On Thursday of this week we took part in a Projects By Jen online project in which we had to find the number of seeds in a pumpkin. We took part in this project along with our buddy class in Oshawa, Canada via Twitter.
We started our adventure by tweeting pictures of our pumpkins and our predictions to each other. As we began to open our pumpkins up, we again tweeted a picture of the insides of our pumpkins to each other in the event that we would need to or want to update our predictions based on what we saw.
After we scooped all of the seeds out of the pumpkins, to the delight of most, but groans and ewwww's from others, we began to talk about how we would go about counting all of the seeds. We had some great discussion, and in the end, decided that it would be best and easiest if we put our seeds into piles of 10s to start with. This was a great strategy as it is exactly what we have been focusing on in math. As the teams went to work counting out piles of 10s, we again tweeted a picture to Mrs. Drapers' class to see if they could figure out what counting strategy we were using. The groups then began to work collaboratively to count their seed piles.
After passing the 100 mark some found it difficult to go on, so we discussed what happens when you get 10 piles of 10 and how many that is. We were then able to combine more of our piles into groups of 100 which made the counting even easier. In the end, one of our pumpkins had 3 piles of a hundred, 4 piles of 10 and 7 extra ones. Using this information, we were able to quickly figure out that the pumpkin had 347 seeds.
When we were done, we tweeted a final picture to Mrs. Draper's class to show them the final count so they could compare their predictions to the actual number of seeds. It was a great collaborative activity in our classroom as well as via Twitter with Mrs. Draper's class. It was also fantastic way for us to work on problem solving skills, predicting, counting by 10s and 1s, and our writing skills all while using technology to enhance our learning.
You can check out our Twitter feed here.
During math, my class has been learning the strategy of counting on. Today we focused on counting-on on a number line up to 20. After doing a couple of problems together on the SMARTboard, I wanted to give everyone a chance to actively participate, so we took out our iPads and used the free app, Number Line. This is a very easy app to use and has several great functions including the ability to hide and reveal numbers on the number line, the ability to mark the number line with multiples of any whole number from 1-100, and easy drawing tools just to name a few.
As we worked through our objective for the day, students circled our starting number, made their "bunny hops" for counting on and then showed the mathematical number sentence by writing it above their work. Using this app kept everyone involved and engaged in our learning and in my opinion, truly helped us to grab onto the concept as we were able to visually represent it and then use that representation to create our number sentences.
Each team did a fantastic job problem solving how each person would take somebody else's picture so everyone got a turn (this may seem simple, but for a 1st grader, this can be a big problem solving process) The creativity and differences between each groups projects were neat to see and compare. 
When we were done, we emailed our collages to our buddy class so that they could get to know us better. Our buddy class also used PicCollage and sent us their creation which we now have proudly displayed in our classroom. This has really helped us to put a name to a face (pun intended) and is helping us to feel more connected with our buddies when we read their posts on Twitter.
This month I am trying something new during our calendar time in order for all students to participate and more importantly, for all students to be able to analyze and share their information about our weather graph at the end of the month. We normally do our calendar routine on the Smartboard, which allows student participation, but only allows one student at a time.
