Day 87: Tabatha Stover, 1st Grade Teacher at Hilliard Horizon Elementary

What my students have taught me! 

And how many of these lessons have been more beneficial than 100's of hours of course work.

From http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8251/8545067064_4b3f5f8a6b_n.jpg

I have been blessed to be a teacher at Hilliard Horizon for almost twelve years.  When I started teaching I was eager to share my knowledge and love of learning with my students.  I quickly discovered they had more to teach me than I had to teach them.  

I have spent hours, days, and years reflecting, refining, and learning how to be an effective teacher.  However, it was my students who taught me to listen enthusiastically and to embrace everyone's ideas.  They taught me to see the joy in the smallest accomplishment; to take time to celebrate ourselves and others.  

I have learned that learning is a journey full of bumps, mistakes, and re-dos.  I have learned to enjoy each new personality, to take a moment to learn something new about someone else.  The most important knowledge I gained for my students;  learning is a collaborative process and I am merely a participant.      

Day 72: Mrs. Hall's 3rd Grade Writers

Persuasive 3rd Graders

Recently, students in Mrs. Hall's class worked with our Literacy Coach, Mrs. Wendt, and explored the genre of persuasive writing.  Students learned that there can be power in words, especially in a well-written persuasive writing piece.

Here are a few new understandings Mrs. Hall's students have learned:

• "There's a lot of steps, like revising your work."
• "You have to use good words to get people to read it."
• "You need to use words like 'finally', 'first', 'second', 'third' and 'in conclusion'."
• "The conclusion is important and you need to use the word 'should' in your conclusion."
• "You need at least three ideas to support what you think."
• "You need to get your reader's attention by having a strong opening."

Check out the hall display outside of Mrs. Hall's room for more persuasive writing!

Day 69: Simple ideas can lead to big changes.

"Honk If You Love Someone"

Photo from http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-09-02/lifestyle/35494321_1_happiness-positive-emotions-signs

I ran across this blog post by Jason Markey that describes how he is developing a vision for his school around the simple idea of being kind to others.  Markey says,

"Be Kind, Find Your Passion, and Commit to Excellence.  This is my new personal vision for education.  This is the sentence that I will share repeatedly with every one of our students and more importantly I will bring these thoughts to every conversation and decision I’m a part of."

I really like this video that Markey included.  It features the story of Massoud Adibpour who wanted to make a positive impact.  Adibpour got some folks together and put simple messages like "Honk if you love someone" and "Smile" on signs and stood alongside busy Washington, D.C. roads.  I love this idea of doing something simple to try and make a big impact.

There's been lots of research done to see what initiatives can make the biggest difference in schools, but it seems the best approach may look more like the vision of Jason Markey and Massoud Adibpour. Maybe the most influential initiative we can undertake is to show kindness every single day.  Simple things like saying hello to a student or smiling at them can make the biggest difference.  

Day 57: The Power of a Compliment

The Power of a Compliment

Over the weekend, I received a link for the video below from another educator.  The video shows how one group of students at West High School in Iowa City, Iowa.  The group is called "Westhigh Bros" and they use social media to send out compliments to other students at the school.

It's a great project that I think indirectly challenges all of us to try and create this for every student at ever school.  I'm not sure how we could do this in an elementary building, but I'm not going to let that stop me.  If you have a suggestion or comment on how something similar could be done at an elementary building, please feel free to post a comment.

Enjoy the video!  It's worth it!

Day 42: Mrs. Marsh's Leadership Academy

What is a leader?

Four weeks ago, Mrs. Marsh started a project-based learning experience with her 1st grade students by asking this simple question:

What is a leader?

The project involved aspects of math, social studies, science, and language arts, and featured leaders like our principal, Mr. Blum, and our superintendent of schools, Dale McVey.

Students began by brainstorming different characteristics they thought described a leader and by thinking about important leaders in their lives.  They interviewed family members about who they consider leaders and what makes a leader.

Mrs. Marsh had different guest speakers come in to talk about leadership.  She coached her students on asking quality interview questions.  Mr. McVey shared that you may think you're a leader, but you're not if no one is following you.  The students compared the different leadership qualities of the guest speakers and added the information to their research.

While the students continued to research and share ideas, Mrs. Marsh read 6 books that featured 6 different characters that demonstrated some sort of leadership qualities.

After researching what makes a leader and reading each of the books, students worked together in cooperative learning groups.  Their task: develop an election campaign for the book character they thought was the best leader.

Students worked on campaign speeches and campaign poster to gear up for the big event: the election.

Next, students campaigned in different precincts (the other 1st grade classrooms) to try and get other students to vote for their book character.  They made campaign speeches to try and win the vote.

After the campaigning was done, the voting began.  Each precinct voted on one of book characters.  As the votes came in, Mrs. Marsh's students tabulated the results:

Somes students were stunned to find that while their book character won in one of the precincts, they did not win the over all vote:

The winner?  Molly Lou Mellon!

Overall, the students learned a great deal about leadership and about what leaders do in order to lead others.

Enjoy this VoiceThread of the book character campaign posters and speeches: