Be Careful What You Ask For!!!

Last week when I posted about heading “north” to do some training, I pleaded for a little bit of measurable snow! Well…I got what I asked for! Now, I know for  Minnesota, North Dakota and others that this isn’t a big deal, but to me I finally saw enough snow to measure---7 inches! Many schools in Iowa closed for the day or had a late start so we really wondered if anyone would show up! We set up the registration, put out breakfast, set up the displays and hooked up the computer and began to wait! Well….if the elevator door didn’t just open up and out walked 4 very excited teachers! We told them how surprised we were and we were convinced they would be our only teachers that day. But, while we were suppose to have 100 teachers, 40 teachers we able to brave the weather and meet up for DI for the Little Guy! I had them all pose for a picture to show off their teacher determination!
That night we headed to Nebraska for the next day! The biggest surprise…some of the teachers who couldn’t make it to Des Moines showed up in Omaha! I also met Missy and her group! She was super excited about the Nebraska Kindergarten Conference in July! Deedee Wills, Shari Slone, and I will be there for two days! I am sure Deedee and Shari are planning great things and I can’t wait to see their workshops! For my part, we are doing a full day of make and take! Yep, you heard it…make and take! We will spend half of the day learning some new literacy ideas and getting to make some of them. Then in the afternoon we will do the same for math! Who’s in?

So what do we talk about at the DI for the Little Guy Conference? Here’s a pictures of the teachers looking at some math story problems. We had been talking about using Bloom’s Taxonomy as a way to go deeper into our standards. So here’s the question…Which problem is at a higher level of Bloom’s? The one on the left? Or the one on the right?

Did you guess right? The one on the left is more challenging. Here’s my thinking:
The story problem on the left works at the Create or Synthesis level of Bloom’s. The kiddos have to create the story problem. The story problem on the right works at the Application or Apply level of Bloom’s. Here the children have to apply what the know about operations to the problem.
Here is another post related to this topic. http://kindergals.blogspot.com/2013/02/are-you-off-for-presidents-day.html
In this post I was talking about Conceptual, Pictorial and Abstract Learning? Which do you think these are?

And finally…Shari has out her new CD, Oldies but Goodies! I am going to see her next week in Chicago at the ASCD Conference and I can’t wait to get my copy!!!