Roseate Tern

Personal Teaching Connection

I started the session this morning with a reading about the tall-grass prairie.  Thank goodness I was able to do something I am good at because working at this computer has made me weary.  It is the frustrations of "creating a product" via technology that is daunting for me.  I believe that I do not use the tool of the computer at all naturally because I would much rather be outside with my classroom doing the glorious fieldwork that I believe is the real learning. Philosophically there is a big difference in opinion about how I think this will help me be a better teacher!   

The naturalist, David Sparks, was fabulous and I am encouraged that there are individuals out there who are so sincerely devoted to animals and more than willing to share stories about them.  It was interesting to hear about the Eastern Box Turtle and who couldn't just fall in love with that wiggly black and white skunk!

I have enjoyed getting to know Melanie and hope to have her in my classroom periodically throughout this next school year as my students and I work on projects. 

Melanie and I are already collaborating together on ways we can integrate this "experience" into my classroom.  I see possibilities of having students create documents that can be linked to the school's web page.

I do love the idea of my students using photographs that have been taken to enhance a project (unit) particularly so since I already have students researching an endangered bird.  While I have them draw/paint the birds to scale as part of the mathematical component of the project, I could also have them take photographs of their birds to work with in creating a web page.

Onwards to the beach we went this morning to observe the Piping Plover and Least Turn.  A naturalist guided us through identifying the pairs of birds and their chicks while they were quickly scurrying about and/or feeding on the beach.  She was informative in explaining to us about the precarious and delicate environment these endangered birds are faced with each day.  The beach and salt marshes were beautiful and I was amazed that the two birders were so astute and so totally aware of the individual birds they survey regularly.  They know these birds!

I inserted pictures today!  This is not so bad and I think I can do this.   I think that the application of students taking pictures and using them to enhance their projects with visuals can be appealing to the overall look of various documents, creative writing pieces, or story boards.  Something students can really get into to!

The Picasa software that we are using is free, pc compatible and available here.

Today we started out early at the Scarborough salt marsh.  It was foggy, damp, and drizzly but it set the mood for a great canoe trip out into the grasses.  As the naturalist explained, it was the kind of morning to see the birds be more active.  The experience made me appreciate even more how much I am grateful that there are salt marshes and prairies to explore. 
In the afternoon, we started to paint in the background of our watercolor painting and I decided early on to really take my time in creating just the right colors.  I love the green/blue watery effect I was able to produce.  Onwards to the bird's body tomorrow . . .

Continuing to take pictures . . . 

Squaw Creek in Missouri is a federal wildlife refuge, much like the salt marshes, it is open for people to visit and explore.  It is located along one of the largest migratory paths in North America  I am in the process of making bird contact with the volunteers that work there to arrange a day for our fieldwork.  Studens will be collecting data regarding the migration of birds both in the fall and spring of the school year.  I want the kids to become acquainted with a spread sheet and to have our data become a significant part of the survey.

When I started to paint, I felt transported into a kind of paradise . . . in everyday life, I was usually bored and vexed by the things that people were always telling me I must do.  Starting to paint, I felt gloriously free, quiet and alone.

                                                    Henri Matisse

This was the day to get our paintings done and everyone is nervous about it.  I find this project a wonderful compliment to the technology part of our web page and it is for me just as Matisse has described, a "gloriously free and quiet time working alone."

Homework blog - what a great idea!  I mentioned the idea of initiating a blog from the classroom to Melanie and she is going to check it out with the school administration.  I think it could be a structured forum for the kids to keep in touch with each other about their assignments.  A place to possibly talk through with each other any questions they may have about a problem or problems and me still be in the loop.

It is late afternoon and Tom, Carol, and I are working on our Anatomy of an Expedition page and a large oil tanker is on its way out to sea.  It needed tugboats to bring it in yesterday morning but it is empty and quite able to get through on its own now.  The scenery here is hard to resist.

It worked out well that each of us(Tom, Carol, and I) got to do what we wanted in creating this web page of ours but still have what we are doing in our respective corners be a significant piece of the overall picture.  So far the page Carol has designed is looking good.

The picture to the right is a sample of an art project I might like to do with my students.   Because I have to cover as part of my curriculum, ecosystems/biomes of the world I am thinking that I might have my students think about a scene in one of those ecosystems/biomes.  They would then create a series of pictures depicting animal activity in that scene over a 24 hour period of time.  As an example, this would work nicely in depicting what goes on at a watering hole in the savanna.

Technology goals for me would include getting more proficient with the mechanisms/tools of the computer. 

Really using those tools (and incorpoating the parts of what I have learned this week) via creating a realistic plan for my students and I to work through in becoming masters of this media.