Good Book

Teach Like Your Hair's On Fire by Rafe Esquith is a book every teacher should read. Esquith is a 5th grade teacher in Los Angeles. He teaches beginning at 6am and goes until 5:30pm. He doesn't get to work at 6am, he starts teaching at 6am. From 3 to 5:30, he teaches Shakespeare to his children. They perform around the world. He gives great advice for teachers from all experience levels. He has been teaching for over 25 years and has won numerous awards. Some of them include Disney Teacher of the Year and he has been Knighted by the Queen of England. He also has another book titled There are no Shortcuts, it too is a great book.

Great Read

At the beginning of the semester, I read an awesome book called The Shack. The story is about a man who took his children camping and one of them was murdered. He is invited to a shack in the woods where they found his daughter's body. When he gets there he spends a weekend with God. The physical characters of this book are not what anyone expects. God allows him to see his murdered daughter over the weekend. He really gets closer to God. This book really makes you think about perceptions we have about the physical attributes of God.

What's That?

This is my dog, Patch. I talk about him often in class. They are constantly drawing pictures of him. I watched a special on T.V. about 2 months ago about a school in NY that used dogs to help students read. They trained the dogs to sit while children read. The dog would "listen" to the students and the students began to become better readers. I think I may ask my principal if I could use Patch for that. HA!

We did get to sneak a little fun into school. It's hard to see, but these are Thanksgiving turkeys. The students were able to write what they were thankful for on the turkey and then color it. We put it in the hallway for others to see. We enjoyed this activity (I did one too!).

This is a way I have chosen to use technology in my classroom. The day after my projector was installed, I thought I would "introduce" it to my students. I put a similar "good morning" message on the screen and watched as the students entered the room. Much to my suprise I had fewer "What do I do?" questions. I decided to save the message to my desktop and use it every day. I have now noticed other teachers using their projectors for the same thing.

This is the layout of my room. I had them in groups and moved to this arrangement for our Halloween party. I decided to leave them in the "U" shape because I could easily see what each student was working on and could watch for discipline issues. I can also get to any student in the room in 8 steps (Fred Jones). This is a good arrangement to try if any of you are needing an idea on how to solve the above mentioned problems.

Charts, Charts, Charts

Thes are a few examples of charts I have made over the semester. These have to do with descriptive writing. We are encouraged to make charts for everything and then anchor them on the wall for the students to refer to later. When we are observed, or we have a walk through, our rooms are looked at to see if they are "print rich." They do help the students...even though they are a pain to make for everything you teach.