Author Archives: J. van Rees
Picture Books 10 for 10: Authors I couldn’t live without
Inquiring About Inquiry: My Journey Into Inquiry Based Learning (Part 2)
This post focuses on connecting my thinking of inquiry with research. To see my journey into inquiry, go here in Part 1 of Inquiring about Inquiry.
I joined a book club in the middle of the school year with some teachers in our school board.…
Inquiring About Inquiry: My Journey Into Inquiry Based Learning (Part 1)
Grade Ones as Teachers
This past Friday, my Grade Ones became teachers to a Kindergarten class. We have been using Educreations for a few months now and grasping a good understanding of how to use it. Compared to our Kindergarten learners, my students were “digital experts”.…
Building a Community
This week we built our own community on the floor of our classroom. Mrs. van Rees put tape on the floor for roads and we did the rest. We brainstormed different things a community needs and then each of us took a specific thing to create.…
QR Codes and Padlet
Thanks to Kristen Wideen and her willingness to share what she does in her class on her blog, I attempted QR codes and Padlet (an electronic chart paper for sticky notes) with my Grade Ones today. Creating a QR code was really quite easy.…
Flat Stanley
This year I read “Flat Stanley”written by Jeff Brown to my Grade One class. In the past 7 years, I have done a Flat Stanley project with 2 of my other classes, but nothing like the project it became this year.…
Using Educreations… and failing at it
Sometimes the best learning happens when you fail.
Today, I messed up. I tried something new and although it seemed to be going smoothly at first, it didn’t end as well. I had my students use Educreations to record their learning on 3D shapes.…
Student Blogging
In September when I started blogging with my Grade One students, I was probably more scared than they were. Our first computer lab period was… insanity. My Grade Ones were taught how to log on and use a computer in Kindergarten, but they had a summer to forget and I wasn’t just asking them to log on.…