Mr. Stezzi's Classroom Blog

I can’t believe it has been so long since my last post!  Student teaching has been a wonderful experience and I have been super busy.  The past four days of school have been the beginning of my five days of “takeover week”, where I run the show completely by myself.  As today is Good Friday, school was closed, and I will have to finish my takeover week on Monday.  What a journey!  I have to thank the kids for warmly accepting me as their teacher, and Mrs. Carino for giving me the confidence to do it.

We have been doing a lot of interesting things over the past couple of months, and I have some pictures stored away to create posts.  As my semester is winding down, I will be sure to add these to the blog as I have time.

One of the classes I am taking this semester is “Teacher Research”.  I was asked to research something in the classroom, collect data, and write a research paper on the subject.  For my topic, I looked at out of classroom student use of khanacademy.org when I implemented in-class rewards (Stezzibucks).

In addition to using the wonderful data collection tool on the website, I conducted student interviews to determine motivation, interest, and use first hand.

I didn’t want to take away classtime for interviews, so announced I would be conducting interviews during recess.

 Students were very excited to participate.

The students’ responses to interview questions were incredibly valuable for my research.  Sometimes their answers aligned with my predictions, while at other times opened my mind to ideas I had not thought about.

This assignment taught be a great deal about collecting data and research in the classroom, and how I will use khan academy in my future classroom.  Thank you to the students that volunteered to be interviewed!

category: elementary school classroom, Khan Academy, Student Teaching     tags: class, classroom, data, data collection, education, elementary school, graduate school, interview, khanacademy, khanacademy.org, mathematics, research, research paper, student, students, teacher, teaching

I am proud to announce 1000 visitors on the blog!  When the first 100 visitors were announced the blog had only 3 visitors out of America.  Now the blog has seen visitors from 38 countries on 6 continents!

While I am very excited about the number of visitors, I am setting goals for the future.  My new goal for the blog is more comments!  Please feel free to comment on the blog.  Just keep in mind the blogging guidelines page on the blog!

Thanks for the support!

category: Uncategorized    

Today I am posting a video explaining two things:

1)  How to find out the new Khan Academy Challenges on the blog.

2) How to complete the new challenge: Telling Time 0.5, 1, and 2 on khanacademy.org.

Click here for Khan Academy Challenge: Telling Time Video

Hope you found this helpful!

category: elementary school classroom, Khan Academy, Math, Student Teaching     tags: classroom, education, elementary school, khanacademy, khanacademy.org, learn, learning, math, mathematics, student, students, teacher, teaching

The new Khan Academy Challenge was inspired by the Los Altos School District‘s “Ideas for a Fresh Start” blog post.  Students can earn 100 Stezzi Bucks by bringing to class a Khan Academy dedicated journal.

To earn 100 Stezzi Bucks the journal needs to include Khan Academy Goals for the year…

…and an ongoing list of Khan Academy Challenges completed and to be completed.         

Eventually students will be asked to show their work on certain exercises and video related notes.

category: elementary school classroom, Khan Academy, Math, Student Teaching     tags: class, classroom, elementary school, goals, khan, khanacademy, khanacademy.org, math, mathematics, student, students, teacher, teaching

As of Friday, February 10th, 2012, Stezzi Bucks are in circulation in Mrs. Carino’s 4th grade classroom.  Stezzi Bucks can be earned by achieving success in different “Khan Academy Challenges” inside and outside of  the classroom.  Who will be the first student to earn 100 Stezzi Bucks?

The first “Khan Academy Challenge” is simple, and will earn you 100 Stezzi Bucks.  Sign up for khanacademy.org with a google account.  Once Mr. Stezzi is listed as your “coach” on the website, 100 Stezzi Bucks will be distributed.  300 Stezzi Bucks can be redeemed for a homework pass.  For all Stezzi Buck news including Khan Academy Challenges and redeemable rewards visit the About Stezzi Bucks page of the blog.

category: elementary school classroom, Khan Academy, Math, Student Teaching     tags: class, classroom, education, elementary school, fake money, khanacademy, khanacademy.org, math, mathematics, student, students

In Science class we learned about simple machines.  Simple machines are tools that make work easier.  They have few or no moving parts and use energy to work.

The six simple machines we learned about are:

Lever

Inclined Plane

Wheel and Axle

Screw

Wedge

Pulley

Simple Machines from Tom Stezzi on Vimeo.

One student noticed that inclined planes are found next to stairs for people in wheelchairs.  Another mentioned wheel and axles are used on bicycles.

category: elementary school classroom, Science, simple machines, Student Teaching     tags: class, classroom, elementary school, science, simple machines, student, students, teacher, teaching

One of my favorite free online educational resources is khanacademy.org.  If you are curious how the website works but don’t want to create an account yet check out this video overview of the website I created.

Khan_Academy_tutorial

category: Education, elementary school classroom, Khan Academy, Math     tags: education, elementary school, khanacademy, khanacademy.org, math, mathematics, student, students, tutorial, video, video tutorial

At the end of our Math lesson we did an exercise called “Quick Images”. An arrangement of dots are presented on the Smartboard and students are asked to determine how many are there.

Sounds easy enough right? Well here’s the trick. The dots are only presented for a few brief seconds! The dots aren’t presented long enough to count so another strategy is needed.

Good thing we have been learning about multiples and arrays!

Quick Images from Tom Stezzi on Vimeo.

category: arrays, elementary school classroom, Math, multiplication, Student Teaching     tags: array, arrays, class, classroom, group, grouping, math, mathematics, quick images, student, students, teach, teacher, teaching

Last week in class we created got into pairs and created Multiple Towers. The students have been learning about the relationship between factors and multiples, and how they relate to our multiplication and division arrays.

In creating the Multiple Towers, one student of the pair measured the other with long, thin paper resembling cash register receipt tape. Then “towers” were drawn along the entire strip of paper. Students were asked to list the multiples of their base number in the towers. A base of 6 would list 6, 12, 18, 24, etc.

The students enjoyed creating the towers, working in pairs, and moving around the room. Hope you like the video!

category: arrays, elementary school classroom, Math, multiples and factors, Student Teaching     tags: class, classroom, education, elementary school, factor tower, factors, math, multiples, multiplication, student, students

Last night I learned about an amazing web tool called Voice Thread. It seems really great for educational and recreational purposes. I decided to try it out with a subtraction problem. I made the problem in Microsoft Paint, saved it, then uploaded the image to the site. Next I was able to make video, audio, or text comments to the image while doodling on it! Check it out!

I didn’t share my video for comments but it is possible to let any or select users make comments on the same image or video.  I am excited to find ways to use this is the classroom.  Discussing artwork, historical images, and videos seem like some logical choices.

category: elementary school classroom, Math, subtraction     tags: class, classroom, education, math, mathematics, student, students, subtraction, teacher, teaching, VoiceThread