Smells Like Teen Numbers (KidLit and EdTech, Too)

This week in kindergarten-land was a crazy one. Between my being out a good portion of the week with sick kids, and all of our two-hour delays, it was hard to find any consistency, but we still managed to have a lot of fun learning.

Math this week was all about making teen numbers. We had already filled a ten frame, and now needed to use that knowledge to help us make teen numbers. As with everything else I teach, I try to change things up, finding different ways to to introduce a concept. We used base ten blocks and straws as manipulatives, we made anchor charts together and we used the lesson from our math series. We'll use the robots to practice the concept this week.

Dot and Dash:
We used Dot and Dash (our Wonder Workshop robots) to explore our new sight words for the week. Over the past couple of weeks, we performed a Control Challenge, where the kids practiced controlling the robot, moving him from one spot to another while learning the controls. We also performed a Precision Challenge, where the kids used Dash to push a tennis ball to a given sight word. This week, we combined the two challenges, as the kids had to drive to a given sight word, turn Dash around and push a tennis ball back to the starting point. This was really hard for them, and we'll probably try it again this week.

I love that by watching the robot, you can almost see the kids' brains working. Also, I thought it was really neat to hear the kids encouraging one another throughout this challenge. They really want each other to succeed, and try to help each other out as much as I will let them. It makes me feel like we've done a good job in Room 6A making the kids feel like they're all a part of a team.

One thing that I didn't get done this week was an activity practicing teen numbers. It's a pretty neat one that I thought of while looking at Make Wonder's challenge for the week: using Dash to go bowling. This week, students will start with the number 10 (showing a 10 frame on chart paper), and use Dash to "bowl" toward bottles or cups used as pins. They will add the number of "pins" knocked down to the 10 that they started with, telling me what teen number they made. More on this next week...

New Apps:
I don't have a full classroom set of iPads, but I do have enough for a couple of small groups, so I am always on the lookout for new iPad apps (some are actually new, while some could be considered "newly discovered"). These usually get tested on the kids at my house before they are introduced at school. I'll talk about a couple of them here:

EdTech as a Motivator and Vessel of Knowledge

There's this girl in my class. She is an underperforming student, who has had a number of absences (a startling number, actually), and who is very shy and backward, with little self-confidence. As you know, due to my obsessive social media posts and my blog entry last week, we have recently received Dash & Dot robots in our classroom.

She. Loves. Them.

Not only does she love them, but she is good at them, and she knows it (I mentioned this in last week's blog post). I can see her confidence growing as she drives the robot around, making it perform whatever challenge we have lined up for the week. The thing is...she's learning the sight words while she does it. Also, (and there may not be a correlation here, but I like to think that there is) she is performing better in every subject. She's taking off. It's awesome. I feel that the educational technology in our classroom is what motivated her. The timing is right, and I can see the look on her face when she uses that robot...that's it. That's what got her going. She's having so much fun learning.

She's been tricked.

Dash & Dot Rule My Classroom: My Experience With DonorsChoose & Two Adorable Robots

"Hey, Mistew Dicken."
"Yes?"
"Can I dwive that wobot?!"

The smallest and youngest little boy (usually unengaged, and without a single care in the world) in my kindergarten class was beyond excited. I had just introduced my kids to Dash & Dot, Wonder Workshop's pair of blue and orange robots, designed to help teach young kids the concepts of coding. I showed them a YouTube video to announce that we would be getting a pair of the robots for our classroom. Clearly, the video had created a buzz of excitement, as very few (if any) of my students had seen a robot before, in the flesh...er...metal? Gears? Whatever.

I had read about these robots while looking through Twitter, and then Googled them and read some more. New to the education scene, the robots were getting good reviews among educators who were incorporating coding into their classrooms. I knew that I could not fund the project, and I knew that the school could not fund the project, so I decided to try out DonorsChoose.org.

It was Saturday, and I filled out the required information on the website, wrote the essay, answered some questions, and selected the items that I wanted. By Sunday night, they had posted my project, titled, Dash & Dot Are the Secret to Kindergarten Coding. By Monday afternoon my project was fully funded (thanks to two generous donors). That evening I answered a few questions to confirm the materials list, and the following day the items were ordered and shipped from the seller (Amazon.com). It was then that I showed the kids the video, and mentioned that they would arrive in a couple of weeks.