If you are a book lover and feel strongly about sharing books with kids, NerdCamp is for you!
Here is the official link to find out what it's all about. This will be my third Nerdcamp experience; I had to miss Nerdcamp last year, but I vowed NOT to let that happen this year. You know it's a special place and group when you walk up and clutch the arm of your {nerdy book-loving, artist, not-even-a-teacher) friend and literally squeal, "Ohhh, we've found our PEOPLE!" Even better is getting your picture taken with Babymouse and Arnie AND meeting your edu-heroes in the literary world AND walking out with books, posters, bookmarks, and memories to share with your students about your very own summer "camp" experience! Nerdcamp had its humble beginnings back in 2013, and it has consistently grown by leaps and bounds! This year there are more than 50 authors and illustrators who will share in the fun! This S'More will give you an idea of just how broad the scope of the sessions for Day One. Day Two is set up in the non-traditional style of an ED-Camp where the group itself builds the session board based on the interests and questions of those present. As you can surely see, there is excitement in the air as approximately1500 literacy-lovin' and book-passionate folks come together in Michigan! Please follow along on social media - much of the learning will be shared and available for those not able to attend. But wait - there's MORE! After the adults have their two days of learning and sharing, many authors, illustrators, organizers, and volunteers stay for Nerdcamp Jr.! This will be my first year to participate so I am truly pumped to see how this works. I'll work with one group to lead them through their visits with their assigned guests. Summer learning time also allows me to experiment with new technology to engage my students, and one I am exploring with great interest is Flipgrid. I see this as a viable assessment tool (non-traditional, yay!) for my students as they explain their thinking or reasoning or share what they're experiencing. I'd love to have students use it to share book talks, make connections between books or authors, and to help us connect with others outside of our little rural community. I've completed most of what I need to begin my Flipgrid certification journey, but I need your help to practice more with it. Flipgrid is a tool that uses video to capture or share learning about a particular topic.I created a Nerdcamp Grid and posted a topic asking for nerdcamp lovers to please share what they are excited about or some important piece of learning during the actual sessions. Here is the link - I am hoping to have a few video responses which will allow YOU to share why you are passionate about Nerdcamp and will allow me to learn more about moderating responses - so it's a total win-win! It will take only about a minute, so please help out! Have a great time at Nerdcamp - or following along via social media if you are @notatnerdcampMI. if you write a blog post about your experiences, feel free to leave a link in the comments below!
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I am participating in a month-long writing challenge called The Slice of Life Story Challenge sponsored by Two Writing Teachers. The purpose is to share little short "slices" of your everyday life in realistic terms. "Slicers" also read and comment on other bloggers' slices - and in the process we get to experience some fun topics and are exposed to many different writing styles. {There is an individual SOL challenge and a classroom SOL challenge, so perhaps next year I'll be brave enough to tackle this with my students!} Our inspiration for today was to share simple little stories that creep into our lives. This is a perfect opportunity to highlight an app we use in our classroom to share simple stories and slices of our learning: ChatterPix Kids.
If you're not familiar with it, look for it in the App Store. It's easy to use and my kids love it! Here are just a few ways we've used ChatterPix Kids to share our learning:
There once was a book-loving danger-avoiding mama named O'Kincer
Whose two children (unlike her) are brave and seek the thrill of adventure. The daughter treasures most her horseback days in a saddle. The son is happiest up the river with a paddle. And poor mama has to learn to ignore her built-in danger sensor. Slice: Today's slice comes straight from my classroom!
In preparation for state-mandated testing, today we pulled out all of our big pieces of writing and took time to reread each word in each of them! My 3rd graders were so involved in reading their own work that it was completely quiet except for a few giggles and gasps as if they were meeting up with an old friend. It was one of those magical moments! The quiet lasted for 10 delightful minutes, and was followed by an even more delightful period in which students were invited to share anything that we might consider strong writing. Here are a couple of the ideas they shared publicly from their Snowman Comes to Life (for only a specific time period, though) narrative writing. I'm also including why they felt it was strong - in the 3rd graders words:.
This was such a fun activity - it really helped (I hope!) them to see what strong writers they are, to celebrate them as writers, and it gave us a chance to talk about author's purpose and various genres in a truly authentic manner! Any moments that are magical are truly worthy of being the focal point of my SLICE! Connection: As adults many of us struggle with capturing ideas, often as elusive as a butterfly flitting in and out of our consciousness. For others, the issue is more one of storing ideas so you have a ready stash when you sit down to write. Do either of these describe you? For me personally, it's a storage issue - well, actually a "find it" issue. Which is why I loved that Lisa Keeler's post on the TWT (Two Writing Teachers) site shared several ideas for keeping track of ideas. The idea of having random photos that you find interesting isn't new to me, but having them organized into a SOLC17 file on my phone is! I am now the proud owner of such a photo-file! The idea of using a journal or notebook isn't novel either, I have a plethora of real notebooks and lovely journals, as well as electronic notebooks. What I've not established as habit yet is actually using them to write ideas and inspirations DAILY. Oh, I've used them - but sparingly rather than habitually. So here's my plan (and a little WHY behind it): I happen to be a self-proclaimed "sticky-note-queen" when reading, tagging favorite lines and sections of books. I'll keep a lovely little notebook or journal with the book and when I tag a line with a sticky note, I will know to write it in the book immediately. If not, I'll leave the sticky note in there (which may be better to give it time to percolate) and come back later to select the quotes or connections that were the most meaningful. {Sheesh, ok, there - it's public. That ups the ante a bit for accountability, doesn't it?} What a fun day we had on Tuesday! It was part of our ongoing collaboration with Ms. Jena Ball, author, illustrator, and co-founder of CrittenKin. Back in March, we first had the opportunity to learn how a disabled dog named Ricky Bobby was rescued - and actually loved for the first time. It should be noted that if you can bring 3rd graders from feeling shock, horror, and anger - and drive them forward from feeling to wanting to DO, you are indeed a powerful storyteller! For this part of our collaboration, we first read part of a CritterKin book called Meet the Mutts, and then we learned about an interesting blog swap project where we give other CritterKin-readers clues about which "mutt" we met. The swap part is that we'll read their blogs to learn about the mutt they met, all students reading, writing, and asking questions!! Here is a link to our kidblogs: http://kidblog.org/MrsKincersClass/ {Side note: It’s state testing week at our school, so our regular schedule is a bit off. Sharing in this humorous and engaging chapter was just what we needed today!} We did a quick journal-writing activity outlining the characters, setting, and events from our chapter, and finished up by telling about the underlying message of kindness demonstrated by the characters. {Another side note: Kindness is the recurring theme in all things CritterKin, opening doors for many very insightful discussions.} Later, we had a chance to have our second Skype with author and illustrator Jena Ball. During this Skype session, we learned about three dogs currently living at our local animal shelter. After seeing photos of all three, we voted to draw pictures of Spike with Ms. Ball, and she walked us through it, showing us how to give each of our dogs a little different personality by merely changing the slant of the eyebrow or the positioning of the eyes. As I look at the finished pictures, they are all similar, but oh so different! As if drawing with an illustrator wasn’t enough, the class also got to participate in writing a short story from Spike’s point of view, providing details that might help someone decide to adopt Spike! Just when we thought that reading, writing, and drawing was the “icing on the cake,” Ms. Jena asked us to help her with a dance called the Wiggle-Waggle. She got us thinking like dogs – wagging, scratching, barking, panting, chasing our tails, shaking a paw with a neighbor, and finally lying down for a well-deserved nap! Amazingly, all of the wiggle-waggling turned into snoring as sweet dreams were had by all! {Side note: Let’s just say, for the record, that the students weren’t the only ones reluctant to see all the fun end!} |
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