Technology Competition 2016

The Albertville Elementary School Technology Team competed at our regional competition on Friday, April 8th at the Agri-Business Center in Rainsville.  Northeast Alabama Community College did a fabulous job of sponsoring this event.  Hundreds of students from our NorthEast Alabama Region competed in various categories:  General Applications, MultiMedia, Website Design, Video Production, and Computer Programming.

Each of the AES kids presented their projects very well!  All were professional, polite, and confident in their presentations.  All of the projects are winners to me!  Everyone worked diligently with their research, organization, and creatively produced a high quality project!  YEA for AES TECH TEAM! They made this teacher very proud!

Our winners from Friday's competition were.....

1st place website design individual -Melvin Benitez

1st place website design group - Jaxon Cooper and Will Paschal

1st place video production group - Roxie Witherow and Jennifer Tzul

2nd place video production group - Gracyn Spicer, Ava Owens, Kailyn Boman

2nd place website design individual - Emma Buck

2nd place computer programming - Alexander Figueroa

3rd place multimedia group - Levi Hester, Roxie Witherow, Jennifer Tzul

All 1st place and 2nd place winners are eligible to advance to the state competition if they choose.  This will be held in Montgomery on April 30th.  Congratulations to everyone!

Japanese Shodo Class

GATE students had some special guests visit our class on Wednesday, February 17th.  Makiko Jones, Nami Hamai, Sanae Mikawa, and Kayoko Yamanouchi returned to teach us more about Japan.  The class they prepared this year was about Japanese Calligraphy, Shodo.  The ladies explained that Japanese characters came from the Chinese form of writing which has over 50,000 characters!  Hiragana and Katakana are different forms of Japanese characters.

The ladies brought textbooks used in Japan.  Some books were Western style which means the books are read left to right and top to bottom like we do where other books read from back to front and the characters are read in lines top to bottom.  In Japan, people list their last names first then their first names.  They even told us that to call for an emergency (911 here) would be 119 in Japan!

To use Shodo, there are certain tools you need:  an ink stick (made from soot and animal bones and muscles), an ink stone, special paper, a paper weight, a cloth for underneath the paper, and a brush.

All of our students were able to write their name and at least one Japanese word/character.  I even tried it myself!  We are so thankful to have Newman Technologies and TS Tech in our area which have brought so many wonderful families to Albertville!   These ladies are so gracious to volunteer their time and prepare fantastic lessons for our students.  I enjoy them as much as the students!

Please enjoy this video of 4th grade GATE students creating Shodo!

Got Milk?

AES GATE students have been busily investigating a mystery!  WHY do so many students throw away full, unopened milk cartons at lunch?  Do they know about the health benefits of milk?  Do they not like the taste?  Inquiring minds wanted to know...so we have been investigating!

AES GATE 4th graders created a "Survey Monkey" survey for any AES student to take.  The questions were generated by the students and answered by the students.  Please see our results below in a story of pictures.

Isn't it interesting that KIDS said the most probable reason other kids are wasting milk is because they are PLAYING at lunch!?

Our students calculated the cost of buying milk in plastic bottles rather than cartons.  It's only 5 cents more per bottle.  Does that REALLY add up?  We were amazed!  Our estimate for substituting plastic bottles instead of cartons for breakfast and lunch each day would result in approximately spending $93,600 more each year for Albertville City Schools' students!  WOW!  In our survey, we found that more students said it really didn't matter to them if they had a bottle or carton.  Good to know!  That shows us there is no real need to spend that extra money on bottles.

Our students DID say they would rather have a straw with their milk.  We wonder how much THAT would cost?  Would it be worth it?  Stay tuned...we will do some more calculations and update again.

Some of our students created short puppet shows that were videoed on the iPads while others used the app "Puppet Pals" to create a show sharing with viewers why they should drink milk.

3rd grade GATE students are busy creating sets, scripts, and movies to encourage other kids to consider drinking their milk instead of wasting it!

We just might have a few more surprises in store before our Milk Mystery is solved!  Check back often to see if we have learned anything new that would help kids get healthy, cause our trash to weigh less, and know that we are making a difference at AES!

Meet our WINNERS!

The Mountain Valley Arts Council has announced the winners of the Christmas Card Contest.  AES GATE 4th graders won EVERY award in the 4th grade category!  Congratulations to these students!  A reception was held Friday night in their honor.  All entries will be on display during the whole month of December. Please drop by to view the children's art.  I am so proud of each of these students.  Kids' art makes me happy!

Congratulations, Roxie, on winning 1st place!!!!

Andrew was the winner of 2nd place!  Great job!

Congratulations to Emma for the 3rd place prize!

Honorable Mention was awarded to Kiley!

Dr. Bice listens to students in Alabama

 I am fortunate every day to be around creative, smart, interesting young students in my class!  Yesterday, I was fortunate to be around creative, smart, interesting OLDER students from around the state of Alabama.  Dr. Tommy Bice is our State Superintendent of Education.  I have heard him speak on several occasions at our Alabama Association for Gifted Children Conference and I think he is an intelligent, creative, "think outside the box" educator.  He has instigated the very first Student Advisory Council for Alabama.  Sixteen students from all over our state were selected through an application process to be a part of this committee.

I was amazed as each student presented well thought-out ideas and research they had conducted in their areas of the state.  Students brought ideas and issues that affect Alabama students.  Dr. Bice listened - I mean, REALLY listened - and commented on the ideas presented by each of the delegates.  As a teacher I was intrigued by their ideas.  I am so thankful I had the opportunity to be a "fly on the wall" to watch and listen.  These young people have been given a voice and Dr. Bice is a willing listener so that decisions can be made about what is best for our students in Alabama.

Dr. Tommy Bice with Anna Clay Adams
(Of course, I am a proud mom, too!)

Members of the Inaugural Superintendent's Student Advisory Council

I see this council as an important part of our Alabama State Department of Education and I can foresee my 4th grade gifted students on this council in the future!

Principals on the Loose!

     Once upon a time there was a class of 4th grade GATE students who were diligently working on productive thinking and problem solving to figure out a great mystery happening in our school.  ACS Child Nutrition Program director, Mrs. Connie Kennamer, brought to our attention that so many milk cartons go unopened and are wasted each day.  She is worried about the students missing out on the nutrients found in milk and the waste problem.  She wondered why students are not drinking their milk.  As we were actively participating in a productive thinking activity listing all kinds of ideas (maybe kids don't like milk, they might not like drinking out of a carton, maybe they play and talk too long and might not have enough time to drink the milk) and were really "into" our discussion, a funny thing happened.

All of a sudden Principal #1 (Mrs. Sheets) came into the class and said the magic words, "I have a creative idea!  Will you all help me see if it works?"  (Of course!!)

So our deep thinking about this milk epidemic was pushed to the side to help our principal in need. 

Suddenly, Principal #2 (Mr. Walker) entered the scene.  He wanted to check out our cool gadgets.  My students were HAPPY to help!  We demonstrated our robot buddy, Ollie, first.

Mr. Walker even got in on the fun by driving Ollie around the classroom!  A few kids were ready to share Osmo and all the fun apps you can use with the Osmo:  building words, creating tangrams, navigating a pinball type app...so fun!  Mr. Walker decided to try this one, too.

We didn't leave out Mrs. Sheets and Mrs. Lee...they got to check out our cool tech stuff, as well.   These students had a great time teaching the adults how to use our technology!

Then....just as the kids were having fun....the principals left.  

The students were so engaged in  were experimenting with the technology...they were excited...they were creating new things...was this in my lesson plan? No.  Not really.  I just didn't have the heart to say, "Please put up the cool stuff and let's get back to the milk problem."  So, for today we got a little off track...but look what great things happened as a result:

 

These girls used our Little Bits engineering pieces to create a face that would light up and the tongue would wag!  (When they asked me for a paper plate...I wondered why...just check this video out!)

These kids found the Makey Makey in a box and hooked up a FORK to use as the joystick to play a game on the computer!

Learning to connect the alligator clips to the Makey Makey!

Can you see the fork?  They hooked up the Makey Makey
and tapped on the fork instead of the space bar!  Cool!

Kids were spelling and working on math (tangrams) and practicing
engineering (Newton on Osmo)  - all while having fun!

This class started out using higher level thinking to try and solve a real world problem, but ended up creating, experimenting, exploring, collaborating, cooperating, giggling, talking, sharing, encouraging, and teaching.  I think all those skills will help us as we get back to our milk problem next week. Beware...the principals are on the loose!  They might just pop in and take your class on a different path and great things may happen!  We love having principals who care, love, and enjoy being with our students who also want to learn new things FROM our students!

Mountain Valley Arts Council Christmas Card Contest

Once again GATE students have used their creativity to paint, draw, or glue holiday masterpieces.  These mini works of art have been entered into the Mountain Valley Christmas Card Contest.  All of the students created magical holiday pieces that are happy and look great!  We are crossing our fingers that AES might have some winners in the contest!  If we do, I'll be sure to post that next week!

In the meantime, please enjoy this slideshow that 4th graders helped me create about their artwork.  It's a little long (about 5 minutes), but we hope you enjoy seeing the kids and their art!

Ho! Ho!  Ho!