Blessed to Teach and Read

With Common Core looming on the horizon, I thought I'd share this pin I stumbled across on Pinterest. The free part of Mastery Connect is similar to a Facebook for teachers to share common core assessments they have created. I signed up for this and it looks like it will be an excellent tool! There is a second tier where schools either pay $4 per student/year, or $159 per teacher/year to add a feature that allows teachers to easily see who has or hasn't mastered content, to go paperless for all assessments via web tools or apps, and to create reports for students, for the school, and for the district. It has a "Grade Cam", if teachers wanted a paper bubble sheet for answers. The Grade Cam "sees" the page, checks it, and loads the score to the database. Scores can be exported to other online grade books. The interface appears to be rather user-friendly and visually appealing. For now, I'll enjoy the free part of Mastery Connect, as our count...

So, I've been a busy bee at school and gotten away from posting. Recently found Education.com while searching for a math support page for school. Once you sign up for an account, they will send you a "worksheet of the week" to update you on new sheets. Worksheets range from preschool to high school. Education.com has lots of other great features on it besides worksheets. The home page has information for parents on bullying, discipline, science fair, etc. It also has links for activities and for videos. Additionally, it has a "Find a School" feature that lets parents search schools in their zip code. I looked up Sharon Elementary and we were rated a 10 on a scale of 1-10 based on our state test scores. The school link shows our demographics, test scores, our test scores compared to the district and state, and a map of other area schools with their scores. There is also a "Colleges" tab for preparatory information and college informatio...

Our school has just kicked off 2 weeks of raising funds through Fund Runners . They are giving away 1 iPad to a teacher. Teachers get a raffle ticket for every $1,000 pledged to students for running laps. So, when I saw this picture from a blog called Langwitches , I knew I had to share it with my Sharon Elementary friends and with anyone else who reads this blog. It is too cute and applicable not to share! I also love that Blooming Butterfly poster! Of course, I found it on Pinterest, my favorite place on the internet.

Actually found Vocabulary Flash Cards website from Pinterest instead of Twitter. Love how cute and vivid the pictures are on each card! Wonder if our school could use one of these on the morning news every day instead of the slide with definition, sentence, and no picture. I bet kids would pay A LOT more attention to the "Word of the Day". :)

Whew! First 7 days of school down, 180 more to go! While looking in Karen Bolotin's LiveBinder , (Online News and Magazines for Kids and a fabulous resource that in some way should be linked to your teacher webpage to get students reading high-interest, non-fiction articles online), I linked to Karen's Pinterest page , which has LOADS of picture ideas for the classroom! (Was that the longest sentence ever? Possibly. I hope it was intelligible.) Pinterest, if you haven't discovered it yet, is a place where you "pin" your virtual, visual "interests". While you need an invite to join, you can request one from their website by submitting your e-mail address. It's a place to collect quotes, recipes, ideas for home redecorating, ideas for school, etc. and to credit the source that created it. While looking through Karen's Pinterest page, I went another layer deeper onto Mrs. Morris' Simply 2nd Resources blog to a very simple way to sho...

How awesome is this ?!? The picture resources from The Library of Congress are phenomenal and an untapped resource! How cool will it be to show my students actual photographs of Native Americans and have them make deductions and inferences before they start researching?!? SO glad I saw this link before Monday. LOVE this! And I thought using JogtheWeb was going to be cool. Old school awesomeness!

I'm back from our first leadership meeting for the 2011-2012 school year and what should be in my Twitter feed, but a stunning list of ideas for using different technology tools in my teaching. I plan to officially start BYOT (Bring Your Own Technology) this year with my class with guidance from our Instructional Technology Specialist, Susan Brandon. Students bring the technology they already own at home for use during class. Those who can't bring something can borrow a school laptop so that less laptops are needed per class, thus freeing up a greater number of laptops for other classes. Skimming through some of the ideas makes me feel like I need to get an iPad...