Weekly Wrap Up

It's been a great Homecoming Week.  Read more about our week HERE.

Newsletter for the week

Routines are being established and I am so proud of all the great work that the 4th grade crew has done this week.   Read our newsletter to find out the details.

Wrapping Up Our First Week

It is hard to believe that our first 6 day rotation is nearly complete.  Great things are happening as we go running through 4th grade.  Check out the newsletter to find out more.

Beginnings are everything!

Today was our first day.  I can honestly say that I never sleep well the night before the first day.  NEVER.   It doesn't matter how prepared I am or how "ready" I feel.  Last night I was up 3 different times to check on different things that crossed my mind.  

Thank goodness for that Jitter Glitter that I had sprinkled under my pillow.  Without that I might have slept even less than 3 hours!

Once the day got going, all was good...maybe I could even say GREAT!

 

We talked about all the different feelings we might be having before the day.  Then to help us make our "graph", everyone put there post it up to show what feeling they had before school started.

I had play doh waiting on the desks as the students came in.  They had to create something to tell me about their summer.  This was a floating raft to represent time spent swimming and tubing.   You can see more of the creations on our facebook page. 

You should see all the great thoughts:  microphone for all the singing, cow for the cattle that I showed at the fair....Oh so many great creations with just a little jar of play-doh!

We talked about things that take a long time and things that happen quickly.  I told the class how I had been waiting for them to get here followed by You're Finally Here! by Melanie Watt.

These fabulous fourth graders were able to breakout of 8 locks by solving different tasks: 

T - E - A - M - W - O - R - K!

We did cheers to all the possibility of the new year and then we had a little Jitter Juice to celebrate finally feeling less nervous.

By 3:12 when we walked out I think everyone was feeling like the day had been a success.   I am excited for the possibility of the year ahead.   Follow along with us as we go Running Through 4th Grade!

Magic....

This week was Week 2 of summer school.  It was a truly MAGICAL week!  I have 3 "classes" that I teach each week.  I teach a reading class twice and then I have magic followed by minecraft.  All of my classes are really fun to teach and I hope they are just as fun to be in.

I want to take time right now to talk about my magic class.  I started the week with a similar activity to how I start many units:  4 corners.  I put a poster board in each corner of the room.   Students rotated around the 4 corners and answered the questions that were on each poster:

What is MAGIC?

What tools (props) do magicians use?

What would your magic name be?  Ex:   Harry Houdini, Margaret the Magnificent...

What magic tricks do you hope to learn this week?

You should have seen the answers!  These kids were ready for class!  Not only did they fill the whole poster board with answers for the what is magic and what tools do magicians use, but they brought me magic tricks that they already knew and they came each day with tricks to show the class.

After we had made it around to all the posters, I told the class that I had an amazing trick that they would be leaving with.  I introduced the Magic Wheel.  (Thank you, Mr. Scarano, for teaching me this trick 18 years ago.....It is still my favorite!)  As we worked to cut out and assemble the magic wheels, time slipped away.   There was a line at the door waiting to get in for minecraft....I still had a card trick that I had planned to teach on Monday but it was going to have to wait until Tuesday.  The magicians headed out to their next class but that didn't mean that they weren't practicing their skills and illusions as the day continued!

I was so excited for day 2!  Kids brought magic wands and tricks to show the class before I began my instruction.  Today it was time for a card trick!  

The kids were able to practice this card trick for a few minutes and then we had some volunteers perform it for us.  These kids really are magicians in the making.  I completely expect to see a few of these kids on America's Got Talent in a few years.  Speaking of AGT, I did share 3 of my favorite magicians (illusionists) from this season with the class.  

Now please know that when we talked about magic on Monday, one of the things that the kids said was that some magic is really just a kind of prank.  It's true.  Sometimes we are entertained by what is a "trick."  I appreciated the willingness of students to serve as kind assistants to practicing magicians even when the result was a wet face or some other small moment of embarrassment.

Remember those props I was telling you about?  Would you believe that one amazing magician even shared his famous magical rabbit with the class on the last day?  

This magician that you see in the picture above even stayed with me during a time when she could have gone to another class.  She helped to teach the amazing quarter trick to everyone!

What really became the magic was when one of the little learners does an EXTRA trick for the class that she learned on her own.  I loved seeing her so motivated.

It will not surprise me at all if I see one of these kids on America's Got Talent in the next decade.

I have a summary of all the tricks that we learned during the week that I will try and share soon.  Until then remember this:

My Summer So Far

Since the school year ended on June 3, I feel like I have been on speed mode.  My 2 kiddos have each done 2 sports camps (that required me to drive them daily) along with summer rec baseball, softball, and the beginning of soccer.  I have done 1 work day with my 4th grade team.  A day was spent at the Palace Pool.  House chores are slowly getting caught up on.  I will say that I am loving how clean my bedroom looks right now.  Please don't expect it to be that clean 3 weeks from today.  I have also read 4 novels.  My favorite one was Just Like Me by Nancy Cavanaugh.   We haven't seen any movies yet but I am hoping that changes tomorrow night when we head out to the HWY 61 Drive-in to see Finding Dory and Zootopia.  With all of this fun stuff I have to tell you about what has been the MOST fun for me - attending day 1 of the Keystone Premier Education Conference.  Last year I had the opportunity to attend this conference with the Lancaster Community Schools Innovation Team.  When the email about it came out for this year I knew it was where I wanted to be again this year.  This year's first keynote speaker was Todd Whitaker.  He has over 40 books and it was worth going even to just get to hear him speak.
 
After an awesome start to the morning I headed up to a session about Flipped, Blended, and Project-Based Learning.  These presenters (Bev Berns, Jarod Borman, and Melissa Wicklund) did such a great job of showing what these buzz words are and what they aren't but they also had us truly DOING these things:

While this was just a short session, we really enjoyed meeting new people.  Imagine my awesome surprise when I walked out of this session to find Nathan Greiner of Design Mill.  8 years ago Nathan came to my 5th grade classroom at River Ridge and started presenting about Augmented Reality.  In the years that followed that first presentation, I always looked forward to inviting Nathan and his Design Mill team in to share their passion and expertise with my 5th graders.  It was a great joy for me to get to be Nathan's oldest son's teacher.   I loved reconnecting with Nathan and also getting to see his 2 new products that he was showcasing at the conference (The Solmill Eclipse Multi-User VR solution and the Torch Interpretive Projector System). The day moved quickly and I enjoyed every one of my sessions.

#FutureReady

Culture of Excellence

High Impact Instruction

(You can read my notes from the sessions that I attended by clicking on the links.)

I left the Grand River Center and headed on my merry way to run just a quick errand before heading home for Will's baseball game.  With no time to change clothes before the ball game, we headed to the field and sat and enjoyed 5 exciting innings before returning home from the tie ball game.  Summer is just as fast-paced as the school year but what my time is spent doing is different.  Thanks for reading my recap of my summer so far.  Hope you are enjoying the events of your summer!

Shine on!

Our Year in Review