STEM, STEAM, GRANTS... Oh My!

I got some great news today strolling through the faculty lounge. I saw I had some items in my teacher box and found a letter from AEP the power company. I'm sure the secretaries were wondering why I would get my power bill sent to school! But.. I opened it to see an awesome letter notifying me that I had been chosen for a grant I applied for call the Teacher Vision Grant. I'm sure for many teachers out there, it isn't that big of a deal, but for me WOO HOO! Man I am thrilled!

My grant is for $500 for STEM/STEAM use. What I am doing is going to be so much fun for the kids. I used the grant to purchase an iPad mini, a protective case, an iPod touch, and a View Master virtual reality viewer. My students are going to be making Aurasma's to turn our stagnant word wall into an augmented reality word wall. Students will be making videos explaining the mathematical words and even solving problems for each word. Students who are having trouble remembering a concept will be able to go back to the word wall and use a 3D viewer with iPod to scan the word they need help with and watch a video.

I am so excited about this project for my kids. It will enable them to immerse themselves in learning and teaching others. What is going on with your classroom? I know it is near the end of the year, but what an amazing year it has been!

Comments

Inspiration and a Smart Pen

I finally figured out how to work my little interactive white board tablet in my room. I used it on Friday and my kids loved it. I like it to, and it was really my inspiration behind getting my Echo smart pen. When trying to figure out how to use my interactive white board tablet (we will call it IWBT) I thought well I'll just google it and go from there. Turns out... it isn't made anymore. Never the less, I was able to figure out what I was doing, and it is great for my classroom. It operates a lot like a Think Pad. At any rate, I've seen several blog post referring to smart pens and LiveScribe on several blogs I subscribe to and I thought I would check it out. I found an Echo pen in Best Buy and fell in love. I was on a spending splurge today and decided this was going to go one of two ways. I either was going to get an iPad, or a Smart Pen. Well... I got the Smart Pen. So I've been sitting at home and right now...

Spiral Review In All Its Glory (Decimal of the Day)

The school district I am in has cumulative tests covering everything taught each six weeks. The twist is, these tests are made by administrators and not teachers. This really isn't a problem to me. It is a learning tool for me and a teachable moment for my students on the importance of all material covered in class. We as teachers can really get bogged down in the variables of a test like this. By that I mean, oh the test question was worded funny or well they were only given one chance to show mastery on this, my students are _______ fill in the blanks, thoughts, and reasoning. The one thing my school district did was have us put our scores up standard by standard right next to every other teacher in the district who had to teach the same thing we did. My oh my did I fall short! I say I fell short even though I had great reasoning as to why my scores looked the way they did... but upon further reflection ...

Incorporating Literacy Into Math...and what about Fortnite?

The name of the game is engagement, but let us all be honest with each other; if you aren't targeted about your engagement, then it is just fluff. I think I spend about 1/2 of my waking hours thinking of ways I could incorporate cross-curricular and real-world items into my lesson plans. Shouldn't we all be though? Well... maybe not spend 1/2 your waking hours thinking about it, but definitely incorporating cross-curricular and real-world items into your classroom. I always tell my parents life is not a worksheet, but let's be honest... sometimes you ARE stuck with using them! I like to break away as much as possible! Sometimes though, those angelic (cough) students of mine could care less. We know they don't! They don't care how much of our own money we spent, how long we spent planning something just for them, the only thing they care about is whether it is fun, and not "boring". I would l...

Teaching Mrs. Ryan

Search This Blog