Blessed to Teach and Read

Good Morning! Enjoying a relaxing morning at my parents' house for a family visit. We were watching CBS This Morning and saw an interview with Salmon Kahn about his Khan Academy . It offers online videos of a grand variety of topics so that all students can have a "world class education". However, it ALSO has benefits for teachers, other than being FREE, it offers detailed profiles on individual students with an at-a-glance tool for seeing every video that that child has viewed and a class summary graph to show progress or need for remediation. The site also offers a vertical continuum of skills so that you can go straight to the topic you need and/or go back to more foundational skills to tackle more difficult skills. Lastly, the site awards "badges" for student mastery of skills. Students must create their own account and then add the teacher as a "coach". There are several safety features to keep students from posting private informa...

Whoo! Another find from Pinterest. Here is a site with games linked to common core standards. While I'm entirely sure that the Expressions part of the math text we adopted several years ago will excellently support the new common core standards, it is always nice to have additional resources for parent volunteer centers or small group remediation games. I also like the list of math read aloud titles. There are also links to free online games that support standards too. It's nice to find so many resources all in one place!

Forsyth County, GA posted a link to the pacing guide they have created for next school year. I printed it out and took it home to look it over and start planning for next August. I know, I know. I'm working on the first day of summer vacation, but I need to wrap my brain around the new standards and how they will mesh together with science and social studies. Here is what I created for quarter 1 English/Language Arts. (Hopefully, the following quarters won't be so time consuming!) Everything in black type was provided by the county or the Common Core Standards website. Everything in blue type is something of my own that I added. Here is what I created for quarter 1 math common core content.

Long time, no post. Stumbled across a link from an elementary math wiki for a school in North Carolina. It contained numerous links to helpful common core documents, over views, vertical continuums, and critical standards. It also contained a Glogster with a link to an 11 minute Dan Meyer YouTube video that was very inspirational and helped to reassure me that the common core roll out for next year isn't something to worry or stress over, but rather, to be excited and renewed as a teacher. It reminded me that our Georgia math frameworks have prepared us to move professionally in the direction of appropriate math instruction: to question students, to allow students to discuss and develop algorithms and explore multiple solutions, and to think critically and creatively about authentically applicable problems. Am going to be looking more into Dan Meyer's blog! :)

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.