A Hoot and a Holler for February

Today I am linking up with The Rigorous Owl to give out a Hoot and a Holler!

I teach 2nd grade in Southern California, but to spice things up and earn some extra cash before the sunny days of summer come, I volunteered to teach a GATE enrichment class after school for 8 weeks.  Being inspired by Kayla Deltzer from Top Dog Teaching and other such tech-happy teachers, I decided to teach a coding class (which I SO do not know how to do...but thought it would be fun to learn alongside the kiddos).  

Code.org has been a FABULOUS resource for me, complete with lesson plans, video tutorials for both me and the 4th and 5th grade students, and a variety of activities to practice skills such as sequence, loops, debugging, and conditionals (all of which I just learned what they mean...hahaha).  I am simply following their "Course 2" outline which is easy to do and FREE for all!

My district just went Googley so our students are 1:1 with Chromebooks.  My 2nd graders are just getting the introduction to technology but the students in my after school GATE class are already pretty savvy.  I'm getting an opportunity to learn about coding and the Google world myself as these older kids and I correspond via the Google Classroom I set up for the course.

What I surprise it was for me to have kids I just met thanking me over and over for such a fun and interesting class. {We do a lot of unplugged activities just to learn the concepts...debugging relay race and card game conditionals...so our heads aren't just buried in our laptops!}

And for my holler,

Ashley, or Ms Idealistic online and in social media, has been such a wealth of knowledge for me about all things tech-related.  She scopes regularly and has joined forces with Sheila Jane of Sheila Jane Teaching and iTeachTvNetwork as well as TpT Life to host a weekly blab panel about teaching with technology.  I tune in whenever my little girls give me the chance to and I always learn about a new website, app, or how to do something I've been wanting to learn about.  A friendly, quick tip or tutorial always!  Thanks, Ash!  :)

If you would like to join the linky party, head over to The Rigorous Owl and get hooting!