Parent Teacher Conferences Have Been Survived!

Well, I successfully made it through parent teacher conferences and I am alive to talk about it! We had conferences late Thursday and all morning Friday. I am beginning to get over my parent phobia. They're not so bad and they often see you as a resource and trust your judgment. I guess I was afraid they would question my teaching, but I have grown to see that they really respect what you do for their kids and want to support you in the classroom! I used my projector for a fun welcome background and was able to show some parents my blackboard site via the big screen!

Tomorrow is my observation and evaluation from my building principal. I hope all goes well. I am doing something a little different so I guess we'll see...

Christmas Came Early...

I must tell you that my projector is finally installed and ready for technology magic. I created some slides in smart notebook to use for warm-ups tomorrow and can't wait for the big unveiling of this beautiful piece of technology on Monday.

Also have to play a DVD about the book fair and no longer need to lug the television out to my trailer since I can show it with my projector. Thank you Columbia Public Schools, this teacher won't let the dust settle in this new investment!!!!!

Hogwarts and Celebrations

This week is National Teen Read week and I am excited for the festivities to begin. I put my Leopard Reach to work asking them to be my promotions team for this event. They created a commercial and helped pick out the spirit day for Thursday. This Thursday we are dressing like our favorite book character. I am knitting a Gryffindor scarf because I am going to be Hermione Granger from the ever so popular Harry Potter series. I have found myself totally engrossed in my creation of this costume. I'll bring a camera and share the masterpieces next blog post.

On a more tech note I have introduced me class to Blackboard and they are eager to begin posting to the discussion board. They seemed excited when we were in the lab learning the site and since have asked questions about when they would be able to post again.

Gearing up!

Well, my blackboard site is official and I am taking my first hour to the computer lab on Thursday to learn how to access and post on it. Kerry Townsend has been helping me get the site all prepped and I've learned how to use flaming text to create a heading banner and added all kinds of features to the site. I even created a glossary of all our vocab terms so far. I don't think it'll be too difficult to manage, but we'll see once kids start using it. I'm hoping to reveal the URL at parent/teacher conferences so my parents can use it to check homework and obtain copies of assignment attachments.

I'm moving into the technology era!

My digital literacy class, which I feel has been so eye-opening in terms of learning how important multiliteracies are at this point in time, and has helped me discover new tools and forms of literacy to begin using in my classroom has really challenged me to take action in my classroom.

I'm trying not to take too much on this first year but I am really getting excited at some of the new possibilities I am learning about. This week's article for that class is all about fanfiction. This is a concept I became familiar with in an undergrad class. Apparently, if you visit fanficiton.net you will discover a whole world of literacy that a majority of the population doesn't even know exists. Fanfic, as it's called my it's inner circle of writers, is taking characters who already exist in another book or media and rewriting the story from new perspectives or your own prerogative. The article challenges teachers to think about how they can use this literary experience to build on in their own classrooms. The article also pointed out that students who author fanfic usually consider these writings their best work, better than what they write for the traditional classroom.