A boss I really liked posed a question similar to this to me one day… What if… we stopped teaching specific content for one week, one quarter, one year, and instead focused on the kids where they are at each moment. Zero in on their learning edge and provide space, time, and resources for them…
Here’s a thought for a Friday.* How many reminder or warning bells are in your daily life? And, how many MORE reminders or warning bells are in your life than were, say, 10 years ago? Here is typical morning in my world, with warning bells and reminders marked with a star. At 5:30 my clock…
Many surprising things happened today. I woke up early, but not too early (!!!). I actually GOT up (!!!). I took Stella the Dog for a walk after I got up (!!!). And, I saw and took photos of fun things on my walk, AND I’ve already turned them into a writing prompt for today (!!!). Oh, and I…
I just loves me some stacks of books. It’s one of the surest signs that I am, indeed, an English teacher at heart. I got to work at the butt-crack of dawn this morning, and was greeted with these lovely stacks. Clockwise… The books I’m using as mentor texts at my presentation tomorrow morning. …
Today we started to write memoirs. While I’m glad to share the steps leading up to these very-first-inkling drafts, I’d rather just show y’all what they came up with. Here is the mentor text we used. It’s from Knots in My Yo-yo String by Jerry Spinelli. We are using his memoirs as our mentor text…
If you are old like me, or like I’m fixin’ to be soon, you might remember this commercial: Rather than launch into a discussion about how this irritated me when it came out, how it’s a tag phrase I remember now, and how it is possible they were making a joke (I hope), I will…
The lovies are playing board games, dressing up from the costume bin, and challenging me to various card games. They’ve earned some free-choice time at the end of the day on a Friday. J. observes B. is not paying attention during our game of Uno and is causing our game to go more slowly than…
One of my caped friends sent this blog to me. It is enough to simply repost here… Reposted from http://heygirlteacher.tumblr.com/
This caped teacher and one of her caped friends watched Chicago a while back on the television box. We intended to watch something else, but this caped teacher made an error in planning. Good news though, Rule #5 has revealed itself (see the rest of the rules here). Roxie Hart has quite shocking language in…
I have a couple of students with Autism or Autistic-like behaviors (an actual thing when the diagnosis isn’t clear on an educational level). Without going into a long discussion (yet*), let me oversimplify by saying that some students with Autism struggle with social skills, understanding social cues and non-verbal communication, and it is quite quite…
Wear The Cape 