Month: January 2019

Friendship

Mrs. Eaves Uncategorized

A friend is someone who likes you for you.  A friend listens and cares.  A friend is kind and trustworthy. A friend makes you happy.  A friend helps you when you need it.  Friends think about you even when you’re not around.  They know what will make you happy or sad, bothered or worried, and they do something about it.

This poem by Langston Hughes is one of my favorites.  It says a lot in a small, quiet way.

Poem by Langston Hughes

“I loved my friend.

He went away from me

There’s nothing more to say

The poem ends,

Soft as it began –

I loved my friend.”

My world is happier when I share it with friends.

Thinking and Learning

Mrs. Eaves Thinking and Learning

This Saturday I went to the STEM Summit at UNH.  I wasn’t sure I was excited about going.  I wasn’t convinced it was the best way for me to spend my weekend.  After all I had plans to make stew, invent our new science unit and what seems to be a thousand million books to read all around my desk.  But I went anyway and I’m so glad I did.

Hearing Marina Bers talking about her coding projects for very young children was inspiring.  We have Scratch on our iPads.  It will be fun to help kids explore it more and think of things they can do to animate more of the projects they make.  Here analogy was  to think of inventing ways for children to use technology as if they were playing on a playground rather than being placed in a play pen.  Clearly I need to spend more time with coding exercises.  Dr. Bers said it is important to think about coding as an essential literacy that needs to begin as early as possible because as early as 3rd and 4th grade stereotypes of who is and who isn’t a creator through technology are already established.

After the keynote I went to a workshop about integrating math and science through the GLOBE Program.  I learned different ideas for graphing weather and keeping the data over time so we can explore patterns more easily and come to understand how scientist are truly able to show Climate Change though the data.  I learned about many global data projects that we can participate in as well.  It will be exciting to develop projects that help us interact with data sets from across the world – and we’ll be dealing with the metric system in an authentic way.

Finally in the afternoon I worked with a small group of teachers from Dover and Merrimack to explore the Question Formulation Technique.  This is something I’ve been dabbling in for the last few years.  It was interesting to work with others and to realize that we had the same types of difficulties that kids in the classroom do as well.  I had not explored any of the resources at  The Right Question Institute  and I am looking forward to find how they will further my understanding of how questions can change the depth of learning.

If you know more about any of these topics and/or have resource suggestions, please let me know in a comment.  I’d appreciate them.

 

The Word Collector – Growth Mindset Questions

Mrs. Eaves Uncategorized

A1 I collect books, feathers, nests and interesting things I find in nature.

A2 Jerome could collect words like cool, courageous, and confident,  He could also collect possible, positive and purposeful.

A3 A good way to use words is to give compliments, share ideas and create together.  Being cooperative, and collaborative in ways that make where we are more peaceful and happy, are also good ways to use words.  Creating a great story is another one.

A4 I am people, self and word smart.  I do my best to help build a positive, happy, supportive classroom so we can all learn together.

A5 I am trying to give more compliments, listen more carefully and pick up at least five pieces of litter every day.  Hopefully that will make our world a little better.