Mighty Max's Wish for One Million Cards

Max Low, a twelve year old from Neola, Iowa, has been battling terminal cancer since 2004. When most kids would want their dying wish to be a trip to Disney World, or a chance to meet a famous singer, Max's wish is to receive one million cards. This week, my class is making cards for Mighty Max. I am also using this as an opportunity to talk to my kids about leukemia, and helping others less fortunate than ourselves. If you would like more information about Mighty Max you can view this

Des Moines Register blog, or join his facebook event

"Make Mighty Max Low's Wish Come True."

Cards can be sent to the following address:

Mighty Max Low

P.O. Box 111

Neola, IA 51559

As of 3/20/11, Max had received 19,966 cards!!!

I will try to keep you updated!

Please spread the word about Max and keep him in your thoughts and prayers!!!

Management Monday

SoN's SoCCeR pRacTiCe, PaRent-TeAcHEr COnFeRenCeS, nIece'S dAnCe RecItaL, bESt FrIenDs BirThDaY DiNneR, BoOk CluB, PreK ReGisTratION...

Does your week ever look like my week?

Do you ever feel like doing this....

AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here are a few things that I use to keep my family (and myself) getting to the right place at the right time, and so I'm doing this,

AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!,

a little less often.

AT HOME:

I have this magnetic, dry-erase calendar hanging up in my kitchen. I also have one at school. It is nice to be able to change/add things quickly. I also like having cork board at the bottom to place any notes, appt. cards, phone numbers, etc. The notes section of the side lets me add more details about upcoming events, lists (I'm a total listaholic!!), or, just like it says, notes.

This one is made by Board Dudes and you can find it online, for $28.75. I bought mine at WalMart for around the same price.

ONLINE:

To manage all of my family's events, including my school events and deadlines, I use Cozi. Cozi is an awesome website that allows you to create and manage an online calendar for you and your family's events, for FREE!!

Here's more:

• 
  
  Color code each family member and their events


• 
  
  View a single person's calendar or the entire family on one


• 
  
  Send yourself (or other family members) email or text reminder


• 
  
  Create a Cozi side bar on your desktop (to view/manage easily, anytime)


• 
  
  Create, view, and manage anywhere with the Iphone and Android Apps Plus...

• Create a grocery list


• Have that list text to you if you leave it at home (by calling an 800#)


• Create To Do Lists for yourself or others- share via email or text


• Use the meal planning tools to plan what's for dinner, then sync it with your grocery list to make sure you have everything you need

Click here to read Cozi reviews.

Shhhh!! Testing in Progress

Anyone ever taken the MAP tests? We are taking ours today and I am sooo anxious to see the students' results. My class had 100% of the kids proficient in reading and math on our state tests (ITBS), so I'm hoping that we do as well on these as we did on that test!

FREAKING OUT!

Technology Tuesday

It was hard to decide what I would write today since there are soooo many awesome technology ideas that I could blog about, but then I came across Ladybug's Teacher File, who was blogging about her Document Camera....So, I thought...why not blog about mine! : ) I have had an ELMO (Document Camera) for two years now, and it has been AHHHMAZING!!!!

Here are some ideas for using a

document camera in the classroom~

• Social Studies: Timelines (Have students fill in dates or events), Maps, Charts


• Math: Any and ALL Manipulatives, Clocks, Base 10 Blocks, anything for counting, Place Value Mats, Dice, Modeling how to use _____, Calculator


• Reading/Language Arts: Shared Reading, Read Alouds, Morning Message, Procedures, Anchor Charts, DOL, Revising with 6 Traits, Modeling Mentor Texts, Spelling & Vocabulary (Word Webs, Categorizing, Word Families, Word Ladders), Strategy Instruction- write on text/code with post-its/highlight, Environmental Print, Labels, Nutrition Facts on the back of packages, Ingredients, Text Features: Glossary, Index, Table of Contents, Captions, Headings, Bold Print, etc. Text Structure: Filling in Venn Diagrams or T-Charts (Compare/Contrast), Problem & Solution, Cause & Effect, Chain of Events (Sequencing), Webs, Lists (Description), Dictionary Practice

• Science: Rocks, Flowers/Flower Parts, Mold, Types of ______, Samples of ____, Nutrition Labels, Ingredients, Steps/Directions, Dissection, Experiments, Growth/Change of ______ over time (Save images), Observations of _____

• General/Managment: Timer, Looking at Rubrics, Worksheets, Assignments, etc., Pictures, Show and Tell, Reports or Presentations (Turn the camera up to face the student, they will be projected onto the BIG SCREEN!)

Many of these things can be projected onto a whiteboard, which can be written on, creating an "interactive whiteboard" experience. If you cannot project it largely onto the whiteboard, use a transparency to write directly on your document, 'without' writing directly on your document.

Technology Linky Party With Jena Snowden

Management Monday

Math Centers

I store my math centers in baggies, in a hanging shoe rack. Don't go cheap though...These WILL fall apart easily! You can even label each pocket with the name of the game, or skill. (This one is from Target, $14.99.) I label the rows by math concepts/skills:

• 
  
  Money


• 
  
  Calendar and Time


• 
  
  Place Value


• 
  
  Fractions and Decimals


• 
  
  Computation (Addition/Subtraction)


• 
  
  Computation (Multiplication/Division)

Here are a few websites that have great center ideas:

Can Teach Math Centers (Primary)

Kelly's Kindergarten Math Activities (Primary)

Little Giraffes Math (Primary)

The Virtual Vine Math Centers (Primary)

Dr. Mike's Printable Math Games

Technology Tuesday (Wednesday)

Using Word Clouds to Teach Sentence Fluency

My students created short, personal narratives, writing about a memorable time they shared with a special adult. When finished, I asked them to circle the first word of each sentence. Next, I typed these words into Tagxedo. (You could also use Wordle.) After changing a few of the settings, I was able to create a word cloud that displayed the students' words, with the most frequenly used words showing up the largest, and so on...Taking the 5 largets words, we then created a bar graph to display how many times we used those 5 words. The kids were amazed to see that we had used the word I twenty-six times to start our sentences. I used this activity to transition into the importance of varying our sentence beginnings. Tomorrow I am planning to read the book Owl Moon, which is a great book to analyze for sentence fluency. Here's a great lesson, taken from Writing Fix, where I took a lot of my ideas for this particular activity, and many others!!

I'm trying to come up with other ways to use word clouds in the classroom.I was thinking of having students upload some of their poetry, maybe shape poems. Has anyone ever used one of these sites for teaching writing in your classroom?

10 Things I've Learned from Teaching

I'm still pretty new to this whole blogging thing, but apparently bloggers have

'Linky Parties,' where they link to each others pages and blog about certain topics.

(It's amazing...There is like an entire blogging teacher community out there!)

Jennifer at Rowdy in First is hosting a "Ten Things I've Learned from Teaching" linky party. Here's my 10...

1. Choosing a baby name gets harder every year! (Trust me, I have two kids.) 2. Teachers do have favorites, and it's okay. It's not okay to show your favortism. 3. I have an addiction to garage sales and picture books! 4. Organization is KEY! 5. No matter how many late nights, early mornings, and weekends I put in, I still feel like I have so much left to do! 6. Aside from my family, there is only one thing I love more than teaching....Learning! 7. Set higher expectations for kids, and they will work harder to meet them! 8. Unless you are married to a teacher, husbands don't quite understand why we work as hard as we do...Does anyone, really? 9. Teaching takes a lot more time, effort, and love than I ever thought, but the rewards are much greater, too! 10. I am so glad to have a job where I don't have to watch the clock all day long. My job challenges, inspires, motivates, and gratifies my spirit everyday! I feel truly blessed that God has called me to this profession.