Cooking with Cronin

I really enjoyed the online conference I attended. The only draw back was that I didn’t have anyone to share my immediate feed back with or comment to as the conference was being presented. I did like the convenience of viewing at home, at a time convenient to me. I’m all about multi tasking. It was a nice to have  (dinner in the oven, laundry going) while I was online being inspired by other educators. This session Monsters Bloom in our Wiki was shared by two teachers one in New Jersey and one in Florida. The monster project was developed by the children over a six week period. It put a 21st century spin on  the traditional Bloom’s Taxonomy. I liked how the project was organized in steps that were easy for the children to follow over the course of several weeks.  First, a variety of books, spotlighting adjectives, were read to  the children.  After  reading each book a project was created, using different technology tools. The children were encouraged to create and develop their reading and writing skills while integrating technology into the classroom. Since there are no preconceived notions of what a monster was suppose to look like, each child’s creation was different based on the amount of details another writer provided. The children learned the importance of giving specific directions.  I love the creativity and each child felt success at the end of the project. This would be a fun project for my first grade students to do.