Kids Need To Dance: The ABC's For Parents

Source: V is for Vulnerable

It’s that time of the year again when we see the signs of back to school wherever we go. The usual symbols of yellow buses, apples, and ABC's seem to saturate the retail market, as if apples were grown across the country and we all need to learn the alphabet.

As it turns out, Seth Godin’s picture book, V is for Vulnerable: Life Outside the Comfort Zone, is an ABC book for grownups. Hugh MacLeod illustrates each letter, and Godin’s word choice for each one will ring loud and clear for educators.

Source: V is for Vulnerable

We could not help thinking of ways to incorporate this resource into our parent conferences, or ways to motivate our students to understand the difference between effort and impact, taking initiative, or working safe.

One of our favorites is Quality. It’s not about reliably meeting specifications, it needs to matter. “Quality of a performance is a given, it’s not the point.” It reminds us of the students who think it’s good enough.

There are plenty of others including More is not better, Heroes take risks for the right reasons, and Feedback can be either a crutch or a weapon. So many of our students won’t “Dance with fear,” because they're afraid of not being the best, scoring the highest on a test, or getting a B+. Godin’s definition for anxiety strikes at the heart of what adults project when a child doesn’t hit the high note.

Source: V is for Vulnerable

“Anxiety is experiencing failure in advance.”

 

We recommend taking a look at the post by Maria Popova on her blog, Brain Pickings, to read the highlights of Godin’s interview about the book with Debbie Millman, host of the show Design Matters. In it, he talks about why he wrote this book for adults as a picture book.

Source: V is for Vulnerable

“I wanted to capture the way I felt as a three-year-old when my mom read me a book. I wanted to capture the way, as a parent, I felt when I read a book to my kids. And that feeling isn’t something we get when we hand a kid an iPad in a restaurant and say, “Don’t bother me.” Something magical happens when we read a book to a kid, when we’re read a book.”

Perhaps this is why this book strikes such a chord. Adults identify with that feeling. Make no mistake, the design is purposeful; the message succinct.

It hits at the heart of vulnerability and the limits adults cast on children. For Godin, “Design, at its core, thrives when a human being cares enough to do work that touches another — it doesn’t thrive when it gets more “efficient.”

Source: V is for Vulnerable

Let kids dance, and let them do it without a tether and a helmet.

For other resources, please see:

• The Power Of An Idea
• We Love Our Devices, But Need To Look Up
• Century of the Child, Moving Forward
  

Make It, Own It, Learn It

Source: ASIDE, 2013

Like so many other teachers faced with time constraints in completing curricula, we often think of how to fit more things in that we know will make a difference in the learning. We strive to provide our students with creative opportunities to show what they know. To this end, the best advice we can give is to collaborate with other teachers.

By taking an interdisciplinary approach to a particular topic and partnering with others, it's easier to accomplish this objective. Straightforward projects are equally beneficial to student understanding, and the educational looping of material allows students to make stronger connections. Our Sumerian ziggurat project is one example of this.

Source: ASIDE, 2013

The fifth graders learn about ancient Mesopotamia and in particular how farming gave rise to the first civilizations. They make sketchnotes about the eight basic features of a civilization to understand the transformation from a hunter and gatherer society to that of settling down in permanent locations. Two of these features that the ziggurat project addresses are organized religion and the development of art and architecture.

Source: ASIDE, 2013

We keep it simple, but we thread in the history throughout the process. Before beginning, the students complete a short research assignment in their history class using the British Museum website on ziggurats.

In art class, they work in small groups to construct, paint, and build ziggurats by transforming boxes to look like stone, stepped structures. The students have a blast spackling pizza boxes, too. In addition, our art teacher gives them a history lesson about the different types of art the Sumerians made that adds to their knowledge about Sumerian culture.

Each group personalizes their ziggurat with offerings, people, and a dedication to a god or goddess. This makes for an incredible show of creativity. The kids get so into it that they made clay figures praying on their knees. The temples at the top are equally as elaborate.

Source: ASIDE, 2013

They also write a dedication to the deity based on their selection from the list of gods on the British Museum site. They have fun developing this written piece as a tribute to their god or goddess, and each dedication is displayed next to the ziggurat in the school library.

Once everything is completed, the math teacher uses the ziggurats to teach the students about area and perimeter. The students enjoy using their own work to measure and figure out math problems.

As we stated earlier, we keep the project simple, but allow for the students to take ownership of what they make and use it to further their learning. It makes a difference in how they retain the content, because they are engaged throughout the process.

While we all wish we had more time to make things with our students, collaborating with other teachers not only helps bring the learning to life, but also makes it fun.

Source: ASIDE, 2013

The Secret Of "Enrichment" - Humanities For The Ages

Source: Humanities Enrichment

All parents want "enrichment" for their children. Kids, without knowing it, also crave enrichment, because it's the fun stuff, the hands-on exploratory stuff. Teachers, when they have the time and support, ache to offer students expansive investigations and motivating projects.

For many students, the classroom at times can seem dull, yet the Internet is their reliable playground. During recess, they huddle around laptops to watch YouTube videos, check sports highlights, and scope celebrity gossip. We admit that for us, the panoply of web media has taken on much the same enlightening distraction. The extraordinary graphics and nimble videos that we find via Twitter have filled our bookmarks and our evenings with professional wonder. Everyday we find something new that we want to share with our students. But when the realities of curricula, schedules, and assessments set in, we frequently can't find the "extra" time required to show supplemental maps or photographs or poems.

Source: Humanities Enrichment

Because of all the captivating online creations, and because our students latch on to visual resources, our History and English teachers in grades 5 - 8 joined together to assemble a website of self-directed learning. We created a Humanities Enrichment Tumblr page. Anything helpful or fascinating that we come across and that our students might find intriguing, we post on our page. Tumblr proved to be the ideal platform for quick, constantly updated posts that scroll easily through the days.

The goal of any enrichment is to enhance learning or add nuance to quotidian ideas. This kind of self-guided enrichment, where students can click on pictures that grab their attention and skip elements that seem bland, is valuable for learners along the spectrum of academic achievement and capability. It also offers a wonderful outlet to inspire a distracted child or a "bored" student. Additionally, enrichment pages are ideal for letting parents know that we as teachers are excited about providing their children with dynamic complements to the school day.

Source: Humanities Enrichment

We are strong believers in cross-curricular learning, so we teamed up with our English colleagues Gina Sipley and Barbara Thomas in cooperatively designing a joint page. We all want our students to recognize the intertwined nature of their Humanities studies. All four of us, therefore, post media about the blended worlds of social studies, language, geography, literature and cultural research.

Thanks to our favorite websites and our PLN, it's not hard to find links to display. So far, we've been able to post a new tidbit each school day. It's a great way to cultivate collaboration among fellow faculty members and to learn from the exciting resources each person unearths.

Each of us maintains the page link at the top of homework assignments and/or class websites. It turns out our students check the page regularly. They frequently remark in class about a fiction contest or antique map or financial infographic that appeared during the prior evening. Sometimes the humanities posts connect directly to what they're learning in class, but just as often, the snippets relate to current events or quirky scholarship.

Source: Humanities Enrichment

Please feel free to check out our Humanities Enrichment page for yourself. We've intentionally tried to keep it clean and simple and unassociated with any person or institution. Also, feel free to share it with your students. Because it features varied media such as animated clips, museum exhibits, and historical etchings, the page is hopefully relevant for any age group. Each item is something that caught our eye in the first place, so we think kids will find them curious as well.

Note: All images are sourced and linked on the Humanities Enrichment page.