Paperless Assessments

So, as I mentioned before, I got to play quite a bit with Google Chrome this school year. That came in handy when a group of us went to the CUE Conference in Palm Springs in March and learned that "Chrome is the New Black." I am very far from being an expert, but it was nice to see the incredible places that educators have already gone using this system!

The first place my mind went involved getting rid of some of the paper in my room. I am the queen of piles. As the year goes on and there is more to do, the piles get bigger and bigger. Once those little chromebooks arrived, I immediately knew what I wanted to start with.

Some of you may have the same thoughts: this whole common core thing is killing my students with writing and explaining! We transitioned this year into comprehension questions for each Houghton Mifflin story that involve collaboration and communication. They encourage the students to think more critically and, in some cases, creatively (see what I did there??). The problem we found with these questions was that they took the students forever and a day to write down the gist of what they discussed with their table groups. Enter: Google Forms.

I had dabbled in the basics of Google Forms and sort of knew what to do in terms of setting one up. So, I took the comprehension questions for that week and began to enter them into the Forms template (which provides options for longer/shorter responses, multiple choice, etc...)

*Note, make sure to include a name section when you create a form so that it will tell you who owns each response. Google creates a spreadsheet of the answers.

The confusing part became sharing the completed piece with my class. At first, I shared the form with all of them but immediately realized my mistake: they were all working in the same document. After some trial and error, I settled on creating a Google Doc that contained the links to each set of comprehension questions. I shared that doc with my class and they were able to access the links from there. 

I feel that there is a lot more that I can do to utilize this technology, but for now (and for computers shared with about 8 other classrooms) I am living in a very basic world in order to downsize my counter piles. Plus side: handwriting is much easier to read when it is typed into a spreadsheet!

It Only Took Till July...

Hello, my friends!
I welcomed myself back what feels like ages ago, but here I finally am!
The moment school got out, I jetted off to vacation and left behind all of my classroom thoughts! While all sorts of things happened over the course of vacation and the time following, I have finally found my brain again. I know you're all very excited!

I have not yet begun all of the crafting that summer will entail. It is coming, but for the moment I am fairly preoccupied with the fluffy rug that came home with me a few weeks ago:

I don't quite trust Miss Puppy-Head enough for me to bust out the paint or the glue gun yet. For now, I thought I would chat to you about my technology experience this year. It was sort of a doozy for me.

Back in August, I was asked to be a technology representative for our school site. This job entailed attending meetings and discussing district tech needs and the future of this crazy world we've created. Alongside of that job, I became the go-to on our school site for basic troubleshooting needs. Ironically, much of the tech that I was being asked to help with was not even installed in my classroom! But everything changed during the winter with the arrival of....a whole cart of ChromeBooks!

I'm sure most of you are familiar with the teeny tiny lappy computer that runs primarily as an internet delivery system. 

The device runs Google Chrome and is incredibly simple to use...and I suddenly had 36 of them in my classroom! 

Chromebooks offer the option for users to log in as a "guest," (which we utilized in our upper grades more when time was of the essence) but the students were all given individualized Google accounts that had the social components deactivated. This meant that we could create digital portfolios using Google Drive! We could build presentations using Google Sheets! I could assess my class using Google Forms! We could make spreadsheets about the school's track team using Google Spreadsheets!...oh, that was just me.

Suddenly, amazing doors were open to me! I had always been a Safari user, so these devices gave me the motivation to begin playing with the Chrome Browser and research ways to use it in my class. I can't tell you how exciting it was to have the opportunity to play with these things for a couple of months before having to share!

The thing that was the easiest to play with and is so nice to incorporate even without personal computers in your classroom was KidBlog. This website gives classrooms the opportunity to build a blogging community and teach students internet rules and etiquette. A usual morning in my room would include the assigning of a high-interest informational article (lengths varied) and giving a free response question on the blog. The students were always given the opportunity to positively comment on each others' writing; however, in the early stages of third graders having computers...typing skills are minimal and responses generally took a very long time.

I would encourage you to try out the site. It was very easy to set up and it offers a certain level of security. Students can only enter your blog with a specific password to your specific blog URL. That limits their ability to have things widely read across the wide, dark interwebz. 

Cosmetically, KidBlog has some work to be done, but the fidelity of the idea is there. 

Too Many Devices

I have decided that I don't enjoy blogging on the iPad.

Coming soon: An iPad learning experience write up!

For now, I am packing to head off to Comic-Con San Diego. I know, I know...I've kept the fact that I am a huge nerd super under wraps....I don't have an ewok in my classroom...
This is my first experience with the whole Comic-Con world. My friends have gone for years and have watched it get bigger and bigger. Last year when they were there waiting in line for the Firefly panel  enjoying themselves, I realized how super jealous I was. So now, I have all of my best digs laid out and ready to go:

But the one thing that surprised me is that there are legitimate panels for educators at this massive event. Things like:

and...

and finally...

Basically, I've decided that I deserve professional development units for this. 

Not only is the sci-fi /fantasy nerd in me incredibly excited for this event; but also, the educational geek is totally stoked to hang with some of these educators that probably have enjoyed a sci-fi day or two in their classrooms over the years. 

Spirit day in my room at the end of the year....Love, LOVE that this amazing kiddo dressed up as the 11th Doctor!

Having all of those panels in mind, I will try and keep my blog updated through the duration of this trip. It may be iPad blogging, which either I haven't figured out (and hate because of that) or is really lame (and I hate it because of that). 

For now, back to packing because this is happening:

and I need to stop blogging and playing Candy Crush at the same time.

Do you do any sorts of exciting professional development over the summer?

Twitter in the Classroom

There are about 5,000,000 things I should be doing right now...namely, actually getting my act together to leave the house...not happening anytime soon...because one of the things on the "should be doing" list is "blog." It just doesn't feature prominently at the top of the list!

At this point in the summer, a lot of people in the bloggy world seem to have access to their classrooms. If you remember from last summer, I have to turn in my keys before finally going on holiday...and we can't pick them up for another month. So while so many of you wonderful teachers out there are busily working on your rooms steadily, here I sit thinking about my room...

Thought is a powerful thing; however, it doesn't seem to get the job done. I mentioned before that we had a couple of days after the official end of the school year in which we had to go in and do some work. During that time, I moved my classroom and did very little more. Which means that I have not yet gotten to set up any of the features that I loved about my room last year. Namely, I've been thinking about my Twitter Wall.

This wall was something that featured fairly prominently in my language arts program this year. Each child was given a space and a "username" to go with it. I had printed out those pieces, laminated them, and then used my leveling app to make sure that they were straight...no OCD here.

My mistake at that time was that I had run out of card stock and just printed on regular paper. Because of that, I wound up sending each kiddo home with their final tweet of the year and plan to re-print on card stock this go around. 

At the beginning of each story, I would ask the students to embody one of the characters and give them a specific topic to tweet about. For example, in the story "Raising Dragons," I told the class that they had just walked into a cave and found a dragon egg (just like the main character)...tweet your reaction. 

They would head to the back of the room with a dry-erase marker, and write out their tweets underneath their own username. My students loved it! Especially when they could write messages to their parents for Back-To-School-Night and Open House. 

I also linked up an actual Twitter account for my classroom that I used to tweet out homework reminders, compliments for the day, spirit day ideas, etc...This was something that I had sort of idealized in my head this year. I love the idea still, but I let it fall flat when other things were more important. Also, I didn't encourage parents to follow as much as I should have.

It is my intent this coming year to make a point of asking families to set up an account, even if they are only following me. This will be a quick, easy way to keep the families appraised of what's going on. 

Things to note:

-Tweeting will never take the place of a phone call or email to parents if there is something important going on. Even though we live in a very tech-available world, not every student or family has access to the internet and tweets shouldn't be used to pass along super-important information.

-Much like on my blog, I avoid using student names or faces. Twitter is still the wide-open-interwebz, and what you put there is around forever. Even if your students' family signed off on the photo-release for your school, it is probably wise to keep their faces and names private.

And finally, I did make an update this year and created a new account. Last year's account was my school/room number....but as I've mentioned several times...I moved rooms! So now I have a slightly more generic one....

Okie doke. Here's to text-heavy blogging with coffee in hand. Off to work on some of the things on my list!

Random Summer Mash-Up

My dear friend, Becky, over at Musings From the Foreign Teacher has been putting me to shame....
Don't worry, I'm busily planning my trip to visit her as we speak...rather than blogging...or really doing much of anything.

School got out ages ago, and I have spent a lot of time looking at the file box that is lingering in the back of my car waiting to be sorted into a lovely orange binder that will spend lots of bonding time with the other binders I made last summer. However, the amount of work associated with that project has left me with little motivation to do it, and lots of motivation to plan for Boyfriend's and my trip to London.

Similarly, I have been trying to get back on the running bandwagon ever since I got back from visiting a friend in Scotland over spring break. So my Doctor Who socks and I have been spending a lot of miles together on the treadmill.

I've also avoided work by doing mindless work! 

This year, our district started the process of adding in days that had been previously removed due to budget issues. For the moment, this consisted of us teachers coming in and putting in two full days after the kiddos had left the building. When all was said and done, I really enjoyed this process. In the past, we have had a deadline of 4pm on the last day of school to be over and done and closed up for the summer. With all of that extra time this year, I could have procrastinated a lot more! 

But instead of procrastinating, I had the joy of moving my classroom across the hallway and into a much more spacious/storage-ready center room. Having lived as a crazy minimalist (or as much as a teacher can) for the last two years, I found that I have more empty cabinets in this new room than I do filled ones!

Much to my OCD's dismay, I wasn't able to completely settle in or get totally unpacked. There wasn't much of a point. All of the desk-y things needed to be stowed away no matter what, so a lot of my "unpacking" consisted of shoving things into a file cabinet and locking it.

This is why there are no pictures yet.

Instead, I slowly set to work trying to figure out what I wanted to do in order to semi-cover the windows that connected me to the classrooms of six other teachers. Originally, I had wanted to put cute contact paper up on said windows to create bulletin board spaces that separated my room from the next (there are two windows and a door for each of the six rooms)...however "cute" and "contact paper" didn't wind up working together in the merry land of the interwebz, so I started over.

It came to me at a one year old's birthday party....bunting flags. 

I love them. They're adorable. They can suit any space. They're easy!

I like it! So, since I'm being super frugal and going to Michael's just about every week; I popped over there and grabbed some books filled with cute scrapbook paper.

If this blog has done anything, it has brought to light my tendency to go overboard...having purchased my scrapbook paper, I fell in love with two different sets of color combos. (i.e. two different forms of orange/pink/teal...but mostly orange...) Being me, I set up to cut out enough flags to re-do my windows a few times this year.

Start by making a triangle template out of cardboard.

The best decision I made for efficiency purposes was to fold the 12"x12" scrapbook page in half and therefore got 6 total triangles (based on the size of my template) out of each page.

I pulled out my trusty cutting board, traced a billion triangles, and used my slide cutter to cut them all out.

Now I have an over-achiever amount of triangles.

This was the time that I high-tailed it over to Lakeshore to laminate all of the crazy triangles...because, go big or go home. Plus, the ladies at Lakeshore always like the ridiculous projects that you laminate at their big laminator, right?

So this is the projected final product. I am currently in debate over whether I want to use the orange yarn that I have here (out of cheapness) or to get plain white ribbon...

Currently though, I have been getting majorly distracted by lame things like Candy Crush Saga and Facebook and still have a bunch of triangles to cut out of the big lamination sheets. Doesn't help that blogs like Skinny Runner keep pulling me away from actual teaching productivity with their shiny awesomeness.

I am looking to figure out how to add PDFs of some of the adorable chevron printed Daily 5 pages I've been making on here...while it feels like I am being counterproductive, I am actually doing a good amount of reading/making things dealing with that system. I'll keep doing my homework and update as I go!

And also, mostly because I need to catch up to Becky, I will work to blog tomorrow and answer all of the things she assigned to me with the Leibster Award.

More on that tomorrow!

For now, here's a cute puppy:

QR Adventures

Okay, so we had a big technological adventure last week in preparation for our Open House. Several months ago, one of our wonderful third grade team members visited a technology conference and came back with a myriad of seriously amazing ideas. One of them was implementing QR codes in the classroom somehow. 

Since this was our first experience with QR codes, we figured Open House was a good time to debut them; rather than using them during class time. So as Open House drew closer, we really had to focus our thought process and decide how exactly we wanted to use these codes. 

Because we are third grade teachers, the solar system plays a gigantic role in our spring curriculum. Through the solar system unit, we do a bunch of different projects with a large focus on a research-based planet powerpoint presentation. Now let me tell you, teaching third graders how to use powerpoint is its own adventure....something I would like to block out for about a year....However! The end result was pretty nice. 

The kiddos researched their assigned (i.e. drawn out of a bag) planet and filled out an outline in order to have their slides managed early on. Upon completion of the project, we teachers created a dropbox file for the documents. 

We figured that Dropbox.com was a simple to use, safe place to store the students' digital documents. We even went so far as to ensure that there was a specific account for the documents so that they were secure, though I don't believe that that is entirely necessary if you have our own Dropbox account. From there, Dropbox will assign each file its own URL, which is necessary in completing a QR code. 

All you need to do is right click on the file and select "Share Link."

This will open your link in a new tab and allow you to copy and paste the link into the QR generator of your choice. For our purposes, we used QRstuff.com. This website is incredibly easy to use and allowed us to pop out about 115 QR codes for the grade level in a school day.

Just copy your link from Dropbox into the appropriate box, select the color of your code if you wish, and then hit download or print. Again, for our purposes, we downloaded everything into a Word document and wrote their names underneath.

Because this was for Open House, we printed the codes and mounted them on cute paper for the parents to scan with their phones or tablets. All of this worked to great success! The parents were happy and the kids were stoked to see their presentation live on a tablet!

Most QR zapper apps work just fine, but we loved using Zapper Scan in our rooms. The application takes you directly to the Dropbox file in order to easily download or save the presentation.

Next step....Dropboxing for the whole school! 

Triumphant Return!

It has been established that I am really bad at keeping up on my blog....or that I have super-powered ADD sometimes...
So here I sit, in front of one amazing episode of Firefly, reliving the events of the past several months at school and realizing that I don't feel like I've even had a moment to sit down until right this second...and even then, I am (very importantly) multi-tasking with Nathan Fillion.

In any case, we are sprinting head-on into the end of the school year (Literally...I'm the track coach), and I'm looking into carrying out some new traditions I've enjoyed seeing.  Last week, we had Open House...which occurred approximately 4 school days after state testing was completed. Needless to say, everything was pretty rushed; however, everything pulled together and went off without a hitch.
Waaaaay back on the first day of school, I had taken pictures of the chickadees in which they had told me what it was that they wanted to be when then grew up.

Being as sneaky as I could, I  hid these pictures away until last week...when I posted them on the wall with a caption "When We Grow Up...Class of 2023."
I had seen a similar idea on Pinterest last summer, but had to wait for ages to finally put it all together. For the end of the year, I plan on writing them little yearbook-esque notes on the back...but I am a procrastinator and still haven't gotten that far.

In addition to that whole Pinterest-y activity, I also decided to try a nice compilation picture where all of the kiddos made a heart out of their hands. This took quite a bit of hilarious orchestrating and me standing on a table...which was super fun when they were in the perfect position and then the classroom phone rang....But the result of all of the staging and squished bodies worked out really nicely, and I do believe that I will do this picture every year!

And I'll leave you with my final activity planned for the end of the year. This is something that I've seen all over Pinterest, and even in a few coworkers' classrooms as the year has gone on: a thumbprint tree. Should take a short period of time to paint the tree, but then I can use it for years to come. I love the idea of documenting each year of students with their thumbprints....my only sadness is that I didn't find this activity during my first year of teaching!

Anyway, as we move into summer, I will try very hard to be a better blogger....cross my heart!

Blogging on the Go

Ok, so I got all kinds of motivated a week ago to post a blog (and for tradition's sake, apologize for being such an intermittent blogger), buy the site was down. Here's to iPhone apps that allow me to post on the run!

Bear with me as I try to figure out the ins and outs of the app....

I wanted to do a short little post about conferences. We finished those babies up a few weeks ago, but I know some schools in our area are waiting to do conferences until the time of first report cards.
In general, conferences are not a particularly enjoyable experience for me. Not that I dislike talking to the families, but I have a harder time talking to adults comfortably in my professional capacity. Fortunately, for nearly every difficult conference, I had two or more really positive conferences to balance them out. Nothing beats the feeling of singing the praises of a student who has been working particularly hard.
Last year, I kept a pile of student files on my desk in order of conference time. Call it inexperience or whatever else you like, but I didn't get deeply into the file as the conference progressed. I decided to blame the folders and switch my brainwaves for this year. Instead, I organized a binder by student number and filed each piece of conference paperwork behind that number. By having only one binder to deal with instead of 24 folders, I was able to keep my table far neater and to keep track of all additional paperwork that came up through the course of the meetings.

Add in a vase of tulips (orange, of course) and there you have it! Thankfully, conferences went off without a hitch, and now we are on to a lovely Thanksgiving break!

Here's hoping that another post pops up now that I have no excuses!

Pinterest Addict

Alright, I'll admit it:

I'm addicted to teaching blogs and pinterest.

Big time.

I think it has something to do with the fact that I have a lot of rearranging that I would love to be doing in my classroom, but my keys are turned in and locked away. Sigh.

As I've mentioned a million times before, I love, love, love Ladybug's Teacher Files; however, she is on vacation right about now. Her trip is perfectly timed with my mental obsession about my classroom reorganization...and now I am pouring over the Clutter Free Classroom !

The post that is linked is what has inspired a whole lot of online shopping: using sheets as bulletin board backgrounds.

Genius.

Ages ago, a former teacher of mine recommended using fabric to cover boards. While I also agreed that this was a fantastic idea, my OCD kicked in and I could see crooked edges...which would drive me nuts. So, I just finished a date with AnnasLinens.com that resulted in three brown sheets (to match my dots on chocolate colors) for $20! I shall report the results once I have returned to the land of the classroom.

Otherwise, I just finished today's Pinterest project of the day, and it worked out perfectly! With that Pinterest obsession I mentioned, I've seen a whole lot of pins where cheap frames are used to display lesson objectives. Seemed easy enough!

Math Teacher Friend and I took a trip to the Dollar Tree and Michael's today to buy scrapbook paper and frames.

Michael's was having a 50% off sale on their scrapbook paper (plus the teacher discount), so I got very adorable paper to frame! (Sadly no polka dots, but awesome orange patterns.)

After dismantling the frame, I traced the cardboard insert so the size would be marked properly.

In order to have sharp lines, and create enough layers so things wouldn't slip around, I opted to fold along my pencil lines rather than cut. It worked out really well, since the $1 frames needed a little extra help to make everything fit nicely.

And look! Cute little dry erase board! Perfect for writing eye-catching lesson objectives on and sticking on the white board! I do anticipate using black markers when they're actually displayed; however, blue is all I had on me.

Now all that is left is to figure out a nice configuration and to get them onto the white board! I'm also tossing some pink and blue in with my orange this year (again, to match the dots and chocolate), so I made sure to make the "objectives" sign in a different color.

And again, I leave you with the tease of my interactive notebooking research. I've been in the trenches looking, but I have not yet convinced myself that I want to implement it into my math program. We shall see!

Now For Some More Work!

What does one do with the first hours of summer.....hmm...go to lunch with friends? (check) Sit on the couch? (check) Watch kind of dumb television? (check) Get blog guilt when you realize you haven't blogged since March? (check) Start thinking about fonts for my focus wall?

Wait? What?

Having titled a blog something to the effect of "Why I Need to Teach Second Grade Next Year," I clearly jinxed my workload and am now moving up to teach third grade next year.

This will be a really good thing! Minus the fact that I will be spending some good quality time with my focus wall again - since now there is a whole new grade level to prepare for...and about ten seconds ago I realized I forgot my amazing magnet things in my classroom drawers. Sigh.

In any case, I brought all of my second grade files home...




which led me to consider what supplies I needed for creating a severely comprehensive and OCD binder detailing all of the aspects of this year in second grade in chronological order....which of course led me to This lovely blog that I have spoken about before.

I linked the page about a comprehensive binder because I love the idea, plus, it has exactly what I was looking for: circular tabs!

In addition to spending time with my focus wall this summer, I shall be spending time with my circle cutter!

Looking at the tabs set my brain on a ridiculous and untimely journey that has inhibited my laziness slightly. (only slightly, however, as I continue to sit on my butt....I have however moved from my couch to my deck - progress!) I noticed fonts that I wanted. Very seriously wanted.

I mean, when you're considering a focus wall that you have to look at all year long, the font better be fun, right?

The previous link mentioned this website as where the cute fonts for the tabs came from. It was amazing! I may have gone a bit overboard and had to walk away....but! If you're looking for cute new fonts for things this summer or for next school year, I highly recommend it!

I also recommend perusing Ladybug's Teacher Files too. Her ideas are marvelous.

And now, I leave you with a few pictures from when my classroom looked together and pretty: Open House. In an effort to walk away from my room as quickly as possible today, I did not take a picture of how blank and sad everything looks now (or the corpse of a freakish spider that is currently stuck to my big bulletin board thanks to my kids). Photos courtesy of my mom, as she and my dad came to visit my classroom that day!




Looking across the room. Desks stuffed full of portfolios, etc.



Painted Lady Butterfly Pictograph: When Did My Butterfly Emerge? (Oh, during STAR Testing Day 3...no big)




Finally, the completed Angry Verbs wall!

Thinking About My Thinking Cap

So many things to share!

In my immediate procrastination upon sitting down to blog, I had to share that I love this blog! Hope King is fantastic; but even beyond that, the post that is linked is such a great elaboration on what I attempted last week...I will have to do that next year.

We completed our own contraction surgery in class during Week 2 of reviewing for our summative test....which was fun and engaging and such, but we didn't have surgeon masks and supplies. Next time. Next time.

I teased before that we have been discussing metacognition in regards to reading comprehension. School-wide, teachers have taught lessons to show that "Real Reading" is a combination of both thinking and reading. This leads to discussions that cause the students to really consider how they are thinking about what they read, and how they are responding to the literature. All of these ideas are listed and discussed in this book.



Most things are scripted, but you kind of run with what you've got when your kiddos are listening. Mine enjoyed it so much when we got started that they ask to do "reading salad" nearly every day during our read aloud.

Before I get into the posters, let me first explain that I didn't feel like I had an ideal place to hang the posters that go with this concept. Then, let me also explain that the only tape with any lasting quality that I have in my room is neon orange duct tape.

Proceeding.



Having completed the introductory lesson to metacognition, together you create a venn diagram that shows students they must think about what they are reading to really get something out of it. The salad activity illustrates that by using different colored papers to represent "text" and "thinking," and you put one or the other into a big bowl if you do it while you're reading to them...another demonstration of the same concept: You have to think to really read.

All of this connects into several Thinking Stems that we use to encourage metacognition. I positioned these posters on my back window, which just happens to be behind me when we are on the carpet.....hint hint. "Hey kids! Look at me! I am the way you are supposed to start your sentences!" The thinking stems are fantastic! We have been integrating them into nearly everything that we read....this also includes using them in sentence frames during science and social studies lessons. As a whole, it is incredible to see some of the thinking that comes out of their shiny brains sometimes!



We have been using white boards to take notes using these thinking stems/sentence frames while we read our Scholastic News these days. I put a frame on the board (ex: I'm thinking __________________, because I'm noticing _________________. or I'm noticing _________________, because I'm seeing ________________) and have them fill it in using their own words. Some, like my ELLs, write shorter sentences, while others fill up the board with their notes.

Finally, for today, back to my poster-hanging implements: Binder Clips and Duct Tape!
Oh, how I make my father proud! All the daily uses of duct tape in my classroom are amazing :) This was my particular favorite.

As I said, I have limited space for posters where they will be easily accessible for regular reference. Also, I wanted to be able to move and change the posters as we add to them. For instance, we have been using a lot of opinion phrases these days,



but I may want to add our inferencing poster on top when we do that activity. This also helps with some of the storage issues that I have in my portable classroom.

I have read about using binder clips with command hooks to store sentence strips or bulletin board borders, but I didn't have any command hooks handy (where are they when you need them) and I needed a place right away. To the duct tape! Who cares if it is neon orange!?




That's that! My excitement of weeks and weeks consists of metacognition and duct tape. Oh, and Pi Day....but that would be too much for one post. Perhaps I will Pi Blog this week....that would be impressive of me! In my blogger defense, it was report card time, so I sort of lost track of life outside of a correcting pen and my classroom for a while.

....and I get to spend time with this EVERY weekday!

There are some days where I sit down after all of the kids have vacated campus and just think back on the ridiculous things that happened.
Seriously, some of the things that come out of their mouths are amazing. Some are hilarious. Some make me want to put my head on my desk and never look up at them again.
Honestly, it amazes me that the short weeks actually feel the longest, but I have moments and comments to get me through....oh, and fantastic classroom neighbors.

Favorite moment of the week requires a small amount of backstory. Two of my students are best friends. Both have been Star Student already this year, and both plan on being Paleontologists (like Indiana Jones) when they grow up. They are going to do it together, because they're best friends. One of them, H, lights up like it's Christmas when the topic comes up. A grin spreads across his face and you can tell that it is radiating from his soul.
This week was writing central. We worked on our summary of "Ants," having spent Tuesday creating our graphic organizer;



We wrote a letter to this week's Star Student; and we ended the day writing to our pen pals. During the final writing of the day, it seemed quiet enough (what?!) and controlled enough to put on a CD, and in thinking of H, I knew the perfect one.
This called for "Here Comes Science!" brought to you by They Might Be Giants....particularly the song, "Paleontologist" in honor of H. When he started listening to the lyrics, that smile from the soul spread across his face. Kind of amazing!


The real question is: how is it that the spazzy ones are ultimately the sweetest? I mean, really. Most of the time they drive me crazy, but then they do something that puts a smile on my face and keeps them endeared to me.


The desk fairy made another appearance this week too. There is apparently some sort of story that the whole class has concocted about this fictitious individual....I guess she has an evil counterpart who steals stuff from desks and moves it to other tables (personally, I think that would be another specific student....) In any case, I found that it was difficult to find different desks that were deserving of a visit from the desk fairy.....so pretty much all the same kids got the note. So much for equity when it comes to neatness! I tried.....really. Problem being, most of them believe that papers just naturally migrate into desks at the end of an assignment or at a transition....which makes me so wonderfully happy.....

I have so much to share. Literally, I have to keep reminding myself that things do not have to all go in one post. It will especially help me to post when I feel as though there is nothing else to write about, so I am saving them until later....I can tell you that it will be about how every kid in our school (kindergarten through fifth grade) will know what metacognition is.

Finally, I shall leave you with my Valentines. They were cute, and I am happy to share what I stole from Pinterest!