by saying their name and one thing they had learnt about Maths through this activity.

I was really satisfied with how well these activities flowed and the discussion that arose as students explored chance through the roll of dice.

For more information about circle time, click here, or search this blog for 'circle time'.

ALEA Conference

On the weekend I attended the ALEA Conference for Literacy and Numeracy Week. I try to get there every year as I find it so inspiring. When I walk away I have a whole new set of things to try out and absorb into my teacher toolkit.

Recently I have been trying to use author studies and commercial picture books to teach my English content. In previous years, my focus has been more on the use of Reading Scheme materials. I have felt really excited about teaching through commercial picture books, but have been a bit worried about the lack of reading on the part of my students – generally I have been reading to them, as the writing in the book has been too small for the kids to read along.

At the conference on the weekend, we thought through a few options for overcoming this hiccup. I’ve decided I can scan or photograph the pages and display them on the Smart Board for the class to read along with. I also popped into my school library and found multiple copies of some of the titles I am interested in. This means I can use these texts for guided reading rather than being limited to reading scheme materials.

I was also challenged to give more specific feedback to my students, and to ensure that writing tasks that I set have a purpose and an audience. So…this week I got my class to design posters to remind students to respect our classroom environment, and a booklet on respecting others for students to read when they are sent to the thinking spot.

I found some great books I’d like to use later on: “Zen Ties” by Jon J Muth, “Woolbur” by Leslie Helakoski, and “Sunday Chutney” by Aaron Blabey. I’m thinking that I will use “Sunday Chutney” to help students consider what it feels like for the new kid at school and as a lead in to students writing letters for the new student who arrives.

I’m excited about all the possibilities with the use of quality children’s literature and am now looking with fresh sight at children’s picture books.