The Rock Story continues...

The rocks are still moving around the world.  They have gone all over the US and some even ventured out of the states a bit.  Here is a recent picture sent to me by our Assistant Principal Bruce Jean and several of our staff members.  This little rock can't wait to be found!  

Alison in Michigan found a rock.  She continued the story and it has been posted along with other stories on the Rock Thought website.  Be sure to keep looking to see if your rock has been found!

Rock Thoughts in the classroom

My mini and his 5th grade buddy

Here are a few more ideas of how to do RockThoughts in your classroom.  My son was lucky enough to be in Mrs. Glew's class this last year.  Mrs. Glew was a co worker, a friend, and my oldest kindergarten teacher.  Because of all of this... I love this woman!  She and many other teachers at Rogers Elementary were able to fit in RockThoughts right before the end of the school year.  Please see the link to her post about it.  I would highly recommend following Mrs. Glew's blog, she is really an amazing person!

Artist Rock Thoughts

Ch. Stückelberger has left a new comment on your post "Step 7- Hiding the rocks.": 

I like that Warhol rock. I'd like to see more of them. (I've got a rock project going with a class as well.) 


You ask and I will answer!

With my art class I had the kids do a little twist on the Monster rocks for their Rock Thoughts.  Here we have a series of rocks I called 'Artist Rocks'.  I asked the kids to decorate a rock as an artist, or in an artist style.  As you can see we have great artist such as...

Keith Haring...

Pablo Picasso... 

Andy Warhol...

Georgia O'Keefe...

I asked the students to go through the same process as the rest of the school.  The advantage was they know the process of rock thoughts.  I found doing this a second time with them was really beneficial.  I also gave more specifics on the story.  I asked them to include 5 facts about their artist or style.  Most students understood my request.  Some didn't but still had a wonderful story.  If you want to see the whole series of these rocks, click here for my flickr site.

When these rocks were done I sent them all over the world with my staff.  Most teachers do a big trip in the summer and I sent a rock with many of them.  Keep your eye out for a rock in your neck of the woods.

Check out the stories as well (click here for Rock Thoughts).  I was REALLY impressed with these.   Here is just one example of a story of the rock above by Andrew, grade 8.  It was copied from the RockThoughts website...

It was a bright sunny day, but Pablo Pic-ROCK-so was inside, painting, as it is his favorite thing to do. Pablo had created many things, which he hung up on his wall, and he loved to paint in an angular fashion. Many people teased Pablo, his paintings were not like every other rock’s, they were different. Pablo didn’t mind the teasing though, as long as he could still paint. He rolled over by the window to see out side, right in between two of him paintings, the first was called Guernica and the second was named Les Demoiselles D’ Avigirnon.

Pablo really liked those paintings he thought he did really well on them but some of the other rocks didn’t like them because those paintings, like Pablo were different. He turned to look at two of his other paintings that he had worked really had on. One, named Gertrude Stein, was hung over his Rock-couch. The other, the one he called The Two Saltimbangques, was hung on his Rock-Fridge, where he kept his Rock-Food. All of the sudden, Pablo heard a knock on the door. He was pretty surprised because for one, none of the other rocks ever wanted to play with Pablo and two, rocks don’t have arms to knock with. He slowly rolled over to answer the door to meet a slim, round, smooth, Rock-Girl.

“I couldn’t help but notice that when I was looking through you window I saw some magnificent paintings, did you paint them yourself?” asked the odd Rock-girl. “Well actually I did, but no one else seems to appreciate them like you…” replied Pablo with a blush. “Well I think they are great and I also think we should hang out some time, would you like to do something on Friday?” said Rock-girl. “That would be great!” exclaimed Pablo, who was excited to have finally met a new friend.

Step 7- Hiding the rocks.

RockThoughts suggest that you hide the rocks someplace in public for other to find and add to the story.  After speaking with the Rock Thought Staff, I decided to start these rocks out a bit differently.

I emailed the staff at the three elementary schools that feed into our middle school.  I had staff from each school participate and they all worked on the project differently.  I provided a worksheet for the elementary student to help them participate.  This also helped teachers know when they needed the lab for looking up the rocks and typing the stories.  Click here to see the worksheet.


Otsego Elementary:

I asked student to meet me at the school at 4:30.  We had plans to hide the rocks in the front garden of the school.  I thought this would be safe because there was not lawn mowers to catch a rock here.  Mrs. Matchinsky was kind enough to give this project a try.  After finding the rocks, she asked her students to go home and write the stories with their parents.  I loved this idea.  Anything to facilitate parent interaction!



Hassan Elementary:

You can't really tell by this picture, but it was going to rain soon and a hard rain at that... These kiddo's helped me hide the rocks in the media center of the school.  This was really nice for the teachers to find the rock amongst the books of the library.  Mrs. Wallin and Ms. Silva of Hassan Elementary both participated.  Their classes found the rocks and re-hid the rocks for the other group. When finished, the rocks were taken and placed all over the community by the last class who worked on them.

And my dear Rogers Elementary:

Many of you might remember that RES was my home for the past seven years so the teachers there are friends.  All the 4th and 5th grade participated, several of the kindergarten classes helped, and Mrs. Wilhem (the new art teacher) all worked on rocks.  What a great treat to do a project with these ladies again.  The rocks were found and hid several times thought out the last couple of weeks of school.  They reported that the kids started steeling the rocks at night when they would come to the school for sports.  I never advocate steeling but it made me smile a bit because the rocks were just that popular.  Again, the last classes to write the stories got to take the rocks home and hide them someplace in the community.

Finally, I did a special group of rocks with my art class.  These rocks will be heading out with my coworkers from RMS.  I am asking teachers who are traveling this summer to take a rock and hopefully get a picture of the rock where they hide it, and send the pictures back our way.  I know we have teachers going to New York, Washington, China, and more...

Who knows, maybe one of you will find a RMS rock:)

Step 6- Writing the story

Now to have the kids write the story.  As of step 2, there has already been assigned jobs for the students.  This is where the writers SHINE!  I provided this worksheet not really knowing how it would help.  I just thought for some kids it would have them think of the direction of their story.  Some kids used it and were able to really run with their story.  Some stories were very forced... I guess that's going to happen with you are working with such a vass group of people.  I think if I were to do this again, I would have an english teacher do a bit of a story lesson for the kids on the morning show. I would have liked to see deeper thought of the rocks stories over all.  If you would like to look at this worksheet, click here...

Once stories have been created they are submitted on the RockThought websites.  They have a google doc set up at this time.  It works slick.  All submissions are viewed before posting so there is a bit of a delay.  

Step 5- Taking Pictures

When I printed off the labels for the URL and Rock Code for the bottom of the rocks, I also printed off labels for pictures.  Here you see that I have taped a white paper on the wall and I have a curve to the sheet anchored onto a table.  I place the rock on the paper and have a back drop if I need to take a picture strait on or from the top.  I place the code on the paper or bend it a bit to make it stand.  The sheet with the labels on it helps me to know what rocks I'm missing.  I would imagine that you could use a white board, name tents, or have the kids make a sign as well as their rock.  This was just the way I did it.

Once you have all the pictures, you need to send them to the RockThought staff.  Emailing is fine but with a mass group of images like this project was, a Flickr or Picassa folder was helpful.  Click here to see mine.

Step 4- Collecting the rocks

Rocks are out... Now how to get them back.  I had a counter top cleared off with numbers ranging from 1 to 150 (the amount of rocks that I was collecting).  After repeating my due date to staff several time, and placing it on the announcements, I received about 1/3 of the rocks on the first day.  I expected this.  When doing a large activity like this I always allow 'late' time.  The next day I had a few more.  I put out my hard due date to staff and received MOST of them by my 'true' anticipated time.  As the rocks were trickling in, it was nice to have a designated space for the rocks to go.  I would highly recommend coming up with a plan for collecting the rocks when doing this project with a large group.  

Step 3- Rock Thoughts- Explanation

I had my advisory students help me out with a quick little video to show on our morning show.  This gave full instructions of what the kids were to do the first couple of week.  I found this to be a GREAT tool to explain things to a mass audience.



My original post said the following and this video was also distributed to my staff incase they wanted/needed to watch it again.


RMS is involved with a GREAT project called Rock Thoughts.  There will be much to share with you in the near future.  This post is for the 51 other advisory classes to watch and understand what this project is all about.

Step 2: Rock Thoughts- Groups

Once the rocks are in the homeroom, it was time for the students to start working in teams.  Each Homeroom got three rocks, each rock had a team of Artist, Writers and Directors.  I provided a worksheet to help explain the different roles to the teachers.  (Click here to see the whole worksheet)

I also provided a second worksheet to help homerooms sign their classes up into groups.  (click here to see that)

The groups worked well.  The students had a couple of weeks to complete their rocks in these groups.

Step 1: Rock Thoughts- Preparation and Distributing the Rocks

What is Rock thoughts?  How did I get involved?  Please see my previous post...

Step 1:  First thing I needed for the rock project was ROCKS!  I contacted our local gavel pit.  Hassan Sand and Gravel was happy to donate plenty of rocks for our project.

I thought the rocks would be best if they had a base color.  I used house paint to paint the rocks.  It worked well.

I used a Google Doc Spreadsheet to lay out all make a mail merge for mailing labels.  This worked slick!  I made two labels at this time, one for on the bottom of the rocks and one for the pictures of the rocks later.

Then I grouped the rocks into three.  Each homeroom (51 of them) got a little care package of rocks.  The rocks were 3 consecutive numbers.  I also marked what homeroom received what rocks.  This was helpful during turn in time.

That about wraps up the preparation and  distributing of the rocks.  More to follow.

Thoughts on Rocks...

I have just complete (and I say that loosely) an amazing project.  About six months ago I was on Art2.0 Ning and saw an invite to participate in a project called, Rock Thoughts.  After visiting the RockThoughts site, I knew this was perfect for me and my school.

In the next couple of posts I want to bring you through the process of this project.  I'm not saying this is the best way, or only way... just a way:)

Here was my goal, I wanted to get each homeroom to participate.  We have about 51 homerooms with roughly 27 student each.  I then wanted to get the three elementary schools that feed into our middle school involved.  Finally, I wanted to get the community in the action too.  It was a big job but Karla and the Rock Thought staff were very willing to help me through every step of the way.  Steps to follow...