Creative Writing

      I took this picture at the end of last summer of my golden retriever staring out the window. He sat their long enough for me to frame him in the picture. The school year is coming to a close, short on lessons and only a few more days of school left, I still need to teach but the project based learning lessons have to be less time consuming. We discussed the different aspects of the picture. When was it taken? Where is it taken? Who was the photographer...etc. Leading to the big question “What is he looking at?” We didn't discuss the question "What he is looking at?" since the creativity would be directed in the paragraph.   It made a great writing bulletin board for grades K-5 creatively expressing on what he was watching or looking at! (I have no idea what he was looking at so intently for such a long time)

The following are just a few of my favorite titles:

What Are You Doing Bob?


Bob, the Amazing Starrer


The Interesting Bob


What’s Wrong Bob?


Bob, WHAT is it?


Bob, the Looking Detective


Bob, the Staring Dog Of Memphis


Bob is Sight Seeing!

Decorah Eagles!

I love that this available again this year. It is live footage of two eagles in their nest 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. http://www.ustream.tv/channel-popup/decorah-eagles The bald eagles pictured above have laid 3 eggs this year and each parent takes a turn on the nest.

The website enchanted learning has basic information and can easily be adapted for young students to use the internet to research facts to write a report.

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/birds/info/Eagle.shtml

In class I start each lesson about what has occured during the day and since I teach multiple classes I am able to take screen shots and put the pictures into a powerpoint slideshow to share with each class. Just by observing the streaming and the powerpoint show I have created 500 eagle experts!

Using Digital Art to Create Colorful Easter Eggs

This was a great and very fun digital art lesson that can easily be adapted for any grade! The students used a program such as Microsoft Paint divided it into sections and doodled in each section. I introduced a book that talks about the artist Klimt and I read the story Chicken Sunday by Patricia Polacco. We discussed the different repetitive designs that are found in the paintings or the eggs represented in Chicken Sunday. I printed copies of zen tangles for the students to reference to give them ideas for their art. Overall I am very pleased with this idea. It can easily be adapted for Valentine's Day or different shades of green for St. Patrick's Day.

5th Grade Digital Photograhy

January 29 is National Puzzle Day
1. Have students take pictures of a class of an activity around the school.
2. Save pictures to a shared folder
3. Insert into Microsoft Paint.
4. Add lines for Puzzle shapes.
5. Cut out pieces and glue down to construction paper.
6. Frame your puzzle using ribbon, buttons or both. Use your imagination.

National "Insert Word Here" Month

Need a new idea to jazz up your lessons? Research what might be recognized for that month. For example September is National Potato Month and October is National Pizza Month. Students in grades 3-5 can make pie graphs showing favorite pizza topping and student K-1 can draw a picture of a pizza and write a sentence about their picture.

Here is a fun website. www.tagxedo.com After you paste your text into the word boxes you can choose different options that will arrange your work into word clouds in shapes instead of randolmly placed.

I will post some of my student work later in October! Happy Computing!

Upgrade and new learning

I posted before to learn something new every year. This year I am going to have to learn how to navigate around the latest version of Microsoft Suite (for not tech people, that would be Word, Excel, PowerPoint). I am hoping that most of my projects will easily transfer over and be compatiable. Teaching this year will bring forth many challenges since my chants (i.e. In-sert pic-ture, clip art) will no longer work. Hopefully the new changes will be easier for my students. It sounds like an opportunity for some curriculum writing updates.

It would not be me not to post a cool tip....

Did you know in the newer version of Microsoft Word instead of saving as a document it can be saved as a .pdf ! If your parents have access to Adobe Acrobat no longer will the issue of your document not being able to open for the user!

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

Today’s blog is in celebration of Read Across America.

My first graders listened to Green Eggs and Ham where as my Kindergarten students listened to One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish.

The first graders completed the sentence I would eat my green and ham.

The Kindergartners are learning how to click and type numbers and adding up to the sum of 5.