Melanie's+Journal+Entries

How exciting it was to receive my Bee-Bots! They have safely made their journey to Topeka, I freed them from their plastic wrapping and showed them to my family. I have also picked out a bag that I can safely transport them in from school to school. In showing them to my family, I discovered that their box of shells is different than what I thought they would be. Whereas I thought there was going to be 5 red shells, 5 green shells, and 5 white shells, my box has 2 red shells, 8 white shells, and 6 green shells. I wonder if I misunderstood what the contents would be or if there happens to be a discrepancy in my box????? I guess there just won't be as many ladybugs as I thought there might be.
 * 8/5/07**

I am still looking forward to sharing the Bee-Bots, but the time is not right just yet. With teachers focusing on establishing routines, I am having to hold off on introducing the Bee-Bots to the students. I am hopeful that next week I will be able to though. My plan is to offer to facilitate a Bee-Bot center during center time in the kindergarten and first grade classrooms at my four schools. I'll keep you posted on how many takers I end up with. In the mean time, I am preparing materials. I also utilized my new knowledge with wikis to create a wiki for the teachers in my district that received video projectors in their classroom this year. I think this will be a useful avenue for sharing and support.
 * 8/20/07**

I don't know whether it matters, but I changed my username from soup to ITS_MC.

I sent out an email last week regarding a Bee-Bot center in the kindergarten and first grade classes of the four schools I service. I have had eight teachers reply so far. So, at least eight classes of students will be working with the bee-bots on a weekly basis. I am really excited about that prospect.
 * 8/27/07**

I worked with my first two kindergarten classes today. The kindergartners were so excited about the bee-bots. One little boy said, "Can I have one of those Bee-Bots? I really like them." I smiled when he said that. Then he proceeded to ask me where I got them. The Bee-Bots have definitely piqued his interest.

As I work with each group, I plan to alter things just a tad. In this way, I will be able to determine more effective strategies for introducing and working with the bee-bots. For example, with the first class, I worked with four students for 30 minutes. Each week I will work with a different group in the 30 minute period. In the second class, however, I had five students in each group, with groups rotating every 15 minutes. For the initial experience with the Bee- Bots, I truly felt that the 30 minute session worked out the best.

Tomorrow, I plan to have the students work in partners. Today, they each had their own Bee-Bot.

Introducing Bee-Bots Each time I came into a class for my first Bee-Bot center, the students had already been told by the classroom teacher that I would be coming in for a Bee-Bot center. I began by showing a picture of a Bee-Bot and asked the students what it reminded them of. In every class, I got the same two responses. The students always said that it looked like a bee because it was yellow with black stripes and it looked like a robot because of the buttons on its back. I then asked them what they knew about robots. They typically responded that robots are big and walk real slow. I asked them if they thought a Bee-Bot was going to big based on its picture. I then asked if they thought a Bee-Bot could walk based on its picture. We then talked about the fact that what robots do have in common is that they are programmed to follow directions. I explained that they can only do what they have been given directions to do. I asked them how they thought we could give the Bee-Bots directions. They immediately said. "The buttons on the back"
 * 9/4/07**

At that point, I took a Bee-Bot out of my bag to show them. There were always lots of ooh and ahs.his point. I asked the students how they noticed I was holding the Bee-Bot......with two hands. I asked them why they thought it might be important to hold it with two hands. Before putting the Bee-Bot on the floor, I demonstrated rolling a car back and forth on the floor and explained that a Bee-Bot's wheels work differently than a car you can roll on the floor. A Bee-Bot can only be moved by pushing the buttons on its back, not by rolling it back and forth.

After demonstrating how to use the Bee-bots, I then got out the Bee-Bots and a length of road for the students to use. Their challenge was to program their Bee-Bot to go to the end of the road and stop before going off of the end. Once they accomplished this with one length of road, then I gave them another segment to add on. Once they were successful with two straight lengths, I then gave them a turn.

I did find that working with a partner works much better than having students work individually during their first session with the Bee-Bots.

During our second Bee-Bot session, I use the grid. I made a second one so that sets of partners could each have their own grid. In addition, I used the Beginning Language Roll & Learn pocket cubes. These are soft cubes with a bright color on each side. In addition, each side has a pocket that you can slip a card into. This time I merely used the colors of the pocket cube. A student would roll the pocket cube, whatever color they landed on would determine where they needed to progress to on the grid. (I had flash cards of various colored items underneath the grid.) The kids loved it and were very creative with their routes.

I am now known as the Bee-Bot Lady. I am only in each school one day a week. When the kindergarten and first grade students that I work with see me in their building, they immediately announce, "The Bee-Bot lady's here. Do I get to work with her today????????" Enthusiasm is indeed high with the Bee-Bots!
 * 9/16/07**

In some classes, I work with one group of students for 30 minutes. Each week I get a new group. In those classes, I still have not worked with all groups yet. In other classes, groups rotate every 15 minutes and I work with all or most of the groups in the course of one day. I personally feel that working with a group for 30 minutes works best as it provides ample time for students to explore and problem solve with the Bee-Bots.

I applied for a PTO mini-grant at one of my schools for 3 of the Bee-Bot mats (the alphabet mat, the number track, and the CVC mat). I will learn of the outcome later this month.

The Bee-Bot excitement just seems to build. I cannot tell you how many cheers I get when I walk into rooms and hugs I get with children telling me "I love Bee-Bots." It's not because of me, it's because of the Bee-Bots. I was ill one morning and unable to go to a first grade classroom. The principal shared that students were begging the teacher to see if she would go see if she could find me. So, Bee-Bots are definitely a motivator of kindergarten and first grade students.
 * 9/25/07**

I find out this evening about the PTO mini-grant. Wish me luck!

I did receive the mini grant so I will soon have the three bee-bot mats available to use. I have added two more classes for Bee-Bot centers so I am now taking Bee-Bots into nine classrooms each week. The kids just love them. Last week I used the grid with numbers and a pictorial of each number used. I then put the following descriptors on the sides of a dice: greater than, less than, equal to, =, odd, and even. Students rolled the dice, looked at what number they were on (in the case of greater than, less than, or equal to), and then programmed Bee-Bot to go to the appropriate answer.
 * 10/1/07**

Going into classrooms, I was getting a little frustrated getting set up for Bee-Bots. I had been laying cards underneath the plastic grid, but that takes more time than I felt I had for set up. I wanted to come in ready but hadn't yet come up with a way that I could do that. I didn't want to use tape as that tends to leave a residue and is sticky. I finally came up with a workable solution for me. I used poster board and cut diagonal slits in the posterboard to slip two corners of each card into and then lay the plastic grid on top. I was pleased with this solution.

I would really like to upload some photos but am not being successful. I get a message that they are bigger than 1024 x 1024.. How do I make them smaller so that they can be uploaded? I wanted to share with Carolyn a photo of the mat I plan to use with the Five Senses activity tomorrow. I also have some photos of students in action with Bee Bots that I would like to upload.
 * 10/15/07**

I just noticed that much of my journal has been deleted. Sorry about that. I'm really not sure how or when that happened. It is very disappointing though. When I looked in the history, I don't see all of the entries that I have made. In looking at the history from the main page, I deleted them when I made a new page for journals. I still am not finding any evidence of my last journal entry, however. I made it prior to uploading my photos. It expressed my apology for having a lapse in journal entries. I have had an ill mother that I have been caring for. As a result I did have a lapse in entries. (I wonder if I neglected to hit SAVE.)
 * 12/13/07**

We have received notice that our application to participate in the Tech Fair at the Capitol in February has been accepted. One of the technologies we will be sharing at that time will be Bee-Bots of course. :)