How Ben Franklin Stole the Lighting- Kite Biographies

This week's story was How Ben Franklin Stole the Lightning. I do sometimes give the selection tests and I often hate them but I also don't have the time to create assessments for every single story. As often as possible we'll do something that accomplishes the same goal without all the bubbles and questions. This week was one such week. It's the week before spring break. Everyone is crazy and antsy. It's time for some art.

I googled "Ben Franklin Art" for ideas and a kite popped up. Perfect. I don't think I followed what the kite was about. That's how I work. I find someone else's idea and then change it so it fits with what I want to do. Often all I need is the kickstart and then it's off to the races.

We quartered (I know it's not really quarters, math teachers) the kite first as a rough draft on small paper. In the top two quadrants they were to write two things Ben Franklin did in his life. In the bottom two they were to illustrate two things he did. In the bows on the kite string they needed to talk about some of his inventions. And on the key they needed to write the title of the story.

I encouraged the rough drafts to be rough but good enough to give them an idea of what they'll be writing, a place to check their spelling etc, and a way to judge drawing within the unusual shapes. The original plan was to work with the 4th grade teacher next door to me and the kites would be flyable, but after a little experimenting we realized what a nightmare that was going to be so they are indoor kites. That's why the big kites are done on light paper. The cross beams are Popsicle sticks because not having dowels is the mother of invention. Sticks are glued and tail, bows, and key are taped.

The finished products got to fly on the walls and ceiling of the classroom. Who says teaching in America today is all testing and test prep and crying children?

Some students got the chance to reflect on the process on our Kidblog.

#WeirdEd Week 48- Speed Dating

I want to try something a little different this week. This chat will have very little to directly do with education. "So what else is new?" I hear you ask. Hardy-har-hat Mr/s Funny Pants.

I think chats are about building connections, and those connections are where the real learning happens. A chat is a springboard. A place to meet. It's Mom's Group for teachers craving adult human interaction. So instead of a normal Q1/A1 kind of chat I'm going to run #WeirdEd Speed Dating Services. (aka #WeirdEd Ice Breakers But Not As Lame Because It's Not Eating Valuable Meeting Time)

Here's the idea: I'll post a commonality. Your favorite movie/band/food/whatever. You have to go into the chat and find someone who shares that thing with you. Or is close. Digressions are encouraged. I want you to digitally mingle. I have no idea how well this is going to go. I think what's going to happen is a few brave souls will have to tweet out their likes/dislikes/answers and then you gravitate to that and respond and build. I think (read: hope) the chat will branch like a wild tree. We'll start with a trunk which will be my guiding questions/topics, and then you all will take it over and branch it out to who knows where.

Every question you'll need to pick a new person. You can't be a perfect match the whole chat with Sarah Thomas even though all of us wish we were. I want you to drag people into the chat. Who cares if they aren't online? But I also want you to talk to tweeple you've never reached out to before in a safe environment.

The focus is building human connections so that later when you have a question about How To Teach X or What Do I Do About Y you know the humans responding to you. It's not building your Professional Learning Network. It's building your Human Connections, which is more important.

Or maybe this'll burn down, fall over, and sink into the swamp. It's always a possibility.

Be brave.

Charlie's Gumballs

My kids need more problem solving practice. Everyone knows being able to do the calculations is only a small part of math. The real math is seeing problems and determining the proper way to solve. A few days ago someone (I don't remember who, I'm sorry!) shared Charlie's Gumballs with me.

I loved it. It was just the kind of problem my kids need. Today to start math I switched on the video, told the kids we were watching a video and that's all, and played it. They were immediately on board and started doing the next step before I prompted them.
"Ok, what questions can we ask using this video?"
"How many did he start with?"
"How many did each person get?"
"Can I have some gum?"
I listed the (good) questions on the board and said, "Ok, that's your assignment. Go." Then I stopped talking, sat back, and watched the groups work.
I have to say I was impressed. There was a lot of gnashing of teeth and even more too quick too flip answers that they didn't double check, but once they figured out it wasn't as easy as they thought they got to work with an industry rarely seen with, "Do page 267, #2-24 even only."
There were math conversations happening, problem solving, team work, trouble shooting. I loved it.

Terry Pratchett

I first visited Discworld in Small Gods. I had heard about this Pratchett guy because he and some guy named Neil Gaiman, who I also didn't know past this one book, wrote a book I liked called Good Omens.

Small Gods was a revelation. People talk about how pieces of art change their lives so often it's a cliche. Small Gods changed my life. I couldn't believe you could be this smart and this funny and this deep all at the same time while telling an engaging story with fleshed out characters. It was too much. It was impossible. It was perfect.

I'm a completionist and anal enough that if there's a series I have to start at Book One and work my way forward. Discworld was way too intimidating for that. There's no reason to read the books in any order. Sure, some come before others and you get a little more out of them if you read them in order, but you don't have to. You can jump into Discworld at any point and understand everything.

Because Terry Pratchett was a genius.

We lost Terry Pratchett today. I had no idea how much he meant to me until I saw the news. Someone had tweeted something about when they first started reading his books. That's never a good sign. Google confirmed it. He'd died at the age of 66 from the Alzheimer's which had been embuggering him.

I knew about the Alzheimer's, of course. It seemed like a nightmare. A writer of his skill and wit losing his ability to think like that?

I cried when I saw the news. I don't mean that metaphorically. I didn't feel like crying. I mean my kids were working away on a reading project and I saw the news and I turned away from them because tears sprang to my eyes unbidden. I collected myself enough to keep teaching and helping, but the black cloud was suffocating. I had no idea I would feel like this. Sure, I loved his work, but crying? The way the people who took over his twitter account told his followers was both perfect and heart-breaking.

Anyone who has ever visited Discworld knows only one character who speaks in all caps. Death. I still can't look at this series of tweets without crying.

Discworld was a vacation spot. Any time I had a hard group of days, any time I read a really difficult book, I'd turn to Pratchett and Discworld. He was so good that I could pick a book at random and be happy, if not utterly in love, with it.

Reading Terry Pratchett sometimes made me mad. Mad that he was so brilliant. Selfishly mad that he could be so great at this and make it seem so effortless. I know it wasn't, writing never is, but it feels like that. It feels effortless. The satire of Discworld is sharp and cuts deeply. The humor is often laugh out loud funny and made me shake my head at the absurd connections he'd make that made perfect sense in his world.

He comforted me when I needed it. He constantly inspired me. He was more deeply important to me than I recognized.

My favorite Pratchett books are Small Gods and Night Watch. Night Watch builds the background my favorite Pratchett character, Sam Vimes and is an examination of the choices we make and how they ripple. Commander Vimes (reluctant Duke of Ankh-Morpork) will never walk the streets anew, but I have so many tales of him walking those streets it feels selfish to want more.

That's the thing about losing an author, especially one as prolific as Sir Terry was. We have a record that we can always go back to. The well is deep and I haven't yet plumbed all the depths. Still, knowing that we'll never get more is painful.

It feels weird answering, "You ok?" with "Not really. One of my favorite authors died today." I've done that a bunch. It's hard to explain if you've never read him.

I took a few minutes today to talk about him to my class. I told them about him and my connection to him and tried to explain why I was so upset. I'm sure I rambled and went on too long but these things are hard to explain and harder still to explain to fourth graders. I left them with, "Find an author who you connect with so deeply that you feel you know them," or something like that. I wanted them to see what books could do. What authors could do.

I'm in the middle of an excellent book but tonight I'm stopping and revisiting Discworld in Small Gods. Brave the Librarian and find one of his books.

#WeirdEd Week 47- Big Hero Six

I love BIG HERO 6 so much. It's not perfect but it's damn near. It's science-positive, the team is more diverse than any other Marvel team (or superhero movie team we're going to see for some time) both in terms of gender and race, the emotional beats hit hard, and it's funny as hell.

I might like it better than THE LEGO MOVIE. And I looooved THE LEGO MOVIE. I'm not going to spoil the movie here even though you already should have seen it. Go see it.

In BH6 school is an awesome place. The Nerd School is the goal in the first act. It drives our hero Hiro to push himself. The experiments there are fun and science-ish. The team comes together not because they need to fight a Big Bad but because they already were together. The BIG HERO 6 don't have a Nick Fury because they don't need one. They were friends first.

I can't wait to find an excuse to show this to my class and talk about it. I want to bring up GoGo's catchphrase, "Woman up!" and see how my kids react. I want to watch them laugh at Fred being Fred. I want to see who cries.

Baymax. Let's talk about Baymax. I love Baymax. He's perfect and in the tradition of Marvel superheroes he's cooler outside of his suit than in it. Armored Baymax looks cool but that's not who he is. Baymax wants you to rate your pain and wants to give you a sucker. Baymax is huggable.

I'm going to try to write this week's questions so that you don't have to have seen the movie to participate. I'm not trying to exclude people. But stuff will really make more sense if you do see it.

Here's a Character Key because these pictures are awesome and that's pretty much the only reason

Honey Lemon- Science Specialty/Power: Chemical reaction balls that explode/color/burn/stick/etc
Very empathetic

GoGo- Science Specialty/Power: Speed enhanced by maglev wheels
"Woman up!"

Wasabi- Science Specialty/Power: Plasma cutter
Everything in its place

Fred- Science Specialty/Power- Mascot (also fire-breathing and super jump)
The fanboy 

Hiro- Science Specialty/Power- Computer wiz, microbot designer
The leader and reason for team formation

Baymax- Science Specialty/Power: Medical care robot modified for fighting and flight
"Are you satisfied with your care?"

#WeirdEd Week 46- Dr Seuss

This week of course can have but one topic
You'd have to break my fingers, toes, and nose to stop it
I can't write about anyone but the good Doctor Seuss
(and if you asked him it would rhyme with rejoice)
At #WeirdEd this week we'll gather with glee
And talk up his characters, like the one in the tree
And the one with the egg and the one with the street
And how they sing out to us and make our hearts beat
For Seuss is the best of the best of the best
A champion for children and the repressed
A master of wordplay and the silly mixswirld
Making up words that are used 'round the world
From imagination to loyalty
From war to up to royalty
Suess tackled them all with the greatest care-olity
I have my favorites, and you do at home
For reading to students and all all alone
What ego it takes to write a Seuss rhyme!
I should get out now while I still have the time.
So in #WeirdEd let's visit the Whos and the Sneetches
Oh, the places we'll go should include their warm beaches
This week we'll have joy but also we'll glean
Seuss knew about fun but that fun could well mean
That learning is happening without a bash on the head
Happy birthday, we cry, to the patron saint of #Weirded!

Taking Read Across America Literally (OR How To Stress Yourself Out And Dress Like the Cat in the Hat at the Same Time)

Today was Read Across America.

I was in charge of Read Across America. Why? Because it's my favorite school holiday ever. It's Halloween but with Dr Seuss. And Dr Seuss is the greatest author ever. The equation is simple:

Seuss cosplay + Seuss books = Happy Dougie

This year I decided to make things extra difficult on myself. Normally I send a few weeks working with the librarians and anyone else who wants to help finding members of the community like firefighters, cops, councilpeople, school board members, etc who are willing to come to my school and read to our kids.

This year I had a baby seven weeks ago. And I forgot to start planning. Because baby. Yes, I'm absolutely blaming my lack of preparation on new baby. Stuff gets shifted and forgotten when there's a squish at home.

So I was unplanned. And in a meeting with my VP I said, "I'm on top of it. It's not for a few weeks." At which point she showed me how calendars work and I thought, "Awww, crap. I'm screwed."

I ran to the twitters for help. I built a schedule in Google Spreadsheets taking into account everything that would be in everyone's way (I thought, I forgot about computer lab and how just because lunch ends at 11:40 that doesn't mean you're back at class at 11:40), posted it to twitter, and said, "HALP! Find a teacher and a time that works for you! Don't forget I'm in Pacific Standard Time!"

Damned if twitter didn't respond. After a few hours half the schedule was filled up. By the next day even more of it. Soon I had only a few spots left that I was able to fill with humans from my area. But most of the Read Across America readers would be coming to classrooms via Google Hangout.

I don't know about your staff. Maybe they are all tech-savvy. Maybe this plan wouldn't be any kind of an issue for your school. For my school this was very nearly a real dumbass plan. We do not have the most technologically comfortable teachers. Not all of them! Some are fine with computers. They aren't scared of breaking the internet. They are cool troubleshooting. They knew what I meant when I said "GHO" instead of "Google Hangout". They knew what I meant when I said "Google Hangout" instead of "a video call on your computer."

Some...not so much with the comfort or familiarity.

I had less than a week to prepare them. Here's the thing. I think GHO is really easy. I find the program intuitive and easy to troubleshoot. I also recognize that I'm in the minority. So I made a Slideshow and shared it with my staff going through every possible step I thought they might need, while also keeping it brief enough to not be scary.

I almost nailed it. So close.

I sent multiple emails to my staff last week. "Please please try this out with each other before Monday. Please email your readers, you have their contact information. Please please please hook up your Chromebooks and make sure you won't have any questions on the day."

Teachers are a lot like students.

Some did and I was able to help. Some didn't and I had emails Monday morning like, "We don't have the right cord to do this with the new Chromebooks." Ok good. I'm about to start teaching but I'll be down at recess or lunch to see what the hell that could possibly mean. We got the cord thing worked out, by the way.

Final verdict- It went better than I expected. I never expected it to go perfectly. I feared mass failure and pitchforks and anger at the blue-haired teacher who thinks tech is sooo easy for everyone. There was no mass failure. There were failures, but this is a first time thing, basically a giant experiment where I forced my staff to be guinea pigs. Fail happens. There were problems I didn't anticipate and problems I did but they didn't notice that I had.

The main issue was calls not connecting. I have seen that GHO does that. Sometimes you make a call and it says it's ringing and the person on the other end isn't seeing the ringing. I don't know why it does that. I do know that when it does that you stop, hang up, and try again a different way. A bunch of teachers did that. "I'm not sure how I got it to work but I started pushing buttons and it worked," one told me. Perfect. That's not far from what I would have done to help you. The less tech comfortable or patient teachers, and I'm not blaming them, gave up on the call. It happens, that's fine. I think there are things they could have tried but it's cool. I'm sorry to the readers that were supposed to read and never got connected.

One teacher or reader I think missed the pacific standard time thing. One read my schedule backwards, thinking she had a live reader when she had a GHO reader. And one told me she had a schedule conflict Monday morning.

The other common question was, "Why does the projector just show more of the Chromebook background but not the Hangout?" I heard this nearly a dozen times walking around collecting feedback after school. A TON of my teachers had no idea the screen extended when plugged into a projector. I swear I put it in my slideshow, but didn't want to say, "I told you this would happen," because they were asking for help very nicely. But I did tell them. It's the second slide. It's cool, most of them figured it out.

Those who did connect loved it. They were thrilled to talk to other teachers in other places. Their kids loved seeing the readers. It was awesome. I cannot thank everyone who tried enough. We took Read Across America literally. Readers from Washington to Virginia to Chicago. And beyond America! My class had an Aussie and an American in the United Arab Emirates. Talk about a lesson in time zones! Poor Jordan. "What time is it there?" my kids asked.

Jordan rubs his eyes, "It's 12:30am here." My kids don't understand. I show them a globe and how he's directly on the other side of it. He's calling from Tuesday.

My other non-American reader was Kim Sutton of Australia, who called from 7am Tuesday Aussie time. The future again!

Lindsey is less special. She just called from a few hours in the future. Kidding Linds, it was excellent.

Thank you to everyone who went out of their way to make this stupid big undertaking a success. I can't tell you how much I appreciate you showing what truly connected educators can do.

My call-in readers were Andrew Mead, Lisa Berghoff, Ashley Gravelle, Ryan Winklemann, Lindsey Lipsky, Kimberly Sutton, Ross LeBrun, Stephanie Robertson, Jordan Lanfair, Kory Graham, Travis Phelps, Dana Hsi, Grace Bedient, Sam Bates, Sarah Thomas, and Jessica Lifshitz. Find those people on twitter and show them all the love.

Special thank you to Jordan for the book. It means a lot. And everyone should know that Sarah Thomas was stuck at home because of snow so she read her class a book she wrote and illustrated when she was in second grade. I think that wins Read Across America book choices.

This is how tech works in the future. And even teachers scared of tech, teachers who had never done it before, managed to pull it off.