Arts Conference

I spent Thursday and Friday at an Arts Conference in Ogden. It was so wonderful. They really put an emphasis on how to include the arts into everyday classroom teaching. We always focus so much on reading, writing and math but sometimes forget about how important visual arts, music, dance and drama are to children. We were able to spend about 2 hours in a workshop for all the art forms and then had a couple of hours with everyone who attended on our grade level to discuss and plan how we are going to implement what we learned into our teaching. I am so pumped to use the ideas and lesson plans I got. One of the best things about the conference is they really integrated across the curriculum. For example they showed us how to teach math using music, weather elements with dance and then drama with teaching the solar system! My kids are going to be so cultured!

Not Thinking Before Speaking

Embarrassing moment of the week: So everyday in my class we do some sort of word work. Yesterday we did 'Guess the Covered Word'. I had this paragraph up on the overhead with some words covered up. Then as we read the paragraph we would try to guess the word that was covered by using context clues. Usually I will give them a few guesses at a word and write their guesses on the board. Then I give them a clue by uncovering the first letter and then erase the words that don't match so far and we think of more words that match the first letter and so on. Well, on one word I let them guess for a while and then uncovered the first letter which was a 'f'. Then before really thinking about it I asked the class. "Ok, here is your clue. Now can anyone think of any 'f' words?" Of course the whole class just started laughing and saying "Oh my gosh!! Did you hear what teacher asked us?!" And to make it worse just as I said that another teacher walked in the room to asked me something. The word I was trying to guide them to was 'fantastic'.

I've Been Tagged

RULES
1) Post rules on your blog
2) Answer the six "8" items
3) Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving them a comment

8 Favorite TV Shows
1. Lost
2. So You Think You Can Dance
3. The Office
4. Dancing With the Stars
5. Heroes
6. Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles
7. umm…..
8. don’t watch a lot of tv….

8 Things I did Yesterday
1. Woke up freezing! (Matthew was hot and decided to open the window all night)
2. Made copies for the day
3. Taught my students about fractions and how to write a persuasive letter
4. Used toilet paper to make a scale model of the solar system during science
5. Graded papers
6. Planned lessons for today
7. Ate left over soup for dinner
8. Went to the gym

8 Things I look forward to
1. Thanksgiving with Jenna, Cole and Cade
2. Christmas at home
3. Summer
4. Matthew deciding which career to go into
5. Skiing
6. having children
7. weekends
8. shopping (not grocery shopping!)

8 Favorite Restaurants
1. Japon
2. Red Lobster
3. Cheesecake Factory
4. Mimi’s Cafe
5. IHOP (breakfast all day!)
6. Costa Azul
7. Los Hermanos
8. Chili’s


8 Things on my wish list
1. travel to Europe
2. to be dancing again
3. healthy family
4. that I could have donuts and French toast 24/7
5. to always live close to family
6. to someday have a tan
7. to learn how to dance on pointe
8. to have a cricut

8 People to tag
1. Taryn
2. Alisa
3. Emily Sharp
4. Aubrey
5. Melanie
6. Kara
7. Stephanie
8. Katie Tolle

Alexi's Engaged!

This is a big deal. My best friend from eighth grade is engaged!! Alexi and Tim have been dating FOREVER and are finally getting married! I am so excited for her!! Alexi has always been in pictures right between Jenna and I! We have always had to "share" her! Now she will belong to Tim. (We really like Tim by the way!)She has been such a good friend over the years and I am sad to be living so far away from her. She is living in Texas and is teaching dance and drill team at a high school. A wedding is the perfect excuse to get together this summer!

A couple of other Halloween pics!

The annual Halloween cookie decorating at the Allens!

Ciera and Matthew being vampires

Election!

So I voted for the first time today!! It was great!! I felt really good about putting in my say for the presidential race. The process went so smoothly and there was no line right after school when I went.

It has been so fun to talk to my class about the election. Some of them are so adamant about who they want to win! I have done a lot of fun online interactive things for students to get familiar with the election process and about the candidates. We talked about the electoral college and I had them all color in the states either red or blue for the 2004 election and discussed what it meant and how they determine a winner. I told them we will do it again in the next couple of days for this election to again see which states ended up voting red or blue. This was such a great visual and educational activity! They are so pumped to see if there were any changes this year. It all comes down to tonight!