Imagination Sparkles

When I stumbled across this article I got giddy.  How fun to combine two things I love, cats and math.  I showed the pictures to my 5th graders, only the ones that they understood the mathematical concept.  Show it to your kids or just look at it yourself.  Hope this gives you a little laugh and a smile on this hump day :) And just because you need some more cuteness in your life here is Fitch, one of my dear kitties/kiddies at our last Winter Olympic Party. He was part of a survey we were doing on favorite winter Olympic sport.  See cats + math!

Closing a lesson...this was one of the essential skills you learned in your teacher preparation program.  I would bet we can all do it effectively, but I wouldn't be surprised if you sometimes quickly close a lesson because of that darn schedule (kids are leaving for intervention, lunch, end of day, next subject, etc.).  Oh you don't....okay then its just I who does that sometimes.  So for people like me, I love to find new closing activities when they look like a. something I can use for formative assessment and b. aren't going to eat up a bunch of time.  So I was really encouraged when I stumbled across this fun little Teachers Pay Teachers freebie .  Don't assume because it is made by Mr. Elementary Math that this will just work for math.  These activities can be utilized in any subject.  So I hope this helps to slow things down or gives you another way you can still close your lesson with limited time.  

For several weeks in the month of February I spent time after work and on the President's Day holiday reading and reviewing reports for my business fraternity, Pi Sigma Epsilon .  I must admit at times when I needed to take a break from reading I found myself saying "why am I using my downtime for this?"  I took a few minutes to go back through some old Facebook pictures of my time in college and in PSE.  I ran across a lot of fun ones and it energized me to get back to my reading.  You see when I was in college I was in a chapter that submitted lots of national awards for the national conference each year.  From the end of the first semester to the end of January our lives were focused on writing reports about the year.  I remember many nights saying goodbye to my dad as he left for work at 5am and I was still up writing or working on homework that had been pushed to the side till then.  My friends and I spent a lot of time writing these reports...

I watched this video , I love what Jamie Oliver is trying to do about raising awareness about food, nutrition, and our food system.  I recently watched this video and became really uncomfortable with it.  First, I am assuming his cursing is either fake or happenining after the kids leave.  Second, I don't ever want to shame my kids about what they are eating. I have seen lunches like this before and it definitely concerns me, however I want parents and those getting kids ready for school to feel empowered.  I work in a district that the lunches are not as healthy as the school lunch shown here, so when I see kids bring their lunch to school I know many times it is due to their parents wanting to provide them with more quality, variety, and nutrition.  Other times it is about cost, families that don't qualify for free or reduced lunch are equally concerned with the cost and can purchase and provide a lunch that meets their families budget.   So after all ...

If you haven't seen the video about a preschool in an assisted living home in Washington, I highly recommend you watch it.  As I was watching the video I began to think about how we could structure preschools like this, about the effect it could make on our community and culture of learners in the school.  Have you ever been to a school like this?  What do you learn from watching it?

New career goal...I must become this cool before I retire as a teacher!

I recently have read several articles and blogs on the idea of whether you call kids smart and how a label or that label can effect them.  So I have to ask, in your classroom do you use that word?  Before I read this question I hadn't thought about it specifically, but I realized upon reflection it is not a comment I use with my students.  I'd like to sound all advanced and say it was because I had already thought through the problem of what happens to kids and what does a kid think when they make a mistake or are wrong.  Perhaps my lack of calling kids smart came from being labeled that at a very young age and starting in gifted classes before they were available to the rest of the school.  Perhaps that's why I understand some of the challenges explained in this article.  Perhaps also the teachers or parents calling kids smart aren't doing anything wrong, what if they are using these words and also creating a culture that values learning, mistakes, and ch...