On days when seatwork or lecture might get intense, taking a  Go Noodle break helps students stay fresh and actually accomplish more. 

Go Noodle is a site I learned about from the early elementary teachers in my #edufam online PLC.  (Check out this link for more of what elementary teachers say about Go Noodle, but don't be put off by the younger kids, it works for teenagers too!)

Go Noodle has categories so you can choose calming, stretching, educational, or other kinds of movement.

They even have an INDOOR RECESS channel where I found this gem! 

 I wasn't sure it would be to juvenile, but I tested it out last year in the media center and the kids were into it! I think it's great for middle schoolers, too. They think the videos are hilarious and you can gamify it by creating a class and earning points for each dance you do.  The all time best earworm is probably PopSiKo

And really, how can you call yourself a true middle school teacher if you aren't letting your students get up and dance to KidzBop?!   Go Noodle is here with KIdzBop Dances to rectify that problem, stat.

Are you still not convinced? Need help getting started? I will show you my MakerSpace Go Noodle Channel, I will come to your classroom to run a brain break with your class, or you can follow this script:

1. Talk with your students about the research between movement and learning
2. Share some behavior ground rules. (Mine might be stay within a certain square of your desk, don't hit others, no yelling, when song is over, high five a frind and be back sitting in your assigned  seat at count of five)
3. Warn them that Go Noodle is ridiculous and silly and that is part of why it works (In addition to movement, brains also respond to laughter and novelty. It opens your mind so you can learn more easily)
4. If you want to give them a choice, tell them you'll try three songs at three different times today or over the course of two days and if they don't like it by third song, you will regroup.
5. Play PopSeeKo   (or let the class choose from any go noodle channel)
6. That's it. If they do say they hate it you can always use Just Dance videos to songs the class likes- they are posted on YouTube.

If dancing is just too out there for you, why not start with SECRET HANDSHAKES? If that is too ridiculous for you, you can have the students make up their own. 

If you definintely want to avoid dance, try a stretching video like:

• Be Kind To Yourself 
• Stay Focused Stretch

If you are all-in and have no limit, let them freestyle with these crowd pleasing videos:

• Happy
• Let It Go
• Everything is Awesome

Go Noodle is just one of the many ways to find a quick way to stretch, move, circulate, regroup, and reenergize.

Related Posts:
VocabBall http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/lesson-ideas/incorporating-vocabulary _
Dance Your Lessons http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/piedmont-pd/1
Many More Active Learning Strategies and Active Test Prep Strategies ​http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/lesson-ideas/category/active-learning_

http://msgurthie.cmswiki.wikispaces.net/Your+Digital+Footprint

Online your  digital footprint is like a footprint in cement, not like water or sand!

People WILL stalk your digital footprint and what you do never goes away. 
future schools
future employers
future sports teams
parents of potential bofirends and girlfriends

avoid negative and accentuate the positive

better to not make the mess than to try to have to clean it up.-nothing is ever truly deleted (wayback machine, cache, screenshots, stolen passwords etc)

Make sure that you are following digital citizenship guidelines so you can show off your best work as part of your digital footprint without a billl or a letter from a lawyer. Google image search, royalty free music etc.
More in the Olympic section below

Poet, performer, professor, and powerhouse Maya Angelou died today in Wake Forest NC at age 86.

If you would like to honor her today, you can read a poem of hers or ask students to do so. 

Here is one that can also be used as a point of discussion on her passing, or the passing of any great person in students' family or society at large:

Discussion questions and activities follow. If you wish, select a few that you'd really like  to try. I am a big believer in not asking a question unless you are TRULY curious what the answer will be.

 If you don't want to discuss the poem, you can start by asking students if they agree with the lead quotation above.  

When Great Trees Fall
Maya Angelou
 
When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.

When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.

Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance,
fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance
of dark, cold
caves.

And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly.  Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed.  They existed.
We can be.  Be and be
better.  For they existed.

Which one of these images is most powerful or disturbing to you? Why?

• rocks on distant hills shuddering
  
• lions hunkering down in tall grasses,
  
• elephants lumbering after safety.
  

The line "small things recoil into silence their senses eroded beyond fear" reminds me of a traditional proverb from Africa: "When two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers" (maybe it is just the previous image of lions hunkering down in the tall grasses.) In honor of Ms. Angelou's talents, illustrate* a quote or proverb: *Your illustrativeinterpretation could be visual art, dance, song, dramatic performance or other.
You can choose one of these two above Maya Angelou quotations or find another African proverb or or Maya Angelou quotation that speaks to you. (use BYOT to search!) 

Angelou writes "When great souls die, the air around us becomes light, rare, sterile."
 What do you think about her choice of words here- light, rare, sterile? Compare it to her description of caves later. What is she asking us to feel, see or think and why?

Is your reality bound to any great soul on this earth? If so tell us about how, for those who don't understand that line.

Why is this poem titled "When Great Trees Fall in Forests? " What could another title for the poem be? 

Have you experienced this? :
"And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly.

CULMINATING CHALLENGE:

"We can be.  Be and be
better.  For they existed."
As a tribute to Ms. Angelou, try today to "be and be better" because of one thing you learned from this poem or discussion or example of her life.

In my crystal ball I see the future of education will be makerspaces. Maybe that prediction my own wishful thinking, but I sure hope it's true. A move from content-driven fact regurgitation to studio, and lab-driven workshops can only be a good thing for our students' futures.  At the rate of change in todays world, a skills-based, passion-driven, and failure-tolerant exploratory environment is the way to go!

Makerspace FAQ

What is a makerspace?
Jake Standish defines a makerspace as any place or process that provides students the opportunity for creative expression and the pride of feeling "I made something cool!" I see it as a way in school to experience what visionary STEAM educator Seymour Pappert terms "hard fun." Makerspaces are a place to both instill and nurture students' interests organically. If you are ONLY looking for quickest test score increases, maker ed will not be for you (and I feel sad for your students.) However, done well the maker method results are INCOMPARABLY more long lasting and far reaching than traditional instruction.

How did the maker movement in education start?
Makerspaces in school grew out of the hackerspace movement as a way of integrating STEM or STEAM back into schools and a response to the oversanitization of education. If you are curious how they look outside of a school stetting, there is a hackerspace near our school.  google "Charlotte Hackerspace" to find where and maybe do a field trip. There are also maker faires in many areas.

Do I need to be an engineer, a tech expert or a scientist to run a makerspace with my students?
Not at all. Students can teach each other, learn from videos or instructions, or get help from adult or high school volunteers. Just provide the supplies and let students decide what to do with them.

Makerspaces do not have to include electronics but there are many creative electronic kits out there that are affordable even for a beginning school. Check the resources question below for a few.

" if you know the right end of a soldering iron , adafruot will get you the rest of the way." - Jake Standish of CMS

I can't abide chaos, should I even try this?
Yes, frustration and false starts will be common, valuable, and instructive, but you can minimize the chaos with rubrics and directed projects and minimize the mess with 3D printed and computer based projects. Ideas are on the Pirate STEAMShip page. I also recommend partnering with a chaos-tolerant co-teacher! Put your classes together!

How can I get started?
Rather than worry about who would use it or how, we got started by gathering anything that could be used into one spot and cataloging it:

• gathered my children's old science toys, manipulatives, recycled items, crafts and building materials then wrote possible multidisciplinary lesson ideas to go along with them
• hung a green screenI created a website that listed the supplies.
• rescued a sewing machine from our now-defunct home-ec cabinet.
• got a  MakerBot Replicator 2 as soon as the CEO announced a grant
• loaded up the ipads with free STEM and STEAM apps including video and music-making apps.

When Ms. Newburger came back as our media specialist, she created a permanent makerspace home and improved the vision and -while waiting for the funding for her larger vision, immediately re-created the media center. She

• upcycled two whiteboards and mounted them one on top of the other to create a giant collaborative design area.
• put a table in the lobby for crafting supplies and to use as a workbench.
• moved the green screen for better lighting and to expand usable space
  

Where can my students and I find ideas?

• If you want some cool project ideas start at: Make.com Projects http://makezine.com/projects/
• If you want to develop 21st century maker friendly skills try DIY.org/skills - great way to do independent learning and badging

What equipment?

• K'Nex,Snap circuits, Legos, Lego Mindstorms
• apps green screen whiteboards
• Makey makey, rasperry pi and other ardruino based products like  "Drawduino"_Line circuit sound Adafruit
• • middle school sample website of supplies -PirateSTEAMship (sorry it's not fancy)
  Also recommended:
  
  
  • 700 science experiments for everyone -  book on amazon 
  • Tinnovations - have instructions and YouTube videos
  
  What can we use the makerspace to do?
  
  
  • see photos below and at the blog Celebrating Piedmont
    
  • example of middle school PBL maker driven fair http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/6/post/2014/04/love-of-learning-at-piedmont.html  and Resources to start your own http://piratesteamship.cmswiki.wikispaces.net/Operation+STEAMship+Pilot
  
  Can you guarantee me higher test scores if I try this?
  No.
  
  Then why should I bother?
  
  
  • because right now some of your students hate coming to school
  • because some of your students will drop out
  • because some of your students making "A's" now are ill-prepared for life
  • because some of your students don't know how to fail
  • because some of your students are gifted and you have yet to recognize that
  • because some of your students have never felt the pride of creation
  • because if you want "grit" (shudder) this uncovers grit in children heretofore thought of as lazy in school. (that's a blog post for another day)
  
  This kind of learning may not be  the most efficient for producing a clear linear and incremental gain by the end of one school year on paper, but it provides lasting learning that is transferrable, motivating, respectful of multiple intelligences and values to society and is not artificially separate the way traditional education has been. I'll let astronaut Mae Jemison make the case better than I ever could:
  
  

PBL - project based learning, also called Passion based learning can be student-driven and creation driven. 

This kind of PBL - known as Love of learning, 20% time and Genius hour is creating some great results is based on the idea of flipping blooms (see image) while also giving students a voice in what is created.

It rewards intelligences often ignored in traditonal education and is more motivating that a teacher-driven class. It can also be the bait that drives students to grow their skills as they see the need.

At Piedmont we are one of the first CMS schools to create a makerspace. 

Our MakerSpace supplies are the perfect compliment to make-ify your lessons and/or nurture the variety of genius in your classroom!  In addition to our extensive collection of multiple intelligences apps, Green Screen, Collaboration Board area, MakerSpace workbench and Makerbot Replicator 2 3Dprinter housed in the media center, we have mobile carts of supplies available for checkout to your room.

Check this link for the full list of offerings http://piratesteamship.cmswiki.wikispaces.net/STEAMshipCarts

See Lisa Gurthie or Lisa Newburger for ideas of how to use these in projects or curriculum.

The full information about STEAM integration at Piedmont via the PirateSTEAMship is here
http://piratesteamship.cmswiki.wikispaces.net

Let your student decide:

The Piedmont Tau-rates doesn't have the same ring to it as Piedmont Pi-rates, and I don't know if we do it on June 2 or February 6 but :

here's Vi Hart's explanation why Pi is wrong and Here's Numberphile's Pi/Tau Smackdown
 in case you want to share with students and get their opinion

If they side with team Tau, Click the Tau image to go to the Tau Day website 

Piedmont is featuring two all-school Olympics and Digital Learning Day events this February:

Digi Dine Olympics
 Schoolwide Digital Learning Day Activity

During Feb 5 's Digi Dine BYOT lunch (and recess), students will have QR coded Olympics themed questions on their tables, around the cafeteria and field.

Students who wish to participate will to use their devices to scan and research the questions and then submit an answer via  Google form - All Entries Must use their CMS (chomebook) login to drive (Pete Pirate's  would be [email protected] (x=last 4 digits of student ID #)

Digi Dine Olympics winners will be chosen from the Google form submissions and will receive a Gold Medal (chocolate gold-foil covered) and names on our Olympics Hall(s) of Fame Display near Student Services.


Olympics Halls of Fame (literally, get it?!)

Check Ms Stone's big Olympics map and rings in the main hallway outside the auditorium for more info. QR codes will be on display in Piedmont's hallways throughout the Olympics. Don't just walk through the halls, this month these halls are Olympic Halls of Fame- so bring your BYOT device and scan for links to to  amazing olympic feats !


Don't forget that teachers and students can check out Olympic lessons at NBClearn from school.