and living life one day- and book- at a time
We started our poetry unit this past week, and by Thursday I was feeling about as “Blah” about poetry as my students. I hadn’t yet broached my favorite poems as I was using one larger poem in each of my grade levels to teach some of the basic poetry terms, so my enthusiasm was really …
It never fails. We create a fabulous written assignment and provide the students with a clear, concise rubric, and when we receive the work, it is far from what we expected. In the last quarter, I gave my students a written assignment and provided them with a rubric. I told the students that the rubric …
One of the great ways to assess a lesson that has been taught is to utilize a quick formative assessment or questioning to determine the success of the lesson. After a lesson, when using Classcraft, I can choose to use The Wheel of Destiny to randomly choose a student to answer a question about the …
I’m going to take a moment to discuss something personal. Why? Because it is definitely going to affect my teaching, and that’s what I write about: teaching. On Wednesday morning, I woke up and got ready for work like always. I packed my lunch and breakfast (because I cannot eat first thing in the morning), …
Remember when you were younger, and you would wait around watching the bottom of the screen to see if school was magically cancelled, so you could go back to bed and sleep in? I remember praying for snow days when I was a kid. When I became a teacher, I prayed again for snow days …
Have you seen a recent Covid surge at your school since returning from Winter break? When we returned, there were only a few students that were currently quarantined due to Covid; however, as the week progressed more and more students were sent home. The flu hit us hard right before Christmas break, and now, Covid …
When we returned to school this January, we had the honor to hear a presentation by the 2022 South Carolina Teacher of the Year, Ann Carter. It was extremely motivating and thought provoking. Her challenge to us as teachers was to be Gold Stars in our students’ lives. The relationships that we make with our …
Last year, at the beginning of the 2020-2021 school year, teachers were given a very daunting task: teach a lesson a day on 15 topics for which someone else has written the lessons and assessments. All of these had to be completed in the first three weeks of school along with the usual MAP testing. …
Last Friday I felt it coming on. I had been sneezing and coughing more than usual, and I even felt a little achy. I did nothing, but start drinking plenty of fluids and tried to rest. Rest, I told myself, was important to finish out the last week before winter break. By Monday, I kept …
As soon as I heard Amanda Gorman’s poem, “The Hill We Climb,” I knew right away that I wanted to purchase a copy of her book. I pre-ordered the book in January 2021, and I have been waiting a long time for it to arrive. I was pleasantly surprised when her book, Call Us What …