Behind 2 weeks :D

Though I had good intentions to blog each week on the lessons that my students are doing, I am behind 2 weeks. So goes my busy life I guess. The cold, (bitter cold -20's overnight and highs during the day reaching 0) was making it hard for me to function in a productive and positive way. I have a 2 credit class that I am taking online that is also time consuming and other competing interests in my life. So it goes... Onto the lessons :D

The week of January 31st:
Kindergarten students used 3 different websites. We used Literactive.com in the Road to Reading to get more phonics practice with letters V, W, Z, and J. We did the ABCYa.com lesson with counting fish. Students had 3 levels to make their way through. Finally we did the Place Value lesson again with the marshmallows and the bear from the week before.

First and second grade this week did a lesson in Pixie 2 in which they typed in clues to reveal to their classmates to guess who they were. On a second page the students took a webcam picture of themselves and stapled it behind the clues.

New week, new lessons

I have been too long in between posts on this blog. I am going to try something a bit different. I am going to post what is happening in my classes for the week. I think it is important to know what is going on in schools. Elementary computer integration with curriculum that is adopted by your district is a necessity in my opinion.

Last week my classes did the following:

Kindergarten- We had 4 websites that the students demonstrated their skills beginning with 1. smarttutor.com that involved numbers - addition and subtraction. 2. literactive.com a lesson that we did involving rhyming words - looking for the matching words. 3. smarttutor.com a lesson that taught us about how to sequence a story. and finally 4. smarttutor.com a lesson on geometry and finding the shapes based on clues

First grade- We had 5 websites to visit. 1.smarttutor.com sequencing a story 2. smarttutor.com a lesson on symmetry 3. smarttutor.com a lesson on ways to make the sum of ten 4. smarttutor.com a lesson on money using pennies-quarters 5. oswego.org a lesson from math magician using subtraction to answer 20 questions.

Second grade- We had 3 websites to visit. 1 smarttutor.com a lesson on homophones 2. mathplayground.com a lesson on making change using the least amount of dollars and coins 3. oswego.org math magician subtraction mixed level 2

Thanks- it is such a small word

I was inspired to write this blog post from someone else who posted about a month ago about the things that they were thankful for.
I think all of us muddle along through life. We have hard times and good times and great times. We have times of contentment, resentment, fun, drudgery, working hard and playing. Sometimes we jump through hoops doing what we need to do. We have rules to follow, laws to obey, others to consider in our actions and decisions. We are complicated and can move from many emotions and activities in a short span of time. Some people have personalities that are brighter, some are darker. Some of us see life as what others are doing to them while still others see life as what they are going to do.
I could list off all the the quote unquote normal things to be thankful for- great family, friends, my job, education, living in the 21st century in the most technological time ever...and truly I am thankful for all of this but there is more.
I am a person that has the ability to learn and I truly love learning. I love to read and discovered libraries and sharing books very young. I have an appreciation for nature as well as other cultures. I am willing to try new things. I am creative in lots of different areas and that creativity comes fairly easily to me. I am mostly nonjudgmental, letting others live their lives so long as they let me live mine. I am a middle ground kind of gal- a peacemaker of sorts and that suits me very well. I have mellowed about lots of things through the years, knowing that I can never walk in someone else's shoes. Yes there is poverty, abuse, war, natural disaster, sickness, and many other ills that are an every day part of the human experience. I am not blind nor do I want to make light of the suffering of others. I am one of the lucky people on the planet that has life pretty good. For that, I am thankful.

Wondrous Moments

Teaching imho is much like parenting and life itself. There are ups and there are downs. There are times of brilliance, stupidity, love, hate, and every emotion and reaction in between. The things that make each of us go on living are the wondrous moments. I watched on comedy central on October 30th the Rally to Restore Sanity And/Or Fear. The entire thing was organized, uplifting, fun, and left me with an incredible sense of hope.
This whole sanity thing is what we need to embrace. Tolerance and working with each other is not anything new but the media especially, has forgotten how important it is to our greatness as a nation. We can do this and in fact every single day we have these opportunities and rise to the occasion. We have more in common with each other than we know. We can agree to disagree and still come to a compromise to solve the problems that need to be solved. It is time that the media focuses on the solutions and stop making every single issue a crisis that polarizes us.
So I raise a glass to working with all of you. To wondrous moments- may each of us have many more of them!!!

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Listening to the debate, the discussion, the struggles and the solutions to our education dilemma in this country I think it boils down to one thing. It has taken me a long time to really articulate this and I hope that you do not think that my solution is simple or too obvious.
I think that improving education is all about respect. This word is fraught with much emotion. If a community respects and reveres education, if a parent and student respect and value education and our government and legislators regard education with the respect that it should be given than most every problem in education would and could be solved. It is of course not that simple or easy but it is what is at the root of an education system that is fundamentally struggling.
If one thinks about what has happened in the recent past it is a fairly clear pattern of disregard for the education of our youth that has broken down. Yes the family unit has changed, our country has more impoverished, disenfranchised and downtrodden, and our leaders have failed us in important ways. Fundamentally though it comes down to whether we regard teachers, schools, children and the educational process. It seems clearer all the time to me that we are trying to fix a broken system without digging deeper into the issue. It would be much smarter to begin to think of ways in which we can start to change our society and put action into having respect and regard for others.
A classroom of students that are ready to learn, have parents and society that values learning and expects this from the school and the student is what is sorely lacking. Give a teacher a class of students of any background, any economic status, any level of ability and he/she do what she/he has been trained to do. We are asking our teachers to go at it alone- we have to be a social worker, disciplinarian, police officer, truant officer, cheerleader, parent...all in the hopes of trying to get our students to WANT TO LEARN. This is crazy. If all one had to do is teach, and teach well, then our jobs would be simple. You cannot expect that a teacher is going to be able to swim upstream with the behavior problems, disrespect and all of the other challenges and actually teach each and every student to their utmost potential. Respect is what is missing. In countries that are successfully educating their students the most common denominator is respect in the country for education.