Saturday, January 21, 2012

Whoa What a Week!

This was a short week, but man was it packed!  Monday, I sat in front of my computer to work on my National Boards staring at a blank screen, and enjoyed a delicious meal of tacos.  Tuesday, I heard the best news ever, my school is staying open!!!  After the board meeting, my principal, Rebecca, approached me and my other two teammates and looked us right in the eye and said, "Game on tomorrow!" Several months ago when we visited another school and decided to dump our reading anthology Rebecca asked us to present what we had learned to the rest of our staff.

Fast forward to now and I will tell you, its not easy to present to the home crowd!  I had already done this presentation at another school, and knew the material well, but when it came time to present to our staff, I was afraid of how it was going to be perceived by the other teachers.  We didn't want them to think we were 'showing off' or saying 'look at me!'  Well, our worrying was for nothing!  I work with some of the best teachers out there and they were so excited about the change and asked tons of questions and several grades went and downloaded the curriculum immediately to use during their workday Friday.   The conversations between all the teachers was AWESOME!  Also, Amber, over at Adventures of a Third Grade Teacher was able to come and learn more about this program and is planning on using it in her classroom!  Make sure you check her out, she is always sharing great ideas.  In the end, I know that all our students are going to benefit from having teachers who are willing to move into something new because they know its best for kids.

This all happened, and it was only Wednesday!  Are you tired yet?!??!?!

Thursday we had a field trip to the   Gaston County Museum for a program called Let's Build a County Seat.  My students were able to act out a court case and found the defendant guilty!  They also got to learn about what the civil war was like in our area.


Our group learning all about the Civil War 
I think I could've been a solider! 
One of my teaching partners, Erica, ready to shoot the enemy!  Too bad she was fighting with the Confederacy, and she's from Michigan!!!!  Love it! 

And we are now on Friday!  It was a much needed workday!  We spent the morning visiting a school in a neighboring county that is using Pearson Investigations in math as well.  And if you remember some of my earlier posts about this, my team started using Investigations in November and have had huge success with the program.


Thank goodness Monday is also a workday, because after this busy week, I NEED IT!  Now on to work on my National Boards play on Pinterest!
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6 comments:

  1. You know you love me, even if I am from the north! :)

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  2. I wish Monday was a workday for us!!

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  3. We use Pearson Envision, too. What do you mean by Pearson Investigations? I'm I missing something? I would so love to hear how to make math fun :)

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  4. Kelley, I will send you some good vibes on Monday morning as Im sitting in tutor interviews :)

    Elizabeth, 3 years ago when our district bought Pearson Envision, the Investigations was purchased with it. It is a separate curriculum, but it was created by Pearson at the same time. I.Hate.Envision!!! I.Love.Investigations!!! It allows my kids to build their own learning. The teacher does very little talking, I know you probably wonder how kids can learn like that (I did!) But it is amazing how much they already know and share with each other. Our school is also title one so we have lots of struggles with our students retaining knowledge, but with Investigations, it is amazing how much they retain. I will put a pic of it in the original post so you can see what it looks like and poke around in your school/district to see if you have it. If you are interested in learning more about Investigations, and your district doesn't have it, shoot me an email. I'd be happy to share what we are doing :)

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  5. I have been teaching the Investigations Program for many years and love it!

    Lori@
    bee-the-change.blogspot.com

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  6. Lori, I would love to hear how you are using the program! We are just beginning and am always looking for pointers :)

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