4th Teaching K-6 Blog Carnival

Welcome to the April edition of the Teaching K-6 carnival. This month I had a great response from bloggers who were busy writing great articles. With this month's edition comes a new category for blogs that gripe or brag about things that are happening in the classroom. We have lots of innovative ideas for teaching and thought-provoking articles to inspire you. Thank you to all the contributors for this month. Enjoy, and please, spread the word.

Gripes and Brags

In The Last Zebra the Professor encourages people to keep children's safety in mind by keeping them close. He offers suggestions on how he has succeeded with this with his own children at Professor of Protection.

Gerald Aungst shares ideas for Keeping Kids Focused at Quisitivity.org. He encourages teachers to accept that doodling assists with concentration during teacher-led discussions and points to research that suggests this may be a coping strategy for gifted students.

At My English Pages, Mohammed Rhalmi presents Teach with love and logic- Breaking the ice! He gives suggestions on how teachers can create a positive, caring environment for students. His 'ice breaking tips' are sensible ideas to help teachers to develope mutual respect with their students.

Dana, a homeschooling mum, presents What my daughter has learned through blogging posted at Principled Discovery. She shares about her daughter's learning successes with starting up a blog and creating a science e-zine with multiple contributors.

Innovate - Beyond the Slate

Remember the ant farm of yesteryear? C Merrick presents Gel Ant Farm - A Space Age Habitat For Ants posted at Gel Ant Farms. If you've ever considered becoming a myrmecologist, or want to provide that opportunity to your students, be sure to check out these gel ant farms!

This month at Keeping Kids First, Kelly Hines challenges us to openly explore new learning with our students. Rather than simply go by the book, she encourages us to venture Off the Beaten Path and create learning experiences that are highly memorable to students.

While most of the content of this carnival is focused on K-6 education, Fiona Lohrenz shares some Ideas For Day Care Activities And Games posted at Child Care Only. These ideas are great for developing skills in the early years and engaging children's curiosity.

In these times of great economic crisis, we are all sadly searching for ways to save money and prepare students to act responsibly with finances. Debbie Ducker presents Your Children and Grandchildren Must Learn to Save Money posted at Ducker Promotion Ezine, saying, "Teach your children how to save money at an early age and you will save them a lifetime of heartache."

Meaghan Montrose presents some simple ideas on using flash cards in Effective Learning Strategies and Study Skills- Part 2 | posted at Tutorfi.com.

In the News

How are you a teacher-feminist? Have you noticed the impact of gender, race, and other social schemata in your classroom? Educatorblog presents Ways of the Teacher-Feminist: Text, schema, and stereotypes, oh my! posted at An (aspiring) Educator's Blog. Take the time to read and reflect on this article and consider its impact for your own teaching philosophy and pedagogy.

Chris Mauger has taken a closer look at the development of healthy self-esteem. In Kids and Self-Esteem: Avoiding a Culture of Proud Failures posted at Maugeritaville he encourages us to provide opportunities to try and try again. Chris sees the value in helping students to achieve success for themselves rather than stepping in to do it for them.

This month I present my Thoughts on Globalisation here at Teaching Challenges. I share my personal experiences of globalisation in terms of applying for and obtaining a job in an overseas school.

Brain Strain

This month's brain strain is The Iowa series - Wrap-up posted at Dangerously Irrelevant. It's actually not a hard read this month, and contains lots of great diagrams and videos to present information visually. Scott McLeod provides a brilliantly informative resource discussing the future of education. He introduces five 'levers' to move schools forward and help students thrive and survive in this digital age. This is a resource I would confidently recommend to anyone interested in bringing about change in our schools and making them sustainable in an uncertain future.

Look No Further

Sarah Scrafford presents a helpful resource in 100 Free Online Books Everyone Should Read posted at Best Colleges Online. Here you can link to many of the classics including favourites like "Alice in Wonderland" and "Treasure Island". Her 50 Awesome Open Courseware Classes on Space & Astronomy posted at Rated Colleges may help you to touch-up on your own knowledge as you prepare to teach students about space. (I know I'll be checking it out!)

Erika Collin has gone all out with tips for Twitter this month. Her 100 Tips, Tools, and Resources for Librarians on Twitter posted at Learn-gasm, and Top 100 Tools for the Twittering Teacher posted at Best Colleges Online will keep you twittering away all those spare moments.

Margaret Garcia presents 100 Best Web Tools and Tips to Organize Your Inbox posted at Radiology Technician Schools. Prior to reading this post, I never realised there was so much one can do with email. If email is getting the best of you, check out this post!

Why not submit your post for the next carnival?

The Teaching K-6 Carnival is posted monthly on the 7th. I am collecting submissions throughout the 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 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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Friday Fun - 28/11/08

I've been reading blogging tips from Successful Teaching, that originally came from someone else. One of the things covered this week was the idea of having a blogging schedule with regular items. I see this on a lot of other people's blogs - things like Wordless Wednesday, Carnival of Education etc. So, I'm going to try out 'Friday Fun' where I do a quick recap of the fun activities of the week. I'll also try 'Tuesday Tips' where I'll give tips for teachers and parents for things we're covering in class. And on the weekends, I think I'll do a philosophising post - one where I ponder and discuss issues around teaching. On other days I may or may not do posts relating to what's going on in the classroom. I'll have to see how it goes.

Fun this week:
First 'Classroom Chat' - On Monday, after school, I interviewed my two team teachers about their experiences as beginning teachers. We discussed the challenges and support they experienced and celebrated their successes. We also reflected on our hopes for next year. We are in the process of editing and hope to have it up sometime next week.

Making Geckos - We looked at geckos on Flickr and painted our own cardboard geckos. (This tied in with 'Are We There Yet?')

Constable Kenny - A local police officer brought 'Constable Kenny' to our school to talk to the K-2 classes about traffic safety.

Cooking 'Uluru Buns' - My class reached the next star on the goal chart and was awarded an Aussie cooking session using recipes from an old Kraft Cheese recipe book. I showed them the choices and they voted for their preference (I graphed the results as we went along). The cooking session went well and the buns were delicious.

Real travel journal - Prue from 'My Life as the Good Twin' sent us some scanned images and text from the travel journal she had as a child when she travelled around Australia. It was a lot of fun to read about her story of Kakadu and Uluru. The kids were fascinated.

Market Day - The Year 6 students organised a whole bunch of stores for the rest of the school to buy from. There was a really great variety of things including a petting zoo, obstacle course, guessing competitions, skill testers, and PLENTY of junk food. The kids in my class were very sugared up by the end of the day.