stories of learning

Friday Recap

October 15, 2010Kelly Tenkely1 Comment2234 views

Another beautiful fall Friday in Colorado, I hope you all had a wonderful week. As always, here is a recap of what I was up to when I wasn’t blogging here:

Next week I kick off my virtual classroom! I have several students enrolled and I am excited to teach them some digital storytelling. It is sure to be a learning adventure for all of us! You can learn more about my virtual classroom here.
This week an article I wrote (almost a year ago!) was published on The Apple. 10 Steps to a Better Lesson Plan.
Bookster is a storytelling app that I reviewed on my other blog iPad Curriculum. This is an awesome application for emergent and struggling readers. The app is available for free on the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch.
I have another blog, Stories of Learning, where I post excellent stories of learning happening around the world. This week I added one called Embrace the Mess from Jon Orech about how his students interacted with the book, Lord of the Flies. If you have a story of learning you would like to share or repost, I would love to have it!

Webspiration Wednesday: Stuart Brown says play is more fun

March 24, 2010March 24, 2010Kelly Tenkely4 Comments3386 views

A few weeks ago, I instituted Webspiration Wednesday at CHC. To find out what exactly Webspiration Wednesday is, check out my original post here.

Continuing the play theme from last week’s Webspiration Wednesday, this is Stuart Brown’s take on the importance of play.

TED Talk “Stuart Brown says play is more fun”

Stuart Brown suggests that play is much more than just being a fun and joyful experience, it is intricately connected with intelligence. So, why then, do we feel the need to strip it from education? If play is such an important piece of learning and intelligence, then we should be taking every opportunity to connect learning with play. Students should enter our classrooms every day, not with a sense of dread, but with a sense of adventure and excitement at what acts of play will happen there. Play doesn’t have to stop in the early childhood classroom, play can, and should, continue into adulthood. As Stuart rightly points out, play is necessary at every point in our lives. It offers opportunities to experiment, and grow, and find new solutions. Companies like Google and Pixar are keying into the necessity of play and if the work that comes out of those companies is any indication, play works.

How do you introduce opportunities for play into your classroom? If you have a great story of play, I would love to post it on my other blog, Stories of Learning.

Stories of Learning: Story #2

March 15, 2010March 15, 2010Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment1534 views

Megan Palevich (@mrspal) was nice enough to share a Story of Learning with me yesterday. Her story is entitled “To Kill a Mockingbird Meets the 21st Century”. This is learning her students will remember for years to come. I have a feeling that they will always have a special place in their hearts for the characters that they met on this social networking journey. Thank you for sharing with me Megan!

Read the story here.

Megan has an excellent blog called Middle School 101, a great addition to your RSS reader!

March 10, 2010Kelly Tenkely4 Comments3030 views

Stories of Learning is another new blog I am launching this week. I interact with teachers every day who are innovative, creative, and doing transformative things in education. We need to collect these stories in one place. Stories of Learning is (I hope) a place where we can record all of these. Write a guest post, cross post something that you have already written, I would love it all!