December 16th-20th

Food for thought...

It's Kind of Like Riding a Bike

photo credit jonny.hunter on Flickr

This past Thursday, after 85 phone calls, Petra's sub job failed to fill. Here's our text message exchange after 75 calls from our sub system:

And just like that I was teaching first grade. I reviewed Petra's plans, picked up her kids and headed into class. Secretly, I worried I would be out of practice...and I was just a little excited. I love to teach! So then I did what substitutes are NOT supposed to do-- I failed to follow most of Petra's plans. Oops.

Now, I did follow the schedule, we did morning meeting and SIPPS as planned. We went to the computer lab and the kids went to Spanish. But I didn't do a single worksheet, even though there were several listed in the plans. 

I totally get why they were there. It's tough to plan for a random sub when you're sick. But I wasn't just a random sub. Luckily for me, first grade is right in the middle of their Winter in the Woodland GLAD unit, which I taught last year. Sweet. I knew what I wanted to do. Reading. Writing. Art. 

OWL MOON! My favorite picture book from this unit. Maybe of all time. Ever since I met Jane Yolen in 5th grade, I have been a fan. 

We read the book while looking at the pictures, and then watched the video again. While watching the video, the students wrote words that they heard in their writer's notebooks. 

Later in the day, we went to the computer lab where students entered their word lists into a Google form. 

I then used Word It Out to create a word cloud using the words they had written in their notebooks. 

(Word it Out works on a Chromebook-- it's my new favorite!)

To end this day, we did some owl drawings using this YouTube video. You might want to give it a try! 

So, I found it is kind of like riding a bike! Although I didn't know all of the routines and procedures for Petra's class, all in all it was a good day! I love Owl Moon, I love first grade, and I love, love to teach! Thank you to Mrs. Luhrsen's class for making my day! (I promised them I would blog about it!)

Things I loved this week...

Gingerbread in Kindergarten!

Winter art in TK

A student leading the learning in Mrs. Torres' Class!

• Also, Joe's NCS EdTech News blog post about the awesome teacher bloggers here!
• Petra's first grade class zipping through their SIPPS phonics sounds
• Maria's students in workshop-- they were loving their Patricia Polacco study and were working hard on their timelines!
• Hope's students chanting away about ungulates, using amazing signal words and sentence frames filled with academic language
• The vampire Gingerbread men in Amy's class
• Ms. Fraser's kids writing everywhere around the room-- even on the floor!
• Writer's notebooks in Alex's class- her students were excited about writing!

Dates and Details

December 18th- Ballet and Music performance in gym at Star 6:30 PM (after school enrichment only)
December 18th- late start Wednesday: breakfast at main campus 8-9

December 20- end of semester & first annual BLING IT ON DAY!

December Winter break- December 23rd-January 3rd

January 6- NCS staff development day

January 17 report cards sent home

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!

Tech Tips

Did you know you have a YouTube channel? As part of our Google Apps for Education, you do! You can easily upload videos taken with your phone, iPad, and even upload from your computer. Just look for the share button and enter your NCS Google account information. It's that easy! Then you can easily embed in your blog or post on your website.

Having said that, YouTube sometimes adds random related videos at the end of your video. This is not always what you want. To find out how to turn off this feature, check out this post!

How to Remove Related Videos from an Embedded YouTube video

Have a great week!