Working the Halls and Holding Hands

I was working the halls at school today and plan to continue all week. I think a fair percentage of the teachers would like to add more to their courses, but they don't know how.

As a full time computer and math teacher, I really don't have time to spend time in other classes to hold someone's hand. So, I'm trying out a new model for the rest of the year. I'm looking at projects that will integrate more global collaboration for my students. As I find projects, I'm showing them to the specific grade/ content level teachers and trying to gather interest.

Last month, the middle school Language Arts teacher agreed to help the students prepare drafts for the 1001 Flat Tales project. I looked at the sign up list and was so happy to see another participant and fellow Twitter friend derrallg on the list. For some reason, the middle school group isn't attracting the same number of participants as the elementary level.

I've been following the Teach Jeff Corwin Spanish group for a while and was really interested to see that they want participants to create video scavenger hunts. I spoke to our Spanish teacher and she's willing to brainstorm the project with her sixth graders. On Wednesday, I'm going to show her the first three videos so she sees where we would be heading with this. I'll help the students who volunteer to record the videos and get them online.

I also finally took a good look at Jen Wagner's TechnoSpudProjects web site. I had gone there before, but with an eye to doing a project myself. With this new objective of getting teachers on board, I spoke to the fourth/ fifth grade math teacher about The Great Egg Roll 2008. She's going to read all the instructions tonight, but sounds like she'll go along for the ride.

My fifth graders are already participating in the Classroombraids project through Sharon Betts and are enjoying the fruits of their labor. They'll be excited to hear the comments on their VoiceThreads this week.

I am trying to keep the number of projects to a reasonable number. I will be able to keep Classroombraids going during computer class. The Great Egg Roll is almost a one shot deal with the math teacher doing the majority of the work. The Spanish video has the highest level of work, but it feel comfortable.

Now I just have to talk with the third grade teachers about a potential Social Studies project that looks cute. A third grade class from Massachusetts is looking for little stories of how towns got their name along with photos.

Finally, Lisa Parisi is creating a VoiceThread about fictional books. I'm going to offer it as an option to my fifth graders. It won't be for the entire class, but I'll offer it as a project they can do on days when it's too cold to go out for recess.

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Image Citation
Romel. "Holding Hands". WolfSoul's Photostream. 9 Aug 2007. 7 Jan 2008.
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1116/1352149315_8ef27cb7f8.jpg?v=0