The kiddos have been using the ipads like crazy this year. I just discovered Kahoot, (I must have been living under a rock!) and my students love to make their own quizzes for vocabulary and comprehension with our weekly stories. I wish we had to chrome books because it would be a little easier to manage, but my students are learning a valuable lesson in sharing with our 5 ipads :) We also like to use padlet to ask questions and share what we've learned. It's similar to wall wisher that I used years ago where students post virtual sticky notes and they all start simultaneously popping up on the smartboard. The last app we're really a fan of is popplet, which is basically a bubble map/flow chart. We've used this for vocabulary a lot and the students at a table pass it around. Each child is responsible for either the definition, a synonym, using the word in a sentence, and a picture. Each table then presents their finished product and they're always so proud!
This year I've also gotten into grant writing. This came after seeing how much I spend in the classroom at tax time and I realized I need to be looking for free things! Haha. In April I moved into my first home and I knew right away that I wanted to be more self reliant and immediately got chickens and started with a small green house. I wanted to learn more and found myself reading a lot about hydroponics and thought "how neat would that be for my students to see?" In 2nd grade we learn about life cycles and the life cycle of a plant is the first topic we hit. However, there is a misconception among the students that plants need soil. Really, the plants need the nutrients from the soil for food, and what a better way to show that than through hydroponics! It also leads to discussions about the future of agriculture since hydroponics uses 90% less water than traditional farming methods. Just as I had all these ideas going through my head I saw a TV show that introduced me to aquaponics- A hydroponic concept that includes fish! So the fish waste gives the plants the nutrients, and the plants clean the water of ammonia which benefits the fish. WHAT?!?! THAT'S AMAZING! I looked up systems and seeing that it was going to cost roughly $400 to start up a small system I then started looking for grants. I applied for the Bright Ideas education grant program, sponsored by North Carolina’s Touchstone Energy cooperatives. I'm happy to share I got the grant!!
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I'm getting the supplies for the fish tank this weekend. I can't wait to get it started and share it with the kiddos!
After this I thought, oh man, there's so many things we can do if only we had a little extra money! My next thought was bouncy ball chairs. These too I've read about and seen on the news. They're great for wiggly students that need to focus their attention. The chair allows students to balance and use correct posture. They can also slightly bounce or roll to get their extra energy out while working on a task. I've seen these balls replace all the chairs in a classroom but I didn't want to get too wild at first. I wrote up a proposal on donorschoose.com to put 6 bouncy ball chairs at my small group reading table. During the 15 minutes of small group time it is crucial that students are focused for that individualized instruction. We also meet in small groups for math, so we'd use them then as well. I posted the proposal on my facebook and between parents of my students and my own family and friends the project was fully funded within five hours!! I was in shock and so incredibly thankful. I couldn't believe it!
Here we are enjoying our new chairs :)
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Ok, so I better start being productive on this teacher workday. Back to the grind! Thanks for reading.
