Bucket Filling with Tech to Build Community

     One of the best things I did in my kindergarten classroom last year (along with thousands of other classrooms around the world) was to read How Full is Your Bucket? for Kids. I know the power of this activity because parents come to me asking to know more about Bucket Filling...their 5 year old comes home saying, "Mom, you dipped from my bucket!" If you haven't read this book, you NEED to! It teaches children the value of encouraging others in a way they internalize. The children love the book and can identify with Felix's struggles.
     After the read aloud, we build understanding and process Bucket Filling behavior with some of the activities in Ashley Reed's Bucket Filler Brigade Unit . After that, we sing The Bucket Filler Song by Michael B.  We created some gestures which help get us moving. This song is part of our morning routine, and we sing it daily.  It sets the tone for lifting others up throughout our school day.  Each day, we think-pair-share about bucket filling or bucket dipping behavior. We are sure to go deep and discuss why that example appropriate. I use sentence frames which look like this:   _____________ filled my bucket when he/she _______________.  This made me feel __________ because _______________. If we talk about Bucket DIPPING we work hard to leave out the name of the bucket dipper to protect anonymity.  We take the time to share out with the whole class daily, especially at the beginning of school, to help reinforce appropriate and inappropriate behavior.  Often, we use our tablets to video a child describing Bucket Filling Behavior to post to our classroom blog.  Our Student of the Day gets to choose a Bucket Filling Buddy to help take a tablet out during recess or choice time to find evidence of Bucket Filling. We can then create a classroom Bucket Filling video using WeVideo (a free and easy video editor) to post to our blog or print out pics for a bulletin board. My students leave my classroom understanding the value of encouraging others, and yours can too!  What do you do to teach and reinforce encouraging behavior in your classroom?

Here are last year's Bucket Filling Cuties.  You can see some of the gestures we used with The Bucket Filler Song by Michael B which you can find on YouTube.

Journey to Becoming a Connected Educator

Please read what my techy friend, partner and instructional coach +Connie Patton  wrote:

I am honored that you asked me to be a guest blogger on your site. I decided to write a post using the first two words of your theme, "Connecting educators with a world of resources for developing the whole child."

This summer we have spent quite a bit of time exploring what it means to be a connected educator in our graduate course. This connection is referred to as P²LN (Personal and Professional Learning Network) in the book What Connected Educators Do Differently.

You can find this book at Amazon, just click  the link.
Ultimately, as we expand our personal and professional learning network we become better at what we do, and better meet the needs of the students and colleagues we serve. As educators we strive to create environments so students will feel connected to school because we know that those who feel connected are more likely to succeed and realize that the same holds true for us as professionals. We need peer-to-peer interactions and reciprocal relationships in order to grow.  I realize that creating a network is a collective effort that takes time, but I have found that it has been encouraging, and it has professionally challenged me to strive for greatness. If we are asking our students to engage in self-directed meaningful learning, then we as educators should model the way. A great place to start is to build your P²LN with tools such as Twitter, a blog, and a website.

Connected educators create connected learning for students!
Connie Patton: @conniepatton010 www.conniepatton.com

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Adding Tech to Daily 5

Adding Tech to Daily 5

As a primary teacher for 23 years, I felt like I discovered a gold mine two years ago when I found Daily 5 and began to implement The Sisters strategies in my classroom.  Motivation to read exploded in my 1-2 combo class and I was finally able to meet with those guided reading groups in a way that allowed me to get home in time to still see my family before they closed their eyes at night.  If you don’t know about Daily 5, PLEASE put it #1 on your To Do list.  Just go to amazon right now and order the book!  The best opportunity is to then attend one of their conferences which was the best PD of my life...but sign up now, they fill up fast.

Integrating technology into our students learning is high on everyone’s priority list.  In my kindergarten classroom last year I was able to use technology to help my Daily 5 routine become more fluid and effective.  Here are some ideas:

1. Use Movenote to create Wordwork practice. Students can easily access this using a QR code.
2. Listen to Reading using Storyline Online, then reflect on that reading using Google Docs.
3. If students don’t have a partner for Read to Someone, they can read to the video camera then watch themselves to improve their fluency and accuracy.
4. Use an art app like Asus Artist to rainbow write words.

You can check out my classroom blog Roosevelt SuperKinders to see examples of it in action.