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

Pollination and The Big Easy!

My kids had such a blast pollinating their flowers yesterday!  I have some pictures of the pollination, a short video clip if I can figure out how to put it up, and some writing that showed they really are understanding what we're learning.  This unit is a lot of extra work and expense for me, but it's so worth it when I see the students learning and having fun in the process!

Here's a close-up of a kid pollinating a flower.

A student's description of how to pollinate flowers.

We need bees to get the pollen because if the bees don't, the flower won't make a seed.  But the easiest thing is to get a Qtip and get a dead bee and glue and get a plate and dump the glue in the plate and dump the qtip into the plate and stick the qtip into the bee and when the plant has flowers you stick the bee into the flower and that's the easiest way.

Here's another student's take on why we pollinated our flowers.

We pollinated our flowers with beesticks.  We had to pollinate our flowers because we need the flowers to make new sees for next year's class.  So they can do this too.

And here's a short video clip.  You can hear some of the kids buzzing like bees as they moved from flower to flower.  

Finally, I am on my way to the Plain Talk About Reading conference in New Orleans.  I hope to learn some new approaches to teaching my kids to read, write and spell.  I hope they behave for the sub while I'm gone.

That's it for now.
Joell

Flowers and the birds and the bees

Hello!

We have flowers on our brassica rapa plants!  This week we have learned the various parts of the flower and what each part does in creating a new seed.  Today we dissected Alstormeria flowers.  Here are some pictures of our dissection adventure.

First, we removed the petals.  Then the stamen and pistil.  Then we open the sepal to find seeds.

The finished project.

Here's how our plants are measuring up.  They really do grow quickly!!!

Tomorrow we will be pollinating our flowers.  That meant today we had to make bee sticks.  We use cue tips, glue, and dehydrated bees.  Here are a few pictures of that task.

Tomorrow they'll use their bee sticks to "fly" their bees from flower to flower and pollinate them.  

Here's one final look at one of the plants.

I'll try to update again tomorrow or Saturday.  I am going to the Plain Talk about Reading conference the first part of next week.  I'm very excited and hope to have some new ideas!  

Thanks for reading.

Joell

More Popping Adjectives and Plants

Hi,

It has been a very busy week.  Next week will be even busier as I prepare to go to the Plain Talk About Reading conference in New Orleans.  I look forward to the conference, but not so much the sub plans for 3 days.

I wanted to follow up on a couple of our projects.  We finished our Popping with Adjectives stuff this week.

The students worked in groups to sort the verbs and adjectives.  This will eventually be a center for the kids to do individually.

Students loved making these popcorn bags and choosing adjectives to describe popcorn.

Here's the display that went up in the hall.  I think it looks great!

Plant Progress

We also worked on our plants this week.  The students continued to log plant activity such as watering.  We added measurement into the mix.  They loved using their rulers to measure their biggest and smallest plants.

This is one of our biggest plants so far.  It has its true leaves.

This is more of the average sized plants we had on Friday.

We learned about the jobs of the various parts of the plant.  Our plants are supposed to have some flowers on them this week.  If that happens, we will be pollinating them.  This is a very exciting (and scary for some) day because we use dehydrated bees to "buzz" from flower to flower and cross pollinate the plants.  

Thanks to anyone who is reading this.  I think I need to make some freebies or something to start getting some readers.  I'd love suggestions.

Joell