This time's topic: [B]Raymond Robinson (Green Man)[/B]

Fate has a way of ruining things for some people.

More writing skill building activites are sentence variety. I modified my lessons from last year. I used some ideas from "Mechanically Inclined" by Jeff Anderson and some ideas from Proteacher posts.

I posted a list of sentences that all say the same thing, but in different ways. There were about 8 different sentences. I read the sentences and asked the students what they observed. I love that! Just having them analyze writing engages the entire class. It makes everyone think. Eventually, we came around to the discussion of sentence variety.

"Razzle Dazzle Writing" by Melissa Forney has a great handout for sentence variety. It uses one common subject and lists sentences types with an example. We read these aloud and discuss the difference.

Then I ask them to choose a subject. I have a list from a proteacher poster that had 5-6 sentences. They take the one idea, such as "The fireworks were an amazing display"...

My writing lessons have been focusing on skill building in order to get students prepared to write research reports.

My writing plan has been very successful this year. Mostly recently, I had students write an essay about their most memorable grade. The essay goal was for 2 body paragraphs to have detailed and layered elaboration. The lessons went very well. Students were able to see the difference between layer and list by examples I provided. The focus and their grade was for the elaborated paragraph. Their intros were mostly just a thesis statement. Those papers were graded and placed in writing folders.

Last week we took out those old papers to write new introductions for them. Since the writing goal was elaboration, many students only wrote a thesis statement, but not an introduction with a grabber.

I taught introduction strategies by showing examples from the state created powerpoint. Students wrote notes in a T chart. Then, I wrote my...

Tomorrow marks the second week post-op, and I can truthfully say (knock on wood) that I'm feeling pretty darn good.

My original plan was to be back at school one week after surgery. By the end of my first week out, I realized that that plan wasn't very realistic. So, I missed a couple of days extra and returned to my duties this past Wednesday. Why the extra days? Well, since my game plan involved planting my behind in my coveted teacher chair as much as possible, it didn't really seem like I could return given the fact that I couldn't sit upright in a chair yet. Seriously. Ten minutes was my max before the pressure on my repaired hernia started getting the best of me. I was also still using a lot of ice, and the thought of having an ice bag sticking out of my pants didn't seem like such a good idea after all.

Before I returned to work, I made an appointment with the surgeon to give me the go ahead. Now remember, this is the guy who told me I'd...

Since nobody is looking, I think I'll post another story. It'll take a couple of installments because it's kinda long:

[CENTER][B][U]Sizzle[/U][/B]
By Bigwig Rabbit
[LEFT] [SIZE=2]I thought that rock moved. It is hot. My lips are maybe twice their normal size, cracked, and bleeding. I haven’t had a drink since top-sun. It is now Lower-Quarter (about 5:00 P.M., summer time). I going back to the spring at Sun-Down, when I’ll have time to get from my meager shelter here in this rock outcropping to the spring and back by full dark. I cannot risk going to the spring in full sun, ‘cause I probably won’t make it there, much less back.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=2] That rock moved again. My situation was much simpler at first. One moment I was driving in air-conditioned luxury. The next, I was rolling off the side of the road, head bouncing off the window and airbag. I have no recollection of how the accident happened. All I know is that it happened in the...

My amazing teaching partner (She teaches Math/Science with my Am/PM kids), works with me to create student led conferences. We both simultaneously decided to do this one fall. We worked out a plan, a script and implemented them one year. It was the best conference week of my professional career! No longer was I "telling" parents about their children, but the children were presenting their acheivements to their families in a way that suited their family culture.

Have you ever been nervous about a conference? Sometimes I know a student isn't having classroom success. I wonder how a parent will react. They react differently when their child presents the information. Parents can't lie when their kids are there. No more, "but they had fabulous grades last year". With SLC's the child says, "No I didn't. I had "C's and D's).

Since the time when we started SLC's for fall conferences, we have now progressed to students continuing...

My principal asked me to attend the principals' meeting with the Superintendent to speak about PLCs. They wanted to know how ours worked. Yikes.

The day of the meeting I thought I was coming down with the flu. Fortunately, it was all nerves. I must say, sitting through their meeting was eye opening and nerve wracking all at the same time.

My first thought was that they were so focused on the overall running and coordination of the big picture that most are completely unaware of what we actually do in our classrooms. Most are not aware of the changes to our state mandated assessment. (Yikes).

I expressed that our current reading program is ineffective for teaching the standards from our state because the tests do not resemble our current needs, so we create our own assessments. I also said that we need supplementary material for "functional documents" because that is now part of the test. Functional documents are emails, flyers,...

This time's topic: [B]Superdollar

[/B]No, it's not a chain store. It's fake.

Day six post op. Day six in a recliner. Day six of auditory and visual hallucinations. Day six of muscle atrophy. Day six of all-rest-and-no-play-makes-Speced9-a-dull-boy.

So what have I been doing? Well, for starters, I went on a teacher shirt design bender.



I hate to see such manic work go to waste. Please, someone order one of these and wear it to school so I can feel somewhat useful.

I've been taking pictures of my soulmate, the dog when I haven't been sleeping myself.



What are the chances she has been taking pictures of me sleeping? I'll have to find her iPhone and get back with you on that.

Then, of course, I've been on Facebook entirely TOO MUCH.

...

My long ,strange trip ( thanks Grateful Dead) has taken a sunny turn as I will return to teaching in September. As any one who teaches knows, that's way too long to be out of the loop. So my first action was to pick up my list of things to learn ( that I was too superstitious to touch until now).Thanks to my PT buddies, I have a good list to get started.

My diminutive sidekick ( DS 7) is revved to go back to monthly sojourns to the book store. He also now wants to go to the Staples and Office Max with me. On a sad note, two of my favorite teacher stores have folded due to the bad economy. That leaves me with two stores, a Lakeshore and a privately owned little shop. Both are more than 10 miles from home and require a road trip.

Since I am clueless as to which grade I will teach, I am sticking to the basics for now which means I need nothing at the moment but general teaching tomes. Hubby is counting the days...