Love Letters

A HUGE component of the PYP is the action piece - the one where kids take action because of something they learned.  This really comes into play during Exhibition, the culmination of the PYP, which in our school, is at the end of fourth grade.

And it's one of my favorite parts of the whole year.

To model different ways to take action, I try to involve the class in as many service projects as possible.  We've done a lot of different ones over the years, and it is always an uplifting experience.

However.

The project we participated in this year, Love Letters, was by far one of my favorites. 

I found it through the website DoSomething.org (check it out if you don't know what it is!) and loved it as soon as I read it.  The project involved making Valentines and sending them to designated Meals on Wheels locations, where said Valentines would be distributed with meals to seniors on Valentine's Day.  Many of these seniors don't have family, and are quite alone, which always feels worse on Valentine's Day.

Anyway, I sent an email to my colleagues, and many of them jumped on board, too!  We sent nearly 200 Valentines, made by kindergarteners through fourth graders, all hand made, all personal and festive.  I liked this project because it was relatable for all the kids - even the little kinders understood that they were making cards to send to people who don't get happy stuff very often.  It was an eye-opening experience for all!

Hour Of Code

Teaching our 2nd grade buddies!

Coding.  Computer programming.  Not something you'd think that elementary aged kids could do.  If that's the case, you'd be wrong.

My class participated in something called Hour of Code, sponsored by Computer Science Education Week.  What started out as something just my class was doing, happily spread to the other fourth grades.  And, even more exciting, once my class completed their "training hour" we collaborated with our second grade buddies so THEY also experienced hour of code.  Second graders!

Teamwork and patience were needed.

But it doesn't stop there, no, it kept spreading, and we ended up collaborating with our Kindergarten buddies too, who had a blast telling the computer what to do during their coding time!  That was one of my favorite things about the Hour of Code - how, once my class started, it organically spread where it needed to go.

Exploring Scratch.

Coding.  Basically it is telling the computer what to do.  In the case of the tutorials set up for this experience, the kids started with something familiar - Angry Birds - and were able to manipulate several levels of code there.  The tutorials (which are still up, by the way!) walked kids from Kindergarten through High School through the basics of coding.  It was so neat seeing how some of my kids really, really clicked (pun intended!) with the coding concept, and went on to try other tutorials, and taught each other the more complicated programs, such as scratch, which we'll be using later in the year (hopefully!) when we play with the MaKey MaKey….. but that is a whole different post!

Anyway, I highly encourage you to take an hour out of your week, sit down with your class (we started whole class before moving to individual laptops) and play around with coding.  This is one of those skills that I don't think we realize how much it will be used in the future!

A mash-up of Vines taken during our class coding experience!

Buddy Up!

My school encourages each classroom to have a "buddy room" in the building which with to do projects.  I've spent the last five or so years working with the same kindergarten class, and as the years have progressed, we've gotten quite strategic at our projects, with the kids (both my 4th graders and her kinders) having a blast as they get to know their buddy!

We try to do something connected to the month, or if that isn't feasible, we make connections to our current unit of study for PYP (Primary Years Programme.)  One of my favorite projects that we do is a buddy book, where the 4th graders and kindergarteners look for things that they have in common, and then write (4th graders) and illustrate (kinders) a book together.




This year, in November, instead of doing the usual Thanksgiving project, we added a technology twist!  The Kindergarten room has four iPads, my class has four iPads, and we were able to borrow eight additional iPads from other classrooms.  The kids had to illustrate something they are thankful for using the special paper from International Dot Day.  From there, they got to bring their "dot" to life using Augmented Reality!  It was SO cool!

One benefit of these projects is that as the year progresses, the kinders get more comfortable with talking, and the fourth graders get more comfortable with asking questions, and learning how to help the little ones learn how to have conversations.