I’m writing this in the early hours at a chalet in Tahoe before starting a writers retreat with Accomplished California Teachers. This will likely end up more abbreviated than I’ve managed the last few weeks.

First Grade

We’re finishing up short vowels, and I just need to figure out what direction to go into next. No big new things, but some more pictures added to our VoiceThread on sounds and letters.

Second Grade

Rather than showing a video this week, I read “Piecing Earth and Sky Together” which is Mien (Laos) folk tale. The kids were a lot squirrel-ier than with a video. I think the story did not capture them well. I think I didn’t nail the into/prior knowledge part of the story. I did adjust it with each reading to try to improve it, but no luck? I’m not a bad story-teller, and do well in front a classrooms, so maybe it’s just an expectation they have of what will happen in the lab? I’m thinking about this.

Third Grade

This is my favorite part of the friendship unit, when the kids start to ask questions they have about friendship. Here is one of them:

Fourth Grade

I’ve concentrated more on having the kids do a choice of online activities. This has been tricky because students want to get to “games”, but my persistence paid off, as when they spent the time with, Greenville: Sustainability Game, they actually got into it and were enjoying it quite a bit.

Fifth Grade

More PicLits, this time on Competition.

Sixth Grade

The piece-de-resistance. I’ve done Motivator posters twice in the past, but this has been the BEST experience I had with students doing Motivator posters. They did better spelling Perseverance, they had a better match of pictures and words, and were on topic. I credit this to doing checks along the way with the entire process. I still had a couple instances of kids trying to use copyright labeled photos from Flickr (FYI: it will result in a blank poster at the end, wasting their time), and being off topic, etc., but this was a smaller number than in the past. Considering that this class includes students who are being mainstreamed from a learning handicapped class, it went very well. The only change, I think I’d use this as an introduction to discussing copyright issues next time. Enjoy!