Our class has been studying the qualities of citizenship for the past several weeks. We began our study will the question "How might we, as second graders, recognize and celebrate the citizen heroes who live among us?" The students brainstormed in groups in realized this question caused additional questions for us. We narrowed our questions down to three main questions and then decided to tweet our questions to our learning friends and parents on Twitter.
We received numerous responses that guided our thinking.
We also read information in our social studies textbooks and shared what we learned.
Then Ms. Casida, our brilliant assistant principal, asked us a question that really made us think.
We thought about the people we have met at Polser and realized that there were many citizen heroes learning alongside us. Below are our projects that we created to share our thinking.
One amazing thing about our learning community is that each of us are teachers and learners. Mrs. Haney showed a core group of students how to use the app and then each of them became "trainers" who helped train others. Below are some pictures of the students collaborating to complete their projects. Also, one of our students took advantage of our district BYOT policy and brought his iPad from home.
Mrs. Haney's reflection after this project:
This project was a huge ah-ha for me. When I first began planning this, what I envisioned was not at all what it turned out to be. The kids and our learning partners on Twitter took in a different direction than what I initially thought. I love that one of our parents also tweeted us to share her thinking. Opening our classroom up to learn with others is a professional goal of mine this year. After collaborating with my colleagues during professional learning and with the support and encouragement of our campus administration, I felt empowered to take a risk and try new things.
One thing I will keep in mind next time we do a project like this is the background noise when students are recording. (I am sorry Superstars, I should have had you to into the hall to record. Serena actually thought of that for next time--great idea!) Gianna told me something that also made me think. She said she has always enjoyed playing on the iPad but she really loves learning with it like we did this week. Excellent point Gianna. We will have to check out the iPads often this year!
We would love to hear your comments and suggestions to help us learn from this project.
Dear Mrs. Haney's Class,
ReplyDeleteWe think your videos were very nice because you used pic collage app and told us about citizen heros. We like that you took the pictures of the heros. We like to use pic collage app too. We make research projects with it. You will have to check them out on our blogs when you visit our class. What other things do you like to do on your ipads? I hope you have fun on your new playground.
Maddie, Shea, Chris, and Owen