Sunday, May 11, 2014

A Peek At My Week


Today I'm linking up with Jennifer from Mrs. Laffin's Laughings for "A Peek at my Week."


I'm out of the classroom on Monday to score the NYS Math assessment. Day 2 of scoring. Last week it was tough...because Friday was GORGEOUS and I was stuck inside all day! So, Monday will probably be beautiful as well. Just my luck!

I will also be out of the classroom on Friday because my school is hiring a new fourth grade teacher and I volunteered to be on the interview committee. I love interviewing new teachers! It's so enlightening...hearing about fresh ideas, books I should be reading, and strategies that work in the classroom. I also remember how I felt when I was interviewing for jobs, so I really feel for these young teachers!

On Wednesday we have a walking field trip to the local museum in town. The weather should be nice, so it will be a blast! We learn about local history, play colonial games, and examine artifacts. The kids always love this one game that's played with a circle of string with a bead on it. One person is in the middle and everyone else is holding onto the string in a circle and passing the bead around. The person in the middle needs to guess where the bead is. The students can be pretty tricky!

Now, Tuesday and Thursday are a bit of a mystery.  I'm back to the modules for math, and my kids are liking module 6, all about decimals. Daily Five has been focused on novel studies and short science texts to gear up for our state science assessment. Social Studies is all about the Erie Canal, which is totally engaging because these kiddos grew up around the Erie Canal. But writing? I am blanking. My class is mostly boys and they are not loving writing. I'm thinking about signing out our iPad cart during writing time and letting them do some research and take notes? Not sure. Gotta think this one through. Maybe a mentor text writing piece? I might be browsing WritingFix for some ideas tonight! It's an awesome website that focuses on the 6+1 Traits of writing and picture book writing lessons.

With the weather becoming so wonderfully enjoyable, we might do our writing outdoors a few days this week! Nothing like laying on the grass and writing with the whole world as inspiration!

Now, I'm hoping my school doesn't do 3 fire drills in one day like last week. That was a DOOZY!

2 comments:

  1. Do your iPads have educreations? It's an amazing app that allows the students to add text and handwriting, and insert their pictures. My boys love it. You can have them take a photo, then write about it by typing on the screen. You can also record voice. You set up a teacher account, and have the students save their work under an assignment you create with a code. I use it, and it's so nice to grade the assignments because you can pull up their saved work online without having to have the iPad!

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    1. Cool! I don't think the iPads in our school have educreations. I'll have to request it! Thanks for sharing!

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