When I began this course I never imagined all the things I would get from it. I knew what a blog was, yet I had no idea. I now love the idea of a blog. I look forward to posting new things I learn as I finish up my degree and when I become a teacher. I think blogs could be so helpful the keep teachers a head of the game and up on the new things. Sharing the knowledge after all isn't the what teachers want to do.

I have enjoyed the blog so much I am considering starting another one about being achieving a healthy mind, body, and soul. I use Facebook to sped the word but I don't think it reaches people the way I would like to.

Thank you so much to Sheri and my fellow classmates for making this one of my favorite classes thus far. Good luck to all of you I hope you have a wonderful summer.

Here is a quote I like that I think we all get side tracked and forget to do sometimes.

I made a story using My Story Maker. I think the was a great website other then the fact that you are unable to download or save your story. Instead you have to share a link to the website. However for free it is great. I think students could have a really great time with the different choices for creating a book. It had a wide variety of characters and settings. I would use this in my classroom as a creative learning aid.

The name of my story is 'The Genie who made Friends with a Witch". When you click on the link you will need this code to look at my story. MTP331

http://www.carnegielibrary.org/kids/storymaker/embed.cfm?magicCode=MTP331

I chose to make a story cube. About the book my children and I just finished ready. The Harry Potter series has been so fun to read.

Educational Sites

I found that there are a lot of educational sites out there. I found the Khan Academy a very helpful and interesting site. This site is free which is always nice when your a teacher. I found it to be helpful that is had sections for students, teachers, and parents. I think sometime parents are left off of sites like these. But I feel the parents are a vital part of a child's learning process. I especially liked the section about learning to be a coach. It was very easy to register and get going. It is geared for beginning at 3rd grade and older.

I also found that OpenED to also be a very helpful website. I has things for kindergarten thru 12th grade. It is free and easy to sign up. It has material for all general subjects. It can help with organizing, homework, assessments, lesson planning, and activity.

I came across this wonderful article on Facebook and wanted to share it with you all. I hope someday to be this wonderful of a teacher and change children's live just like this. It breaks my heart to think about what some of these young innocent children are going through.

This is the link:
http://abcnews.go.com/Lifestyle/colorado-teacher-shares-heartbreaking-notes-graders/story?id=30368103

A little Inspiration

I found this very enlightening. I would like to find a poster of this for my classroom someday!

Mind Mapping

This is my Mind Map of Chapter 11

Digital Footprint

I saw this and it really got me thinking about just how big my digital footprint is and just how big it could get. We as educators have to educate ourselves so that we can inform our students just how dangerous digital sharing be. I think a common misconception about our digital food print is that it pertains to things you post to the internet. A popular activity for the younger generations now is Snap Chat. This is an app that you can send you friends a silly picture and it disappears in a short amount of time. This part is true but the photo can be saved if the receiver does it quick enough. This just goes to show that even when you think something can never be shared again you could be wrong.

I think it is also important to think about the things we write on the internet or in emails and text messages we send. Even if we delete them they have still been seen by others and could be saved to hard drives. For example a friend of mines boyfriend said some very awful things about another person on Facebook. The post was later taken down but not before it was printed out and now a hard copy exists. The important lesson is that you should always take a minute to think about what you write or say it will stick with you.

I made a QR Code of my colors and Shapes
                   

Post it Note

Please Read my Newsletter

Index Flash Cards

I think flash cards are a vital piece of learning at any age.

Parent/Child Survey

Shel Silverstein Scavenger Hunt

Swot

To my wonderful teacher Sheri whom I love to confuse with my many aliases, I am happy to announce that at least on my blog I was able to figure out how to unlink it from my gmail account so that my name shows up. I feel very accomplished!!!=)

This week I made a scavenger hunt about Shel Silverstein. He was a great writer. I remember when I was a child constantly checking out his books from the library at school. This is poem "happy endings" is very much a true statement to me. I always feel the best part of a situation flies by and we forget to enjoy it. We need to take a deep breath sometimes and give ourselves a moment to soak it all in. I look forward to reading the new book of his that was released last month. And even more than that I look forward to sharing it with my children. 

I really enjoyed looking through all of these kids safe search engines. I had no idea until I began this assignment that there were such a thing as a search engine that was safe for children. I think this is such an awesome idea. I home school my son and plan to use these so he can do some of his own research while doing his school work. 

Of the ones I looked through I liked Kids Click the best. It had no advertisements, which I was very happy about. The site was very inviting and child friendly. It was also made by librarian so it was book related. This is a good thing I feel because our children become to reliant on technology. 

My least favorite search engine was Squirrel net, For Kids: safe search using Google. It didn't appear very child like it was just a basic white background. It had quite a few advertisements once you searched a topic. It did have good search results.

Technology will never stop amazing me by reminding me how much we need to check and double check our work. I swear I posted this already. But I am grateful that I at least still had it save on my computer. Technology I will call it a draw today!

Rubric Research

I chose to do some more in depth research on rubric's. There was a lot of great information on them and especially how important they are to the learning process. I learned that a rubric sets a clear set of guidelines that allow the student to know exactly what is expected of them, This way they will be able to complete their assignment with quality results. The rubric is also used by the teacher to assess the work so all the students are held to the same standard.

Once the initial assignment is finished the instructor can use the results on the grades rubric sheet to group students together for group activities. They also may be able to pair students up with a tutor if they are struggling.

I found a few websites that had sample rubric sheets. Some have template so you can get a better understanding of what you need and others have rubric builders.

http://www.introductiontorubrics.com/samples.html

http://www.rubrics4teachers.com/

http://assessment.uconn.edu/docs/How_to_Create_Rubrics.pdf

http://pareonline.net/getvn.asp?v=7&n=25