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The Connected Classroom

“Information on and from Cooperating School Districts of Greater St. Louis' Learning Division”

Monthly Archives: November 2012

30/11/12 November 2012 Top Reads

Here are the top five blog posts for the past month on The Connected Classroom — have you read them?

nov2012
1)    2011 Show-Me a Movie Winners…
2)   Countdown to Show-Me a Movie 2012
3)   CHARACTERplus National Character Education Conference Call for Proposals
4)   Show-Me a Movie Contest Changes
5)   Guest Blog Post from edcampSTL Organizers: Building Learning Allies with Educators in Your Community & Beyond

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29/11/12 classroom management strategies + methods to motivate students workshop

National speaker Mark McLeod is known for his dynamic and motivating presentations and can speak to the heart of a teacher. He is at Cooperating School Districts today to talk about classroom management strategies and strategies to motivate students. Mark promises that  participants will leave with many simple, yet powerful ideas and plans to use immediately in the classroom. During today’s session at CSD, Mark will also share ways to create “win-win” situations when intervening with students who are misbehaving. As a lifelong educator, Mark’s educational expertise includes teacher, coach, assistant principal, and principal.

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28/11/12 Guest Blog Post from edcampSTL Organizers: Building Learning Allies with Educators in Your Community & Beyond

Guest blog post by Robert Dillon and Chris McGee, edcamptSTL organizers. Dillon is principal of Maplewood Richmond Heights Middle School in St. Louis County; McGee is a Curriculum Coordinator for Science and Social Studies for the Webster Groves School District,  also located in St. Louis County. Follow Bob and Chris on Twitter.

We have all experienced long-form, conference professional development, and we have probably all experienced individual professional development that had you with a book on your couch learning about something new to implement in the classroom, but it has only been a few years since the opportunity to receive just-in-time professional development has been widely available to educators. This is the type of support that you receive that is focused on your needs, in real-time that connects you with colleagues in your field.

Chris McGee

Just-in-time professional development is one of the goals of the the edcamp concept that is spreading across the globe. Edcamp allows educators to have conversations that they want, about the topics that they want, in a space that they want. Since the first edcamp just a few years ago, educators have been gathering on Saturdays with the hope of building learning allies with educators in their community and beyond. Just-in-time for Monday, teachers and leaders are receiving the resources, supports, tools, and energy that they need to make Monday better than Friday for their students.

Robert Dillon

The second edcampSTL will take place on February 9 at Hixson Middle School in Webster Groves. Even before this post, there are already 200 area educators signed up to participate in the event. There is a growing number of educators that are looking for ways to be more innovative, define their own success, and create new learning experiences for their kids. Many of them are growing and learning as connected educators on Twitter, and this group of learners and educational leaders have felt the power of Edcamp, and they are signed up and bringing colleagues to this just-in-time professional development experience.

Take the time to register today for edcampSTL. A day of handcrafted learning that is designed by the participants to meets your needs has been the elixir for so many educators around the country to propel them to a new level of passion in their classroom instruction. There is no greater time than now to receive your booster shot of just-in-time professional development courtesy of edcampSTL.

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21/11/12 Connect Your Classroom to an Author Via Videoconference

Author Amy Sklansky conducts interactive videoconferences live from Cooperating School Districts for elementary classrooms. Learn more about her sessions here:

In Cooking a Book, she will put on a chef’s hat & coat to “cook” a book. Into her large cooking pot go inspiration, rough drafts, revisions, pencil sketches, and more as she explains how an author’s idea becomes a published book. She will use her fifth book, The Duck Who Played the Kazoo, as her primary example, although she will also read from her other selections.

In Author Visit and Eggs-periments Videoconferences (pictured), Amy discusses her book Where Do Chicks Come From? This book, part of the well-respected Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out Science series, explains what happens inside an egg from fertilization through hatching. Using visuals in a highly interactive videoconference session, Amy outlines various stages of writing the book — research, revisions, artist’s sketches.

With Inside a Poet’s Mind, Amy gives students a peek inside the mind of a poet. Sharing poems from her own books, she discusses the various places a poet finds inspiration. Then she gives examples of the ways a poet may revise her work – emphasizing concepts such as word choice, line breaks, action verbs, and punctuation. She encourages students to write a poem on their own during the videoconference using the same process.

For Amy’s programs, CSD members pay $155, nonmembers pay $195 per session.To schedule a videoconference, contact Cooperating School Districts.

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19/11/12 Join Jackie and Me, and CHARACTERplus, on January 25

Presented by Metro Theater Company at the Edison Theatre (Washington University St. Louis ), Jackie and Me is the story of  a young baseball fan named Joey Stoshack.  A rare baseball card is his ticket for time travel to Branch Rickey’s office on the very day that Jackie Robinson is signed as the first black man to play for the major leagues.  The extraordinary twist:  Joey is now black, too. This play, appropriate for ages 9 and up, illuminates Jackie Robinson’s courage and dignity in the face of cruel racial prejudice. Jackie and Me will have you on the edge of your seat as we all root for the man who changed the face of the game.

While the 90-minute play runs through most of January, CSD’s CHARACTERplus invites baseball fans, theatre lovers, educators and their families to a special performance on Friday, January 25, 2013. Tickets for this special evening with CHARACTERplus are $14 each.  Jackie and Me is by Steven Dietz, and adapted from the book by Dan Gutman (Harper Collins). This would be a great lead off hit to start Black History Month studies! For questions on the January 25th performance with CHARACTERplus, please contact Jill Giordano.

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19/11/12 Pinning Social Media & Education

One of our Pinterest boards is dedicated to social media’s role in education. If you haven’t had an opportunity to take a look, we encourage you to do so. You do not have to have your own Pinterest account to access these resources! If you have some online resources you think should be added to our page, please leave the link in the comments section below.

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06/11/12 #kidvote brings election to classroom

To see some great images of students participating in mock elections this week, check out the #kidvote hashtag. One particularly active teacher is METC Spotlight Educator Krissy Venosdale of Hillsboro, Missouri. She’s documenting every step of her students’ election process- voting, tabulating, reporting, and Skyping- over several media platforms. You can find links to them all at her Twitter feed, including their mock election results. Remember, for those of you 18 and over voting in the real election, the closing time for Missouri polls is 7 p.m. central time; the Show-Me State is worth 10 electoral votes in the presidential race.

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05/11/12 Countdown to Show-Me a Movie 2012

There is just over one month to submit to the Show-Me a Movie Contest sponsored by Cooperating School Districts. Second through twelfth graders in Illinois and Missouri are invited to share their two-minute movies via SchoolTube (double check those movie links to ensure they are open to the public for our judges to view!). The deadline to submit a movie is Friday, December 14. Movies will be judged the second week of January and all participants will be notified whether they were named winners within a couple weeks of judging. Winning movies will be announced and showcased at the 30th annual Midwest Education Technology Conference.

Please visit www.csd.org for full contest rules; for questions regarding the contest, contact program manager Rebecca Morrison.

[Thank you to 2012 contest sponsors
BrainPOP, CSD, SchoolTube, and Tech4Learning]

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05/11/12 K-12 Educators Take Advantage of Professional Development in St. Louis

Today at Cooperating School Districts we had two professional development sessions take place, including a seminar (left), Transition to College: Services for Students with Disabilities in Post-Secondary Education presented by Julia Edwards, Assistant Dean of Disability Support Services from Ozarks Technical Community College. Growing enrollment of students with disabilities in post-secondary education have generated considerable interest in discussion on accessibility of higher education for students with disabilities- the session provided information for educators and service providers which can assist in a successful transition to college for students.

Also at 1460 Craig Road was a CPI- Non Violent Crisis Prevention refresher course (right). Participants in attendance completed the full 8-hour initial Nonviolent Crisis Intervention Training Program prior to attending their first refresher training with Bruce Hunter; it’s recommended that participants attend these refresher trainings on a yearly basis to renew their skills. To learn how you can participate in future workshops for either program, consult CSD’s event calendar.

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01/11/12 October 2012 Top Reads

Here are the top five blog posts for the past month on The Connected Classroom — have you read them?
(1)  2011 Show-Me a Movie Winners…
(2)  CHARACTERplus National Character Education Conference Call for Proposals
(3)  Show-Me a Movie Contest Changes
(4)  about metc
(5)  More Media Literacy Week Events Added

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