January 20th-24th

Food for thought...

image credit appeducation.com

Jo-Ann Fox. Just one reason you should get on Twitter! In  Twitter is a Teacher Superpower, her blog post from last July, Jo-Ann Fox wrote, "I wholeheartedly believe that joining fellow educators on Twitter will impact you and your classroom more than you think. Just try it. What do you have to lose?"

Read Jo-Ann's post and find out more about Twitter. Follow Jo-Ann while you're there! I share this post all the time with people when they ask me about Twitter. 

Jo-Ann also did an amazing mission project with her 4th grade students using Minecraft! Here's an example:

Check out the whole mission project Google site here!

Things I loved this week:

Joe and I finally got around to doing our informal walk-throughs using our Google form (and iPad and iPhone!) as a data gathering tool. It was great to get into classrooms-- so many awesome things are happening at our school! We didn't get a chance to get into 3rd grade this time due to a wonky schedule, but overall we love the form as a tool! We made a few tweaks and additions and I love how I was able to observe with the same lens and be focused in my observations.

Some highlights: 

• GLAD winter signal words in kindergarten
• An interactive writing "Morning Buzz" message in TK
• Musical shares and writer's notebook in first grade
• New Antarctica teams and reviewing high behavior expectations in 1st grade
• Retiring tired words in 2nd grade
• Class Dojo in second grade
• Individual whiteboards on the carpet during writing instruction in Kindergarten=increased engagement
• A guest blogger in third grade

Dates and Details

January 22nd PIP Wednesday and Jennifer off campus visiting John Swett Elementary in Martinez, Julie teacher-in-charge 11:30-3:00, Diedre at am drop-off

January 23rd- DLD planning at tech time :) Link to collaborative agenda here

January 27th - ALA Awards broadcast! December and January: Mock Caldecott at Star Academy! Click here for the link to the live broadcast of the awards ceremony! It starts at 5 am PST, so we will have to check in for the video that should be posted around 10 am...
January 29th- no meetings 10:30 Pennies for Patients assembly
January 31st- Earthquake drop drill at 2:20  and Movie night at 6 PM
February 5th- Late start Wednesday- grade level planning  Digital Learning Day!
February 7th- minimum day / 1-2:00 WASC with Patrick Broughton in the Star Lounge
February 8th- A3WP Super Saturday  featuring Petra!

Tech Tip:
Pinterest board with tons of writing ideas! http://www.pinterest.com/edutopia/writing-101/

Kathy Cassidy's most recent blog post: Using blogs and twitter with young students: This is what it looks like!