Mirror, mirror
Ms. Mercer’s ELD Class is my newest blog for ELD, where I come back with a BAM! Check out the podcast (yeah) my first of the year. I have been sleepwalking with this class (the only one I have every day), but I’m phoning it in NO MORE! I had been counting on a lousy ILS, that is currently not working. I’m going to look at this as a blessing instead of a curse. From now on, we’re doing a weekly or bi-weekly podcast, and writing activities (can I hear an amen?)
In my other blogs, I am doing the first step of implementing changes after watching Dean Shareski’s “Design Matters” by adding visuals to my posts. Here they are…
Where I add more visuals to teach math…
…and to teach history and science…
…pictures, I gotcha pictures!
Other reflections from my week…
I’ve been complaining about my foul mood to my co-workers, my spouse, friends online, friends in real life, heck the whole wide world. Some people say, “Hey, this is too early in the year for that!” It’s not the kids, it’s not the teaching. I have a feeling it’s lack of sunlight from the time change, season change, and being in a room with windows closed all day. The students are not perfect, don’t get me wrong, but they aren’t driving me nuts.
What did we do this week? In primary, I went on with a new unit on Kindness by showing Chyrsanthemum by Kevin Henkes (discoverystreaming) and having them add audio to an Inspiration file about what kindness sounds like (what you say).
I showed some Jeff Crowin to the third graders and had them listen for wildlife sounds in our neighborhood. Next week they will be doing an owl pellet dissection and I have resources to support that.
Fourth Grade is doing a business unit, and I found a great game on starting a business at Disney Channel that’s been a hit. They are starting to work with Google Docs spreadsheets. This week was looking, next weeks formulas, and adding stuff. One class (which actually did give me conniptions–someone in the class cut the cord to a headset in two) did a FANTASTIC job with this, they started using the chat function in the spreadsheet to send notes (which unfortunately are not saved). That class is scary, in many ways (some good, some not so good). Isn’t that so often the case?
Fifth grade had some great work on their research questions. Lots of good stuff that they want to work on. I’m impressed.
Sixth grade is s-l-o-w-l-y finishing up work on their movies. That project has turned into a real time sink. I don’t know if I learned enough lessons from how things went. I suppose more structure might help. I had a good teaching moment. Most of the groups want to film sports “action” scenes, and want balls to film scenes with (which I don’t have). I finally told one group, hey FAKE IT, have the actors pretend there is a ball, focus on the FACES and their intensity, that’s the story! I’m starting to push out stuff on Ancient Civilization to them.
Next few weeks are Parent Conferences and Turkey Day Holiday, so not much work. I won’t have ELD, which is making me squirm, cause I’m dyin’ to share the new blog with them.
