The Teachers Should See This: Research and Expensive Food

I am eleven years old and a guest blogger here.  I often find interesting sites and sometimes want to share them.  I will occasionally post things I think teachers should see. I hope you like my post.

 Sometimes it’s hard to believe all the weird stuff people will buy. Like buying a cornflake for $1,350.00 or a Pizza for $4,200. I am going to tell you about the most expensive M&M. It was a brown M&M sold for $1,500! The reason it was expensive is because it was on the Paul Allen’s SpaceShipOne on June 21^st 2004. If you ask me, it still seems like a lot. Here is a math problem you can ask your students. How many regular M&M’s can you buy with $1,500? I know it isn’t one! If you want more details about the M&M, click here. 

I have been learning to cross-reference. It’s called triangulation and it helps make sure your findings are valid.  Here are some other sites that back these prices up: Most expensive cornflake 1, most expensive cornflake 2, most expensive pizza 1, most expensive pizza 2, most expensive M&M 1, and most expensive M&M 2. If you want to know why I picked The Most Expensive Journal to represent the most expensive M&M, pizza, and cornflake, it is because it has been posted by the New York Times, etc. You can read about it on its about page.

I am still learning how to trust a site and stay safe online. Here are some sites that can help: Using the Web, How to Do Research, Credible Sources Count! , Research It Right!, and Ivy’s Search Engine Resources for Kids.  This site by Mrs. Train has some good information I used.  At the bottom is a template that can be used to ask yourself if your sites are reliable.

Happy researching!  Don’t eat too many expensive M&M’s.

Change Begins with Questions and Discussions, Doesn't It?

Why are kids in school? How do kids learn? Why do kids learn?  What model(s) of education best fit the needs of our children?  Where is the future of education headed?  These are some of the questions that this stop-motion, claymation video called Technology and Education addresses.  It brings in ideas from Sir Ken Robinson and others.  

This video resonated with me due to discussions I watched unfold in my online course this past week.  This term, my class is composed of a great mix of preservice and practicing teachers ranging from those doing student teaching to those who have been in the field for many years.  I only bring this in because it is exciting to see this range of experience asking the same questions and supporting each other in their quest to make personal meaning. One of the topics of the week is what it means to be a “principled teacher” (Freeman and Freeman, 2011).  Part of the discussion took an interesting turn and surrounded the topic of teacher autonomy.  How much power does the teacher have in the class? How can we support and empower each other?  Where does the teacher fit into the mix of answering the questions posed in the video?  (Note another correlation of the week: scaffolding in lieu of direct instruction in this post ;-)

I really love my job thanks to the discussions of my students!