Kernels Baseball Game with the PTO!

Please join us for Van Horne / Keystone Elementary Day at the Cedar Rapids Kernels! This fun and exciting event for students, staff, families, and friends will take place on Saturday, April 25th at 2:05 pm. Gates open at 1:00 pm and students who attend the game may be able to participate in on-field activities and contests. Discounted club section tickets at $8.00 are available for Van Horne & Keystone family and friends.

Tickets can be purchased using the flyer distributed at school, by calling the Kernels ticket office at (319) 896-7560, or online at the link below.

(Section 111 to sit with other Van Horne / Keystone Families.)

https://www.ticketreturn.com/prod2/Buy.asp…

(Section 112 to sit with other Keystone / Van Horne Families.)

https://www.ticketreturn.com/prod2/Buy.asp?EventID=135363&promocode=vanhorne

Positive Post-It Tuesday and a New Challenge

If you follow me (@Mrs_KFisher) on Twitter you will see that I am pretty active in #edchats and connecting with other educators and education leaders globally.  It has been addicting for me!  My husband just shakes his head when I have my earbuds in listening to a podcast, or when I am feverishly typing in the #edchat of the hour (my favorite is #iaedchat on Sunday nights at 8:00, thanks +Dan Butler +Jimmy Casas and other moderators!).  Ryan is very supportive and even will dive into topics with me when the chat is over!

Last weekend I was thumbing through Twitter when I read an education challenge posted by +Tony Sinanis (he is an elementary principal at #Cantiague in New York).  Obviously I have never been given the opportunity of meeting Tony, but I heard him speak on #iaedchat LIVE and starting stalking his Twitter feed.  What I stumbled upon was this, Positive Post-It Tuesday!  So I emailed all my colleagues at Van Horne Elementary and some other Twitter faithful ( +Jen Bange +Andrea Townsley) to see if anyone wanted to join!  In true Bobcat spirit the entire VHE staff, Jen, and Andrea joined!  We had post-it notes and positivity flowing everywhere!  Students were writing feverishly, staff were sneaking around so we wouldn't see who left anonymous notes for each other, buckets were not only filled; but were overflowing!  It was amazing!  The students were talking about it with each other at recess, staff were tweeting during lunch, parents were starting to respond with stories they were hearing from home!  Such great energy.

KF kinders working hard on their post-its!

My door, it is even exciting to get them as a teacher!

We put them on student lockers so we were surprised at recess to read our special guest's note!

Mrs. Bridgewater's student lockers...(side-note, aren't her locker tags the coolest?!?!) 

I walked away from school this week feeling very positive and recharged to keep pushing forward these next few months.  But I realized something very sad too throughout this challenge.  We don't spread the positivity enough.  I hear teachers saying great things to kids, but does it outweigh the redirections we give?  I hear students say things to their friends, but how about the new student that started last week...has his bucket been filled lately?  The biggest realization I felt and heard others comment on was that teachers don't fill each other's enough.  We talk all the time about our next endeavor, our reflections on how to make student learning more impactful the next time we teach a lesson, but when are we ever patting each other or ourself on the back?  This needs to happen every day...not just March 31st.  So my new mission for myself is to keep Positive Post-It Tuesday alive and well every day with myself, my students, and my colleagues (and probably my family for being so supportive) because I see how infectious positivity can be!

If you are new to Twitter, or are an educator that would like to start feeling the passionate charge of these education challenges, I encourage you to join in with the #LoveMySchoolDay challenge on Friday, April 10 ( @JohnWink90 ).  For more details check out this link #LoveMySchoolDay

Exit Tickets and Compare/Contrast

Last week we included exit tickets into our daily routine.  Exit tickets are used by teachers to quickly assess a skill taught, survey students, or just gain general feedback.  We are using our exit tickets for in Kinderland for a couple of different reasons.

• We are practicing publishing our writing for a greater audience.
• We want others to read them and strike up conversations about the cool learning happening in KF.
• Mrs. Fisher wants to know what learning was most impactful.

So every day at 3:00 each kinder gets their exit tickets (they are speech bubbles that hang on our lockers), and write what learning activity, subject, or skill they liked best that day.  Then we hang them back on our lockers for everyone else to read and ask us about!  I am looking for trends when I read them, so I know what to plan more of!  Student voice is something that I am really trying to hear more of when I sit down to lesson plan.  The more voice they have in their learning will usually produce more engagement and deeper learning.  When your kinder gets home, ask them what their speech bubble said and strike up a conversation about the awesome things happening every day in Kinderland!

We also have been working on comparing and contrasting texts.  The most common and visual way we have been doing this has been with the Venn diagram.  In this picture you can see my lovely assistants are showing you the texts that we used to compare and contrast.  We picked two Cinderella texts.  Marissa is holding Cinderella by James Marshall.  This was our traditional storyline that we enjoyed in our read aloud time.  Kasie is holding up one of our classroom iPads that has a YouTube version from Story Circle at Cool School channel that is retelling Cynthia (a Cinderella fractured fairytale).  We like to read different types of texts, and that includes audio.  YouTube has TONS of audio texts that are so enjoyable for kinders.  If you need more ideas, please check out my Pinterest board Online Books (https://www.pinterest.com/kfishwater/online-books/) for more options, or search any book title or topic on YouTube!  Enjoy!

Fairy Tale Workstations

SPRING!!!!  FINALLY!!!!

That’s all I really want to comment on, but I guess I will elaborate on what is going on in KF!  We just finished up with half of our Fairy Tale unit.  If you follow me on Twitter (@Mrs_KFisher) you will see pictures of the workstations that we had within our Fairy Tale unit.  Here is a quick recap, make sure and ask your kinder about each of the stations!
*Fairy Tale Retells-recalling events within  The Three Billy Goats Gruff by telling what happened first, next, then, and finally.

*Fairy Tale Sequencing-we re-wrote the story Goldilocks and the Three Bears by sequencing the pictures, and writing text to support the events.

*Fairy Tale Character Point of View-we wrote about what it would be like to live a day like a fairy tale character.

*Fairy Tale Trait Headbands-we listed traits about each character and wore them around as headbands.

*Puppets for Retelling-we made table puppets for The Three Little Pigs to practice retelling this familiar story at home.

We LOVE workstation time.  How it works is Shelly Thomas leads a group, I lead a group, and then there are 3 groups that are working independently.  We have 30 minute rotations.  Each student will rotate through the stations throughout the week, but usually does one station per day.  Make sure and ask your kinder what workstation was his/her favorite this week!  

Service Learners

At the High School there is a program called "Service Learning" for students that have open blocks to pair up with teachers throughout the district.  The high school students could go at this opportunity multiple different ways.

1. Use it as an opportunity to see what education would be like to pursue a career in the field.
2. Use it to work with kids.
3. Use it as a break from the daily grind of the High School world.
4. Use it as an opportunity to pay back to a school they attended, for a teacher they personally had, or just provide service in general.
5. Come hang out with the coolest students (and possibly the coolest teacher ;) in the district)...okay, maybe that was a stretch, but you see where I'm going here!

There are a lot of students that think they want to come to Kinderland, but once they are here...they don't exactly dig in and contribute to the class.  That was NOT the case with our last service learner.  I am sure many of you have heard from your own kinder that Alyssa Wiebel was in our room this Quarter.  She is a Junior up at the High School.  She is very involved in athletics, and is a very committed student in the classroom.  Alyssa is someone that I felt could really be a role model to introduce to our students.  She came down this afternoon to say good-bye to everyone on her last day.  We made her cards and got her some yummy lotion!  Make sure you ask your kinder about Alyssa!  Here is a picture that we took today!

Digital Learning Day

Friday, March 13th has been declared globally as "Digital Learning Day".  Since I am at a training tomorrow, we finished our project today!  Digital Learning Day is a challenge that was sent out to the educational field to try and do an activity that uses technology to strengthen student skills and learning.  As a teacher, I planned to retell a very familiar, very loved book titled Pete the Cat by Eric Litwin.  This is a book that Miss Wood uses in Preschool, has kids fall in love with the main character, Pete, and we revisit often in Kindergarten.  In the book, Pete steps in piles of strawberries, blueberries, and mud.  We decided to take a step further and write an extended version of Pete the Cat, and this time use all of the colors that were not mentioned in the original.  To do this, I had students all vote on what Pete could step in, draw pictures to depict the story, and then used the app "Little Bird Tales" to narrate the story.  You will notice that we added our activity to the Digital Learning Day website  (http://www.digitallearningday.org/site/default.aspx?PageID=11) so we could be included alongside of the thousands of other classrooms celebrating Digital Learning Day too!  This truly was a great experience, and I hope to hear from any of the classrooms that view our stories.
Please enjoy these stories at home with your kinder.  They were very excited and proud to complete this project!  Also, feel free to thumb through the different lessons on the Digital Learning Day's website at home to bring more lessons to life for you and your kinder!  Happy learning!

Story 1-http://www.littlebirdtales.com/tales/view/story_id/502743

Story 2-http://www.littlebirdtales.com/tales/view/story_id/502744

Conferences

I just want to take a second and remind you all to please sign up for conferences if you haven't already.  Conferences are Monday, March 13 from 4:00-8:00 and Tuesday, March 17 from 3:00-8:00. Tuesday is a 1:00 dismiss for students!  I can't wait to share all the great things your kinder and the rest of KF is doing every day!  Please call Lynne Pealer in the office at 319-228-8701 ext. 412 to schedule!