May the 4th Be With You Day 👨‍🚀 🛰️

For those of us that are Star Wars fans, May 4th always brings an extra smidge of fun into the classroom. I've been collecting resources for several years to use on this day while still staying true to the curriculum (although I do weave in a bit of fun too!) 

I've done my best to curate some of what I've collected into the resource board linked below and will continue to add to this resource as I continue to collect. 😀

You'll find activities for all K-5 grade levels and content areas including Seesaw activities, Kahoots, coding activities, drawing tutorials, escape Rooms, Stick Together Boards and so much more! There are 4 pages of resources organized by content area so be sure to click through all of the pages.

Click the image to access the clickable resources

Malchow's Tech Bytes~ Oct 31st 🍁🎃

 

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Malchow's Tech Bytes~ Nov 8th 👩🏻‍💻📰📱

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Malchow's Tech Bytes 👩🏻‍💻~ November 5th

Malchow's Tech Bytes~ November 5th

Did you remember to set your clocks back today?

A wee bit of Irish fun..

I love St. Patrick's Day~ maybe it's that little bit of Scotch-Irish in me that makes me love a wee bit of fun?! I also love the fact that 1st graders fall for the shenanigans hook,line, and sinker! Last week I read the story, The Luckiest Leprechaun: A Tail-Wagging Tale of Friendship. As we were reading the last page, a little note from Louie the Leprechaun fell to the floor. Louie mentioned that he had been looking for his gold in our classroom and, well, the rest is history. Each day, Louie has been doing something in our classroom: leaving a book, a message on the SMARTboard, a writing project, etc. Today in his frustration of not being able to find his gold, he asked the kids where they would hide their gold if they were leprechauns. He then left special paper and a project for them to display their answers on. He told us he'd be back tonight to see their ideas. In the meantime, Louie found out how to access our classroom blog and was a bit of a sheister when he took our 3D shape hunt pictures and put them into a Smilebox album for us, complete with little sayings on each slide. The kids were pumped about that as they could hear the Irish music playing in the hallway when they came in from recess. ( I have no idea how Louie managed that while we were gone to recess- wink, wink) Tonight I also noticed that he went on the blog and created a Voki- hmmm... a tech savvy leprechaun, what do you know!?!

Tomorrow he is leaving us a graph (Do you believe in leprechauns?) another note, and a money game to play during math game tub time. Sure glad that he's been a nice leprechaun, even if he has been sneaky. I hope he won't be upset when the kids bring their leprechaun traps to school tomorrow to try and catch him. The traps are an at home project that I encourage families to take part in each year. When the kiddos bring them in, they tell us about how they built their traps and how they work. I'll post some pics of their creations later this week.
Although we have a lot of fun with all of the tom-foolery, I've worked hard over the years to embed the silliness into our curriculum so that learning time isn't lost on fluff- hence the writing project complete with an Irish editor's checklist, a graph and money game for math, notes on the SMARTboard which we use as part of our shared reading and then respond back as part of our interactive writing, the many books he leaves for read alouds and guided reading, and the crazy note he leaves us in the computer lab which takes us to some fun St. Patrick's Day sites.  All of this is spread out a little at a time over the course of the week leading up to St. Patrick's Day. The excitement that is brewing in my class right now is exciting, a great way to spice up the winter doldrums!

Groundhog Day

Being back in 1st grade this year has been wonderful but at the same time challenging. It's seems harder and harder every year to find the time to fit in some of the fun things that are still educational, such as Groundhog Day. This is one of my favorites as I incorporate research, writing, reading, and technology. I've also been working to try and incorporate more 21st Century Learning skills into my teaching.

Here's some of what we did this year... maybe you can take some of these ideas and tweak them to fit another topic that you teach.

The day before Groundhog Day we created a graph predicting whether or not we thought the groundhog would see his shadow. After putting up our graph and discussing the results we brainstormed a list of teachers in the building that we also wanted to survey. I had my kids write the name of their teacher on a little whiteboard and then they set out in teams of 2 or 3 to collect their data. When they got back we took the information and added it to our graph.  We even made an appt. with our superintendent to come over and give us his prediction. We also surveyed visitors to our blog using Survey Monkey. Overwhelmingly, the vote was that the groundhog would not see his shadow.

 During our shared reading, we used fantastic groundhog SMARTboard lesson that I found on Smartexchange. (If you have a SMARTboard and haven't checked out this resource, you need to run, not walk to see what's waiting for you. There are some fabulously creative people who share their wonderful notebook files!) This file has wonderful facts, links to other sites, and is extremely interactive! My kids learned a ton and had fun at the same time! The authors of this file also have their own site where you can purchase add'l files that they've created for just $2.00 each. A real bargain when you consider how much time it takes to create a quality notebook file!

On Groundhog's Day, we used Google Earth to locate Punxsatwney Phil's home in Pennsylvania and Jimmy the Groundhog's home in Sun Prarie, WI (did you know that we had a famous groundhog right here in WI?). We used our map skills to discuss continents, states, cities, terrain, etc.

We also went onto both Phil's and Jimmy's websites to find out how their predictions turned out and to do more research about groundhogs.

We even made a text to world connection--- Did you know that it was a battle of the groundhog's- PA vs. WI just like in the Super Bowl on Sunday?!

After all was said and done, we blogged about our experience on our classroom blog, The Dog Blog, as well.

Next week, we'll be taking our research a step further and writing paragraphs using our Step Up To Writing format and then displaying them for others to enjoy.

I sure wish all of my lessons could come together this well and incorporate so many facets of learning and technology.

On a final note, Jimmy the Groundhog has a special prediction...

ABCya!

I came upon this site, http://www.abcya.com/ ,last year when I was teaching 2nd grade. The site is laid out with educational computer games and activities, but the best part is... it's organized by grade level. 

 All of the educational computer activities were created or approved by certified school teachers and all educational games are free and are modeled from primary grade lessons and enhanced to provide an interactive way for children to learn. The grade level lessons incorporate areas such as math and language arts while introducing basic computer skills. Many of the kindergarten and first grade activities are equipped with sound to enhance understanding.




My 2nd graders last year loved this site and my first graders this year are no different. The boys, my son included, love the Create a Car (make a toy car) game. This is also an app that can be downloaded for the iPod Touch. It seems so very simple and almost too game like but a great tool for teaching clicking and dragging while having fun.

I have heard some say that they go up a grade level as well for a bit more challenging content for their kids.

Give it a try and let me know what you think!