Wednesday, April 29, 2015

2015 Inspired Learning Conference

Inspired Learning Conference - Teachers Leading Best Practices

Littleton Public Schools was proud, for the 7th time, to host the Inspired Learning Conference on April 25th, 2015.   Teachers from Littleton Public Schools as well as Weld District 6, Falcon District 49, Weld Re-8, Academy 20, Brighton 27J, Denver Public Schools and Douglas County Schools were leading and sharing best practices. We were excited to have 4 school board members and our new Superintendent Brian Ewert attend and address the conference participants..

pic 4.jpg

Sessions covered a range of topics:  Virtual Exit Slips, Student Conferencing, Formative Assessment, Google Classroom, Blogging, Personalized Learning, Gamification, Flipped Classroom, Student Feedback, Getting Started and more.  We are fortunate to have active professional colleagues who take a Saturday to learn and share with others.

pic5.jpg

This year we combined a traditional conference (pre-planned sessions) with an EdCamp strand that Chris Moore and Nate Ubowski guided.  See schedule of sessions here. This open discussion gave everyone a platform to share their experiences/success/struggles and was a great addition to the conference.
pic3.jpg

I would like to thank the following individuals who helped support/organize this event.
Our fabulous School Board Members, our current Superintendent Scott Murphy, and new Superintendent Brian Ewert, Mark Lindstone - CIO, Mike Porter - Director of Technology, Patty Turner - Director of Learning Services, Randy Stall - Instructional Technology Specialist

Amy McIntosh, Penny Potts and Erin Gonshor for co-leading the Inspired Writing Cohort and helping prepare these teachers to present at this conference.

Arapahoe for the use of their facilities



Thursday, April 16, 2015

Showcase: 2015 Innovation Avenue

Innovation Avenue was April 11th at the Hyatt Regency Denver Tech Center
Innovation Avenue is Littleton’s yearly student showcase that occurs before the LPS Foundation Spirit Dinner.  This year the Spirit dinner was sold out with over 550 in attendance.  This was a great crowd to showcase the work happening in Littleton Public Schools classrooms.  We once again had a group of nearly 100 students and teachers proudly showcasing how technology supports the content standards they are learning.




Kindergartners confidently walking the crowd showing off their iPad project.







High school students explaining the construction process of building a prosthetic foot for a duck and more... 











Middle school showcasing the Middle School STEM programs and more...










A wonderful night for Littleton Public Schools. We are so thankful to have students and teachers that take time on a Saturday to share with the Littleton community their expertise and great work happening in LPS classrooms.


Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Showcase: Poetry Inspired by Art

Arapahoe High School Poetry Inspired by LPS Elementary Student Artwork

April is National Poetry Month.   This topic sparked a collaborative connection between  several of our Littleton elementary schools  Highland, Centennial, Field  and Arapahoe High School.  The outcome we were hoping for would be poems generated by high school students that were inspired by elementary artwork along with a greater connection between buildings and learners of all ages.
Here is one example of over 100 to choose from
Poem by: Kirk Zieser (Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream) CLICK TO WATCH VIDEO

First our elementary art teachers shared artwork with Arapahoe High School language arts teachers by using tools like Google photo albums or Google docs. (handout)

cm90K9

The language arts teachers Anne Smith and Maura Moritz had their students choose a piece of artwork from this list that inspired them and had them write a poem about it. These students then used tools like Screencastify, WeVideo, Prezi and SnagIt to capture a video or audio of themselves reading the poem with a picture of the artwork. These poems were then shared back with the elementary art students.  Imagine the excitement of a kindergartner that saw how a "big kid" in the district was inspired by their artwork.

Here is the complete 2015 collaborative Poetry Inspired by Art project:  

Unnamed image (1).png

1ldOAG

Art Teachers:
Gayla Ruckhaus: Centennial Elementary
Scarlet Lammers: Highland Elementary  

To see other amazing collaborative projects happening at Arapahoe High School visit Anne Smith’s or Maura Moritz’s websites.  Student voice is a centerpiece for these Master Teachers. Checkout their Wikified Research Project, Skyping with Authors like Daniel Pink and Ted Talks just to name a few.