Playing Catch-Up.... Presentations, Coding, an Award, and more to come!

Where to begin??  It's been over a month since I have wrote a blog post, but that doesn't mean I don't have many blog-worthy things going on, it just means that I have been too busy and/or too tired to take the time to sit down and write!  I started this blog partially because I wanted a way to document things I have done with my classes that went well so I could modify and improve them to use again in the future, but now that I have started this, I also want to use it as a way to showcase some of the AMAZING things my students have accomplished.

Most recently, that includes seven of my 5th and 6th graders that were brave enough (or too scared to say no since the principal was asking them the question) to present various projects to our Board of Education at a meeting this past week.  I was SO PROUD of them for being able to do it, as a 10-12 year old I'm not sure that is something that I could have done! Not only that, I was blown away by how well they did!  They are my rockstars! A few of them shared the Genius Hour Projects and some others shared some Stop Motion movies they had created.  I will link up some of the projects/presentations in a different post.

Another proud teacher moment for me recently was when my classes were participating in the "Hour of Code".  Not only did almost 110 5th and 6th grade students spend one hour learning to code on December 12th, 2014, but our school was awarded with a $4,000 grant from @IowaStem and @Google to purchase any instructional technology we need for our students!  During that day we have some guests in our classroom from the University of Northern Iowa and Iowa Department of Education STEM offices as well as both of our school principals, our curriculum director, and our superintendent.  It was a busy and exciting day to say the least!  I would have to say that the "Hour of Code" did it's job in getting students excited about coding too.  In my 6th grade classes we have started working in www.code.org and the students are really loving it.  (That's a whole other post which will hopefully come soon!)