Thus ended the final week before testing…

April26

I must be on auto-pilot (a bad thing) because I don’t have a lot memories about what happened this week. It did end with me attending the Classroom 2.0 Conference and the last thing I did at work was a training for my district. There is something about Friday that gives a “cap stone” to the week with the kids.

Primary:

I started slacking about keeping up our VoiceThread (a minor stomach bug on Thursday didn’t help) but I did get a lot on the second grade one, so that is going well. I’ll just have to press on the third grade one this coming two weeks.

Fourth Grade:

One of the teachers threw me a curve-ball. He’s very eco-green, and dropped a couple links to stories about why beef is bad for the environment at the end of last week. That’s not enough time for me to come up with anything, but during the week I cobbled together a couple lessons that tie in nicely with the thematic units the kids are on, and manage to use some of the resources (op-eds and articles from NY and LA Times, so not always kid-friendly) to use this coming week. I was so happy that most of kids were ready to answer the question about where their families came from before they got to America. The one group that was a little unclear on this were African-American students. The Hmong students in this grade did pretty good. The ones in the next grade had simply referred to being from Thailand, when I asked them the same question. A quick Google Maps editing lesson with Joe Wood at CR 2.0, will help me get those answers up on an online map next week.

Fifth Grade:

I let them use my laptop in pairs to do a a GoogleEarth trip of the Lewis and Clark journey. I also had them do a lighter interactive version from GOOD.is. In looking at what they said they learned, a couple ELs mixed up the Time Warp Trio version of the trip (heavily fictionalized) that we watched the week before, but their class isn’t reading the story yet so that probably didn’t help. They will be learning about buffalo, beef, and factory farms next week.

Sixth Grade:

This is like heaven and hell, and if the kids are reading this, or one of my colleagues, it has a lot of causes that are not one persons fault. One class is still limping along finishing their reports on a musician from the last unit. They got behind when they did a one week trip to a nearby eco camp. The other teacher decided to forgo that report, and is onto the next unit. With the first class, I think all of us feel like this is dragging on too long, and are behaving as you would expect (grumble, grumble). Next week, beef and the environment will be served up. Here’s what I have from the second class.

Next week should be…interesting, as I will be out Monday to look at my son’s school for next year, then testing starts. I’m administering the 6th grade modified assessment, WHICH we do not have enough copies of. Sounds exciting, no? Then I had to redo schedule to accomodate my testing, their testing, etc.

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