Gearing up for the New Year

It is that time of year again! Time for another brand new school year to start.  The supplies are bought and labeled, my classroom is mostly set up, and I'm ready to get into my regular routine.  Next week begins all of the professional development  for the start of the school year.  In my district we are incredibly lucky to have CUE Rock Star come and do a Black Label session as our main event.  The focus will be on integrating more technology and teaching in innovative and creative ways.  I happen to be presenting at this event and am very excited to be working with such a great team of energetic people.  If you have read even one of my past posts, you probably guessed that I am presenting on Digital Citizenship.  What can I say.... it is pretty important to me and I have spent a lot of time focusing on this topic in the classroom.  Having already done a presentation on this same topic earlier in the summer, I am very excited to give this a second run-through and pass the information on to my colleagues within my own district.
As I begin to look at the new English Language Arts curriculum that I am piloting this year and see the numerous ways to integrate technology, it makes me very happy to be teaching at such a wonderful time.  Students will have a chance to use and annotate on eBooks, have access to audio recordings of the literature, and write with more meaning.  It has been a busy but enjoyable summer and I am looking forward to meeting my next "colony" of Busy Bees!

Ocean Trip (lots of pictures!)

I apologize in not getting these up sooner.  I know many people have been anxious to see the pictures from the ocean trip to Fort Bragg.  We had a great time with beautiful weather that day.  The students had a chance to see many sea urchins, sea anenomes, a couple starfish, a few sea slugs, and quite a few hermit crabs while we were at the tide pools.

At the seal watchpoint

More at the seal watch point

This seal sure put on a show for us! Can you see him on the rocks?

At the tide pools

Purple sea urchin

Sea slug

Hermit Crab

Hermit Crab

Dried out crab found on the shore

Enjoying the beach

Mussel shell

The Gray Whale Skeleton

Ranger Fred spoke to us about ocean creatures

Guess the whale got hungry?

On the way back home!

Besides our ocean trip, we have also been focusing on our last math unit for the year, multiplication.  The students have created arrays using manipulatives and Legos, created group array cities, and even painted some arrays using Q-tips.  We have certainly been busy.

Lego Multiplication

Making Array buildings

 

Putting together the array cities

Building arrays and writing equations

Painting arrays with Q-tips

As you can see we have been enjoying the last couple of weeks, both in and outside of the classroom.  This is just a preview of what is to come for Wednesday at Open House.  We hope to see everyone there.

Open House

Wednesday, June 8th

5:30 PM BBQ

6:00 - 7:00 PM All classrooms open

Come see what we have been working on throughout the year!