'Twas the Night Before School Starts

'Twas the night before the first day of school, when all through the house, every creature was stirring....including the computer mouse.


I know, it was a corny try, but I am starting my second year tomorrow. I am SUPER excited to see the kids. I keep thinking back and forth on whether or not it'll be a good year. This is what I've decided...

If I am not excited about the year, then THEY won't be excited about the year. I am doing my best to step up my game, and really make sure my students are as engaged as they can be.

My new motto for this year. I am going to Teach Like a Pirate this year.

Summer Professional Development #1- Project Learning Tree

This is really delayed and I apologize for that. Life gets very crazy.

On Saturday, June 8, 2013 I attended a workshop hosted by the Meadowlands Environmental Center. This workshop focused on ways to engage students in environmental education and was provided by the organization Project Learning Tree. This workshop provided me with a great curriculum guide for grades K-8. The guide has several broad topics that lessons are separated into. Each lesson tells me what grade level, time constraints, materials, etc. are needed to run the lesson. They also give us suggestions of related lessons, similar to the one we are looking at.

We not only looked through and understood the book but we participated in a few of the activities ourselves.  We examined different kinds of soil and then predicted how the soil would lay-soil, sand, clay, etc. One of the other activities talked about creating an ideal community-making sure there were resources available, housing, schools, etc. That was my favorite activity. I felt I could relate it to the NASA real time data lessons some colleagues created during the summer last year.

It was a great experience and I am excited to try and implement some of these lessons when I have a classroom of my own.

The Curriculum Guide

Using my iPad to take notes and looking through the Appendixes of the book.

Attempting to paint splatter a cottonwood tree leaf.

My dirt sample.

Playing a "jeopardy" search game.