Everything’s New to Me

I collaborated with Melissa Garcia and Lisa Kellogg to create a lesson that incorporated technology, was collaborative and included a digital product (a math lesson from the Marilyn Burn's Library that we adapted). As a new Global Learner, it was a huge stretch for me and I was beginning to see it as impossible! So many steps yet it was all connected and meaningful. On top of that, my Teacher Candidate was solo teaching! It was all worth it working in a team. Through many conversations and much support from my team, I did so many new things that I hadn't ever imagined.

Our lesson objectives were that students would use pictures to demonstrate and verbally explain addition and subtraction of whole numbers (doubles) by writing number sentences describing a monster's characteristics. We started the lesson by using the book My Monster Mama Loves Me So by Laura Leuck, illustrated by Mark Buehner. I scanned the book into a PowerPoint presentation to be used with my SMARTBoard. Wow was that hard to do. I used the Snagit program (http://www.snagit.com/) to capture the images. I had never heard of it but it is free and amazingly easy! Using the Power Point was far more interactive and engaging than a typical read aloud! Each student then created their own. Exemplar pictures and number sentences were placed on the class blog
(http://mrswaheedroom28.blogspot.com/) with Voice Threads.

Before this lesson, I had never created a Power Point, scanned an image, or created a digit product with students much less a Voice Thread. Even sending the completed file was hard. Luckily I used http://www.yousendit.com/, also free which allowed me to send such a large file another thing I had never heard of! The thing I was most amazed with was the level of engagement from my students and has remained such. They love posting comments on the blog and I was amazed at how quickly they have learned; yet how slow and painful it was for me. Seeing the other second grade classroom's work created a long lasting connection and a community of learners! My class will never be the same, me either! I have so many tools to use now and a team to go to when things get rough.