Cheep! Cheep! Chick!

Spring is in the air.  Birds are chirping.  Trees are budding.  Nature is rebooting for a new season and our schools are heading into the final stretch of the year.  If you think classrooms are only buzzing in the Fall, hop on in to our kindergarten classrooms this spring and you’ll see them squealing with delight over chickens.  Well, actually chicken eggs.

As part of the curriculum, kindergarten classes learn the life cycle of an egg.  They have been patiently taking care of chicken eggs in their classrooms all over our district.  To help share in the joy, our technology integration coaches met with several kindergarten teachers in the district to gather input and ideas of how to share the information of the chickens in a minute-by-minute fashion. 

They came up with a plan to live stream the action using ustream.  This way no one would miss the first beak breaking out of it’s shell! This preparation took place in Februrary.  The elementary Technology Coaches met with Kevin Fry and LMTVstudents to get the low down on how to use ustream and work the technical aspects of the plan.

Ryan Gott, Karla Koenen, Kevin Fry and some students from LMTV.

This advance preparation boded well for the project.  Below you’ll find links to each of our seven elementary schools.  This week is the due date so to speak, so pop some popcorn, pull up a chair and enjoy watching the action with your family.

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/wilkins--linn-mar

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/westfield-elementary

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/novak-at-linnmar

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/bowman-woods-chicks

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/linn-grove-at-linn-mar

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/echo-hill

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/indian-creek-elementary

Teacher Leaders Partner with the Community

On April 10^th, fourth graders from Echo Hill and Novak Elementary Schools came to the LRC to meet with a volunteer for 45 minutes in order to learn about the state they were studying for State Fest projects.  In the fall, Kim Ophoff (Instructional Strategist at Novak) and Laura Robertson (Instructional Strategist at Echo Hill) met with Karla Terry, Community Relations Coordinator for the district.  They discussed the idea of having volunteers share information about a state they lived in prior to moving to Iowa.  Karla began the work of finding district volunteers who had lived in states other than Iowa who would be willing to take time out of their day to visit with the students about their state. 

Kim and Laura worked with Karla to plan out the morning.   They received help from Alison Vis, Human Relations Clerk, to reserve the gym space at the LRC.  Kim worked with Phil Miller, Human Resources generalist, on how the gym space would be set up.  Alison was instrumental in getting name tags printed for the volunteers and providing a seamless check-in process for them.  In addition, Debra Barry, Teacher Leader Program director, helped Kim and Laura get things set up on the day of the event. 

Community volunteers share their knowledge of the 50 States.

On the day of the event, students arrived in shifts.  Echo Hill arrived at 9:15 and visited with their state volunteer until 10:00.  Novak arrived at 10:15 and stayed until 11:00.  Students had a list of questions to ask their volunteer, and several of the volunteers had other information to share.  Many of the volunteers brought i-Pads, items that represented their state, and even maps to help the students learn valuable information to use back at school as they created projects for their State Fest Celebrations.

This pilot project was such a success that all of the elementary strategists plan to work together next year to make this an event for all 4^th graders to participate in district-wide!  Thanks again to all of our wonderful volunteers for the support in making this event a memorable one for the students at Echo Hill and Novak!

*article submitted by Laura Robertson, Instructional Strategist at Echo Hill Elementary

Making Room on Your Plate

It is no secret that teachers have a full plate.  It is no secret that they take work home beyond school hours.  No matter how efficient and a how organized teachers are, there is never enough time to get everything done in one day.  Things get put on the back burner.  It isn’t because teachers don’t try, or don’t have good intentions.  Time is our enemy.

One advantage of having a teacher leadership program is having human resources to help accomplish tasks that teachers can’t get to.  Now that doesn’t mean we are personal servants, but instead co- workers who can help take a few things off your plate and re-organize that plate to be easier for you to sit down and take a bite out of.  Our full time coaching staff has utilized several Coaching Books as resources.  One of the first books we had all our coaches read was Taking the Lead by Joellen Killion and Cindy Harrison. They have since authored another book titled:  Coaching Matters  In this book she lists ten roles that coaches can take on. Follow the link below to see those roles

http://learningforward.org/docs/coachingmatters/killiontoolch5-4.pdf

As long as our coaching staff are staying within the guidelines of these roles, we gage their work to be in the coaching realm.  This year all of our coaches have taken on several of these roles.  Our Technology Integration Coaches have spent a large portion of our school year as Learning Facilitators.  The elementary Technology Coaches have diligently spent this year attacking ways to train our staff on the use of the Mimio teach bars, as well as helping them learn tools to utilize the software to create lessons with our JOURNEYS Literacy Curriculum.  This lesson planning work has been done by our Technology Coaches and our fourteen curriculum facilitators. 

Rachel Morris,  a fourth grade teacher at Novak Elementary, and Curriculum Facilitator, partnered with her building Instructional Strategist, Kim Ophoff.  They worked extensively on science lessons that interacted with the mimio software.  After seeing the work they collaborated on, Jessica Zimmerman, Technology Integration Coach was brought into the conversation and the three began to organize a day and a half of planning time to work with other district Curriculum Facilitators.  Over the days they were split in two small groups and created the template/skeleton lesson for teachers to use with either Mimio or SmartBoard software.  This work has been collaborative, and meaningful. The beauty of it is ALL our district can benefit from this work.  Every teacher K-5 can utilize the plans to go with their grade level Journeys Curriculum.  This in turn benefits ALL of the Elementary classrooms and students.

I had the privilege of popping in to both days of training and the energy and dedication to the work was inspiring.  People worked hard showcasing their expertise and others worked equally at learning a new strategy and skill to create the lessons. 

I’m certain this work would have eventually happened, over the course of several years, but collectively our district was able to attack this project and it will be complete by the end of the year. Lessons that are done can be utilized immediately, and the rest will be in the hopper waiting for the teachers when school opens this fall.

We'd like to thank the Elementary Technology Coaches:  Ryan Gotto, Karla Koenen, Jessica Zimmerman for their work on this project as well as the following elementary curriculum facilitators:

WF-Juli Wirtjes(K-2)

WF- Sarah Doyle(3-5)

BW-Amanda Goodlove(K-2)

BW-Jill Brockshink(3-5)

LG-Karissa Brincks(K-2)

LG-Jennifer Hammes(3-5)

IC-Jen Dechant(K-2)

IC-Colleen Fritz (3-5)

WE-Lori Manley(K-2)

WE-Betsy Bushlack(3-5)

NE-Jill Paulson(K-2)

NE-Rachel Morris(3-5)

EH-Tara Seery((K-2)

EH-Sarah Russel(3-5)

Ellis Island Simulation

Learning by doing, or reenacting something has historically been a positive way to learn about the past. Second grade students at Echo Hill Elementary participated in an Ellis Island simulation on Friday, March 27, 2015.  It was the culmination of an immigration unit that the second grade team (Allison Adams, Diane Irvine, Jaime Kuenzi, Kristal Lensing, and Stephanie Sears) created with the help of their instructional strategist, Laura Robertson.  The team wanted to enhance the learning from the social studies textbook by utilizing a real world, hands-on experience for the students. 

Students began the simulation by sailing to America on the USS Victory.  Upon arrival, they were greeted by the Statue of Liberty (Teresa Garcia, Echo Hill SAM) welcoming them to America.  The students were split into five groups and rotated through the different rooms in Ellis Island (baggage, information, medical, interview, and passport).  Several parent volunteers helped out by acting as immigration officers and asking the students typical questions that would have been asked while being processed for entry into the United States back in the early 1900’s.  

After the students rotated through each of the stations, a few were “deported” and met by Officer Ludwig.  All students—even the deportees—were treated to red, white, and blue popsicles at the end of the simulation.  We held a discussion about the real life struggles of immigrants who came to America long ago. 

It is our hope that through this simulation, the students understand just how important immigration was to the history of the United States.

~Post written by:  Laura Robertson