No Picture Again

We did these really fun sun glasses this week.  I took pictures, but they all have kids' faces in them.  Then I managed to catch a cold, so I'm without the energy to want to do anything.

This coming week is our last week of school.  We have some fun things planned:  our trucker pen pals will come on Tuesday, we'll also get to dunk the principal on Tuesday.  Wednesday we'll have awards day, Thursday is field day, and Friday is the last day of school.  I'm hoping it will all go well and I'll be able to give my students a great send-off to second grade.

I intend to spend some of my summer time learning how to really blog.  I also have a HUGE project for vocabulary, and several professional development classes.  Who says teachers don't work during the summer?

Joell

Professional Development and the End of the Year

Well,

I didn't get any pictures taken this week.  I felt like I was scrambling all week long.  It's the end of the year and all these crazy things keep coming up.  Then there's all the extra work involved in things like talent shows, awards programs, cleaning up the room.  And this year, I get to pack everything up and move to another classroom.  Not to mention the fact that we are all just "done".  Overwhelmed?  Uh....Yeah.

I spent most of yesterday and all of today (Yes, Saturday) in professional development.  While it's good stuff we're learning, it's a hard time of year to stay focused on professional development with so much other stuff that needs done.  Okay, enough wining.  I'll try and get at least one picture next week.

Joell

Picture Pie and a New Idea

Hi all,

I've had a bit of a motivation problem since I returned from New Orleans.  It's been all I could do to get through the teaching day, so the blog has been neglected.  Not a good way to start a blog, but oh well.

Today I wanted to share some art/math my students did on Friday.  There is this wonderful book called Picture Pie by Ed Emberley that I picked up from a library rummage sale.  All of the pictures are made out of circles.  It's a wonderful way to teach or review fractions because students fold the circles to get halves, fourths, and eighths in order to make the pictures.

I have a document camera and a projector, so I took pictures of several of the pages from the book (since I only have 1 copy) and put up a slide show of those pages on my screen so the students could see how to make various creatures.  This can also be used as a center once the kids get the hang of it.  That way they can look at the book itself and make some of the more complex things.

Here's a few of the pictures my students made.  Sorry for any blurriness, my camera was  having issues.

And here's how they looked in the hall:

My New Idea

So, I went to the Salt Lake City Public Library today.  It's a wonderful place, of course.  The architecture is astounding.  I got myself a library card (I had one many years ago that was lost.)  I hit the children's stacks, and came across six copies of this book--just enough for reading groups.

This book (The End by David LaRochelle and Richard Egielski) tells a fairy tale-like story backward.  So, it starts with "The End" and "And they all lived happily ever after."  And it goes backward through the story.  I'm going to do this with my reading groups this week, and use it to review cause and effect.  If I manage to find the time tomorrow, I might make a page of links with each event in the story, so the kids can link the causes and effects together.  Then retell the story both backward as written, then forward.

I think I have made the links and you can get them here.  Let me know if it doesn't work. 

And finally...

Tomorrow is Mother's Day.  I am so very blessed to have a wonderful mother who taught me who I am and how to survive in the world.  To all the mothers out there, I hope you have a wonderful Mother's Day.

Joell

New Orleans Burn Out and Sales

Hi all,

I had such a great time last week at the Plain Talk About Reading conference in New Orleans.  I have all kinds of new ideas to try out in my classroom, and it was also a good review of stuff I already knew.

Of course, after the day filled with learning, we went out on the town to pig out eat and have fun.  We also took a tour of the city.  It brought home the scale of the Katrina fallout on an emotional level.  My favorite place we went to eat was Emeril's NOLA.  I tried some new (to me) foods:  mussels, oysters, and hushpuppies.

These are some of the elevators at they Hyatt Regency where we stayed.  They were a whole new way of operating an elevator.  You selected your destination floor before you summon the elevator.  On the elevator there are no floor buttons so you need to make sure you get on the right one.

I hope to get back to posting school related stuff this week.  Until then, there is a Teacher's Appreciation Week sale going on at www.teacherspayteachers.com, just use the code TAD12 when you check out for 10% off your purchase.  Many of the teachers who sell things there are also having sales, so you can get some good deals.

Thanks for stopping by.

Joell