LEARNING TO TEACH

AUTHOR SKYPE

mtolisano — Tue, 21 May 2013 16:56:54 +0000

Today the First Graders skyped with the author of Boy + Bot, Ame Dykeman. Our school librarian, Karin Hallett, was able to get in contact with Ame via Twitter and set up a time for us to skype with her. Before we skyped, Mrs. Hallett came to our class and she showed us Ame’s website and even read her book, Boy + Bot. The kids were instantly hooked because they loved the story so much. They couldn’t believe that they were going to be able to talk with the author! Since this was such a great opportunity, as a class, we came up with a variety of questions that we could ask her. Some examples of the questions that the students came up with were:

What is your favorite book?
What is your inspiration for writing?
Do you have a family?
How long does it take to publish a book?
How many other books have you written?

Ame was super impressed with their questions and she gave them some great responses. After each student got to ask their questions, Ame was kind enough to read us one of her favorite books! She read the picture book… Bark, George!

The students absolutely loved it! Not only did Ame take the time to read them this book but she read with such enthusiasm and character that it really brought the story to life!

Check out this website to read more about Ame Dyckman and her books! http://amedyckman.com/Books.html

THE MUSEUM

mtolisano — Sun, 12 May 2013 14:18:44 +0000

I saw this book yesterday in Barnes and Noble and immediately knew that I had to get it! Normally I never judge a book by it’s cover but this was an exception. Being that I have a passion for art history as well as a passion of working with young children, this book stood out like a sore thumb for me.

MY EDJEWCON EXPERIENCE

mtolisano — Fri, 03 May 2013 17:16:39 +0000

First of all, I wanted to say that I was really proud to be a part of such an amazing conference. For me being a first year teacher, it was such a great experience and I felt that I really did learn a lot. Not to mention… we were trending on Twitter! Twitter was something I really was intune with during the conference. I was slowly starting to get the hang of tweeting what I was learning at the time it was happening. I wanted to share with other educators and I was receiving additional information as well! It was interesting to be involved in such a unique way.

Andrea’s keynote on Learn, Reflect, Share was phenomenal and she really did set the tone for the conference. She inspired me to be more CURIOUS and to be open to being more coachable. One thing I really enjoyed was the TodaysMeet. I was in ModelUN in high school and we did something similar where we were able to pass handwritten notes to other “countries” as a backchannel. This was definitely COOLER! It was nice to see that everyone was participating so much and that we were ALL engaged in the topics being discussed. I could see this being used during lessons!

The students have SO much potential… for example, I loved how Lily H participated during the last keynote.

Since I wasnt able to attend I was able to learn from those students who attended. I also realized how important it is to reflect on what was learned and even what you shared. The more you do it, the easy it will come! I was glad that I was using Twitter throughout the conference and tweeting the information that I thought was important because I was able to go back later and make connections. Edjewcon helped me start building a network with other educators all over the world

Pam and I also had the opportunity to present at the conference this past weekend! At first we were a little hesitant but we are so glad that we took that leap! It went pretty well if you ask me… it was a full house:) We definitely make a great team! We were having some internet trouble at first and it prevented us from doing some things we had planned… but as teachers we had a plan B and we worked around the issues! Since we wanted it to be more of a discussion we allowed questions and had a lot of discussion. I am glad that we took this opportunity and presented at EdJEWcon because it was great practice and we were able to learn from others in our session as well. I hope to present more in the future

Learn, Reflect, Share (edJEWcon keynote) from Andrea Hernandez

BOOK SUGGESTIONS

mtolisano — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 12:54:31 +0000

http://www.amightygirl.com/mighty-girl-picks/top-read-alouds

This is something that I pinned onto my Pinterest account. I use this link to help me suggest books to my 1st graders. I go with my students to Library every Tuesday and Thursday and I spend a lot of time encouraging them to check out books that get them excited about reading! These may be the Top 75 Books starring Mighty Girls… but I suggest them to the boys as well, since some of them are such classics.

STUDENT BLOGFOLIOS

mtolisano — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 14:51:09 +0000

I am really excited that the Blogfolios for our 1st graders went live! I have been working on them for a while now and wasn’t quite sure what I was doing at first. I want them to be PERFECT because I feel that this is such a great way for students to be able to showcase their work. They are going to have this for the rest of their school years… as well as for the rest of their lives! For them to be able to look back on and see how much they have progressed is truly amazing.

Today… one of the parents left a comment on their student’s blog post about her favorite book. It was so cute to see her reaction to the comment. After reading it, she left a comment back for her mom. I only wish that I could have been able to do this when I was in elementary school. She was SO proud of her work and felt even better about it once she received immediate feedback from her mom.

EDJEWCON 5573/2013

mtolisano — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 14:43:29 +0000

Pam and I will be “presenting” at edJEWcon this year! We will be leading a discussion group of how we use Pinterest as first year teachers.

Follow my Pinterest page

CO-TEACHING REFLECTION

mtolisano — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 14:09:25 +0000

The other day Pam and I had the chance to observe our colleagues, Andrea and Silvia, while they did a “co-teaching” lesson with our first graders using the iPads. The students were creating their own version of the butterfly cycle using the PicCollage app. The team work Andrea and Silvia showed and the flow of the lesson was phenomenal. I was amazed that they were able to split the teaching evenly and do so without any hesitation. This is something I really want to learn how to do. As a first year teacher, I think that co-teaching is something that I can strongly benefit from. The more practice, the better. I want to be able to support Pam as well as bring in a few of my own ideas. Another thing that I really enjoyed with this particular lesson was the teaching style. There was a mixture of both high and low level questioning and multiple intelligences were being used. The students were not only learning about the butterfly cycle, they were also learning about copyright and digital citizenship. I feel that this is extremely important when it comes to assessing the students. Instead of having them “memorize”… they are learning something that will always stay with them.

I am currently in the process of adding their PicCollage images to their blogfolios. They turned out GREAT!

SOLE EXPERIMENT

mtolisano — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 13:55:09 +0000

SOLE (SELF ORGANIZED LEARNING EXPERIMENT) A SOLE is a typical example of a “social space” of learning.

Here is his latest TED lecture “The Child Driven Education”, where he speaks about ‘Hole-in-the-Wall’ and his new experiments on SOLEs (2010).

100th DAY OF 1st GRADE/ iMOVIE

mtolisano — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 15:37:42 +0000

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT DAY= EDCAMP

mtolisano — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 19:19:32 +0000

Yesterdays EdCamp was truly inspiring. As a new part of the MJGDS team, I was eager and ready to learn. I brought my iPad and was tweeting about the camp throughout the day! Follow me @MARISSA2309! I was a little bummed that two sessions I wanted to attend were happening at the same time, but I still managed to learn a lot for the ones that I did attend. I learned how to use Blabberize and created my own Diigo account Everything ran smoothly and was very relaxing. The Hatzatah presentations were WONDERFUL! I feel like they all deserve to win!