Another Take on a Pinterist Idea

I seem to admire so many Pinterest ideas and for over a year now I have been gathering and gathering ideas that make very pretty boards. This last week of school I have used two of the ideas. I changed the around a bit, but my students enjoyed them and therefore were engaged. This is no easy task considering it is the last week of school and we have a Reading Counts celebration, an end of the year party, and a last day of school pizza lunch. Pfew!

Well the first idea that I want to share was an idea from my technology board.

This is from another blogger and their blog is located here :

Who's Who and Who's New
It is a wonderful resource for ideas using technology.

Another blogger did it this way;

I am not certain who the last picture came from, but they also had the QR codes leading to a blog containing the children's work. 

I love both of these ideas and next year having the children blog in the classroom is on my list of new things I plan to add to my routine.

But this year, I mixed  the two ideas and came up with these;

Or rather my children came up with these. They made self portraits and their portraits are holding IPODS with QR codes on them. These QR codes lead to messages for the new students I will have next year. This means I have to keep them safe all summer!

The messages greet my new students and tell them about the things they will like about second grade and being in my class. The children wrote about math, science, social studies, Edmodo, writing and reading. I will post a banner that reads "Welcome to Second Grade, messages from Last Year's Hagan's Heroes". I am very excited and think this will be fun for parent's to do with their children Open House. My hope is that this gives the feeling of a strong technological presence.

Next year I hope to have my students blog and call it online portfolios and use the QR codes to lead to their work for others to view. But I love the idea of messages to future students.

Any comments? I would love feedback or any ideas that anyone may have concerning these QR code projects. 

Oh yes, the other Pinterest idea I will share another day.

Learning Addition Facts

I have no magic tricks to post. I just wanted to share a little end of the school year happiness. In my neck of the woods we had many assessments. We have five days left with children and are not completely done with them. But every now and then there is a glimmering moment. I suppose as their teacher I should have focused on their achievement. I wasn't. I was focused on there beautiful smiles and sparkly eyes that came shining through the dark assessment abyss. The occasion followed a series of center games and quizzes that students were to pass to show they knew their addition facts to ten. They had the privilege of having a "pie in the face". This was really whip cream in a paper plate. As simple as this sounds, as it turns out, this is a magic potion. Have a look:

One student said "Best day ever!" I was so glad they were able to have a moment of happiness before they leave me to go on to their next teacher.

Adorable  frames by:

Edmodo

Do you Edmodo?
The 2013- 2014 school year was the first year I really used Edmodo with my students. We used it mostly for a reading response area for Science and Social Studies. We did however post math riddles to each other a couple of times and I did post the links to games I thought the students would both enjoy and benefit from.

Some of the mistakes I learned from were during the sign up process. I sent home notices and had parents and children sign themselves up at home. I had to sign up some students who would only be using Edmodo at school. Thank goodness I did. It took about two weeks to get the students all signed up. I did not know exactly what their user names and passwords were and I had to use more days for communications to parents about those things. Fortunately, I learned from signing up the students I did that next year I will sign up all of the students and assign them very easy user names and passwords that they will use with everything I sign them up for at school. Don't gasp....these are not things that contain personal information and students in the second grade really do not have anything a hacker wants to steal. The students  assisted were able to begin using Edmodo immediately.

I love blogs where teachers share what they have learned concerning technology in school so I have put together a "How To" concerning signing your students up for Edmodo. I hope you find it helpful. If you are considering Edmodo, this might help you decide.

As a teacher I was able to enjoy the knowledge and fruits of the exploration of other teachers by joining groups with teachers who shared. We will leave that for another day though.

I hope everyone has a Happy Mother's Day!

Today's Accomplishments

Today's journey has been 
on the internet. I decorated and finished My You Tube Channel.
I am very pleased with it. I have started but not finished my collection. I enjoy putting hyperlinks into my lesson plans. With a collection I could also just have my channel up and open and click on the playlist I need. I can hardly wait to collect more!
Then, on my Facebook page Smart Board Lessons ( I added some tabs (including a You Tube tab), some of them are even custom tabs. They include my Pinterest boards, Teachers Pay Teachers, Lilly's Grace, my Teacher's Notebook store, and my Twitter. Of course this blog is represented and on my Google page everything is connected also. I am feeling very accomplished.
My next hurdle is to conquer the teacher's website provided by my employer. 
To my blog I added some buttons from a couple of my favorite bloggers. Not all of my favorites. Not yet, there is more to come. If you are just roaming around the internet please check out some of my links. I would even welcome some suggestions! For now, I bid everyone good night.

Smart Board Lessons

In December I started my own Teachers Pay Teachers store. When I first started the store I viewed myself as tech savvy. Then, I began reading the forums and some of the truly tech savvy were sharing their knowledge. So, here I am now. Two stores and a blog. I am not a millionaire. But I am a much happier person and teacher. My students are also happier and enjoy the knowledge I have gained because they get first hand benefits. They enjoy the things I make for them much more now because of the tricks I have learned from my TPT friends. I have also learned from Google and You Tube. It is just like Dr. Seuss says "Oh, the things you can do!"

My unsolicited advice for today: If you don't know how to do it, Google it or search You Tube, the truth is out there!

Here are a few pics I took of my kids enjoying an end of the year review I made for math:

As you can see, we have all  been having a blast with my new skills!

You can find this presentation in my Teachers Pay teacher store at the following link:

                                      End of the Year Math Review

Some of my third grade friends say this would also be 

a good beginning of third grade review.

Geometry and Spaghetti

Pinterest Pass or Fail?

I guess it is perspective. It wasn't picture perfect but I thought what happened was great. I had read an idea where another teacher used spaghetti to build geometric shapes. I have often used toothpicks and marshmallows, but I was very interested in trying something new. I explained the activity to the children and mentioned that breaking the spaghetti might be a good idea. I used one pound of spaghetti and two bags of marshmallows, and let her rip! And yes, yes I would do it again, except I would give them more time and more materials. Here are a few examples of what happened: