January 27-31

image credit ala.org

We started with 30 contenders in our school's first Mock Caldecott, and we've narrowed down to our 7 favorites. Who do you think will win?

Here are our finalists:

Things I loved this week:

I have been loving all of the awesome blogging going on! Guest bloggers, student work, videos and more!

Don't forget it's Family Blogging Month! Do you have some super commenters in your class? I'll be choosing three kids to be guest bloggers on our school blog, and one random commenter will be selected to be principal for a day! Family blogging month ends Friday!

Dates and Details

January 30th- Star Academy Genius Hour: Collaborative agenda link 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-Staff meeting in the lounge- Review WASC / Evacuation Plan / School Tours 10:30 Pennies for Patients assembly
January 31st- Earthquake drop drill at 2:20  and Movie night at 6 PM-- Turbo! 

February 5th- Late start Wednesday- grade level planning  Digital Learning Day! Click here to sign up for the lab or iTouches
February 7th- minimum day / 1-2:00 WASC with Patrick Broughton in the Star Lounge
February 8th- A3WP Super Saturday  featuring Petra!
February 14th and 17th - no school
February 24-28 Book Fair 
February 28th- Dr. Seuss Night (we need to pick a date for our read a thon)
March 5th 10:20 Author Skype with Ame Dyckman!

Tech Tip:
Quackit: HTML Table Generator
Close Reading Resources: Several of us attended the K-2 Close Reading workshop Saturday. Click here to check out my blog post which includes the link to the session notes. 
Joe also shared a link to a cool Close Reading poster you can download here http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2014/01/a-beautiful-classroom-poster-on-close.html

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!  

January 13th-17th

Food for thought...

Check out this Ted Talk featuring Logan LaPlante, a 13 year-old from Tahoe as he talks about simple goals for education. Be happy. Be healthy. #hackschooling

How can we hack our school?

Things I loved this week...

Kindergarteners opening their own oranges!

Third graders sharing their writing in Alex's class

A nonfiction bugaloo written by our first grade team

Book doors galore!

Talking books and reading goals with Tammy's class!

Writing about seasons with Kindergarten in Saryn's class

New Year's goals in TK

And I appreciate the time and effort you took in updating report cards with thoughtful, thorough revisions.

Dates and Details

January 16th- Jennifer off campus 2-3 pm. Tech time- connecting with authors via Skype and Twitter / Digital Learning Day

January 17th report cards sent home
January 20th- No school in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
January 22nd PIP Wednesday and Jennifer off campus visiting John Swett Elementary in Martinez, Julie teacher-in-charge
January 23rd- DLD planning at tech time

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!
January 29th- no meetings 10:30 Pennies for Patients assembly
January 31st- Earthquake drop drill at 2:20
February 5th- Late start Wednesday- grade level planning
February 7th- minimum day / 1-2:00 WASC with Patrick Broughton in the Star Lounge

Tech Tip



Have a great week!

January 6th- January 10th

The perfect book trailer to kick off Digital Learning Day!

Digital Learning Day is coming on February 5th! In the next few weeks, we will begin planning how we can celebrate Digital Learning Day at Star Academy! Some of you had asked what this might look like with elementary students, so I'm sharing my post from last year's Digital Learning Day in my first grade class! Click here to check it out!

Dates and Details

January 6- NCS staff development day 9:00-11:30 in the library with PACT
January 8th- cadre meetings
January 9th- open lab tech time with Joe-- anything you need!
January 15th- no meeting
January 16th- tech time- connecting with authors via Skype and Twitter / Digital Learning Day

January 17 report cards sent home
January 22nd PIP Wednesday and Jennifer off campus visiting John Swett Elementary in Martinez, Julie teacher-in-charge
January 23rd- DLD planning at tech time

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!
January 29th- no meetings 10:30 Pennies for Patients assembly

Tech Tips

Did you know you can create a PDF with any document just by selecting a different printer in your print window? This can be very helpful when you have a PDF that won't allow you to save what you've typed in. So, just type into your PDF and then click print. This window will pop up:

Just change your printer in "Local Destinations" to "Save as PDF" and voila, instead of printing it will save whatever you are working on as a pdf which you can then save to your computer and print out or attach. Easy!

Posting to Blogger via email: Check out these three posts for submitting blog posts via email! 

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2013/02/how-to-post-to-blogger-via-email.html 

or

https://support.google.com/blogger/answer/41452?hl=en 

or

http://bling4yrblog.blogspot.com/2012/09/posting-to-your-blog-with-email.html

Welcome back and have a great week!