S’long week 20, and welcome Quarter 3! Here are the week’s highlights.
1. Transcripts – A huge milestone on my way of reaching my New Year’s Goal to finish my dissertation, I finally finished transcribing over 24 hours of videotapes and interviews. You’re looking at 12 two-hour student interviews, over 120 pages. Feels so good to be on to data analysis now!
2. Breakfast – These egg muffins are the perfect grab-and-go breakfast for teachers. I can’t even believe I’ve gone my whole career and never discovered these. So easy! I make a big batch on the weekends, and my husband and I have them as a quick breakfast on the run. I microwave them for 1 minute, et voila! To make them, I begin by sautéing any vegetables I happen to have in my fridge, add diced ham or bacon, then stir that all into 8 eggs, a dash of coconut milk, and a dash of coconut flour (with lemon zest and fresh cracked pepper). YUM! And it’s all of your food groups in one healthy bite!
3. PBIS Videos– You may have seen my post from earlier in the week about the PBIS Video Project that my students are working on this week. They are having so much fun, and I love seeing how creative they can get. Across 3 classes, I have 20 different groups making 20 very different final products. In the photos above, you can see on the left that they are editing using iMovie. I love the picture on the right of my brave group that is demonstrating how to behave appropriately on the playground (Side note: It is 3 degrees outside, and they are coming inside to warm up between takes. “Where are your mittens?” I ask, and am answered with blank stares…) It’s been a great week, and a much needed break from traditional reading and writing!
4. Florida Oranges – We have a sweet aunt who lives in Naples. For the past couple of years, just when Winter has officially overstayed its welcome, she sends us a care package of native Florida Citrus. This is a LOT of oranges, people! We can’t possibly eat them all, so I will enjoy spreading the sunshine even more! Mmmmm… delicious!
5. Adolescent Literature – To gear up for my upcoming graduate class that I will be teaching, I am reading and rereading a few favorites that will become required texts for my class. We are definitely going to read Readicide and The Book Whisperer, but then as a class we will select 3 other adolescent fiction books to read and use for our book chats. Which 3 would you pick? Or did I miss your favorite?
A BONUS:
6. Minor Disruption – Okay so you tell me how productive you think we were after the custodian zipped by our room on a giant Zamboni. Hilarious! I just had to pause and take a picture, because we were all laughing so hard!
Happy end to week 19! The highlights this week are: The Science of Tubing, Endless Grading, War Horse, WALL*E, and Wordless News. Have a great Friday!
1. The Science of Tubing – If you didn’t catch my post last week, we had a great field trip last Friday. The students completed and turned in their packets this week in Science. They said it was the BEST field trip they’ve ever had. Even though it was educational? Yup, even then.
2. Grading – Uhhhhhggggg – it’s the end of Quarter 2, and I have SO MUCH grading to do! I know the students worked so hard on their Argument papers, and I am so very proud of them, but I secretly wish Dembrobot could just blow up that pile of papers with his little red laser… The students handed in their Argument papers on Monday, and I have until next Monday to finish grading all 90 of them. The good news is that I only have 3 left – yessss!!!!
3. War Horse – I went to see the Broadway Theatrical production of War Horse this week. I was completely blown away. The puppeteering is mesmerizing! I was particularly amazed at how ‘cinematic’ this production was, replete with slow-motion and lighting effects that rival the silver screen. Particularly captivating was the portrayal of action and movement, even while the ‘horses’ and actors stayed in place.
4. WALL*E – To introduce our new fiction unit, my students are watching WALL*E this week. Oh you should have seen those ecstatic smiles turn right upside down when I announced that we would be watching WALL*E (YAY!)……and ALSO completing a film analysis (boo, hiss, grumble). They were not happy with me. However, we are enjoying watching the film. It’s great to see 13-year-olds completely hypnotized by a Disney film. While watching, they are identifying elements of fiction (setting/mood, character/traits, perspective, plot, and theme) as well as keeping an eye out for symbolism, foreshadowing, and allusion.
5. Wordless News – This week I learned about Wordless News, “a weekday creative ritual starting at 4:45am. Maria gets up, reads the news, sketches, digitizes, and posts an editorial illustration for a selected headline.” This seems like an excellent opportunity for incorporating current events into the Language Arts classroom, as well as an opportunity to discuss and analyze images as multimedia texts. This picture, for example, relates to the NPR article “More Than 300 Sharks in Australia Are Now on Twitter.” In a nutshell, “Government researchers have tagged 338 sharks with acoustic transmitters that monitor where the animals are. When a tagged shark is about half a mile away from a beach, it triggers a computer alert, which tweets out a message on the Surf Life Saving Western Australia Twitter feed. The tweet notes the shark’s size, breed and approximate location.”
Students could view the image and discuss how it relates to a main idea in the news story. They could identify elements in the image that connect to evidence from the story, and use close-reading techniques to provide supporting evidence. Additionally, they can discuss the use of color, size, perspective, and other multimodal elements that are used to convey meaning without the use of text. I think this is such a neat project!
Happy Returns from Winter Break! Week 18 was a short one due to 2 Cold Days, but I will share the highlights nonetheless!
1. Annual Mother-Daughter Chicago Weekend – For the past 19 years, we have had an annual Mother-Daughter Shopping Trip to Chicago. By we I mean my mother, my sister, my mom’s best friend, her daughter, and myself. We get a suite near the Magnificent Mile and spend the weekend shopping, dining, and laughing. We always go right after Christmas to hit up the best sales. I so look forward to this (and save up for this!) every year! Pictured above: The snowy, freezing Magnificent Mile (a little weather never stopped us!), the inside of the Bloomingdale’s Building, Garrett’s Popcorn (a MUST if you’re visiting Chicago), The 5 of us dining at Tavernita, and my favorite purchase of the weekend (on sale at Banana Republic for only $12!).
2. Cold Days – How can this NOT be a highlight? We got TWO Cold Days this week! I stayed warm inside in my jammies, playing with the dogs, baking treats, and working on my dissertation. What a wonderful gift!
4. Frog Hunt – Look closely at the pictures above. Do you see the hidden frogs (Hint: There are 3!)? Every year, as part of the 7th grade Science curriculum, our students learn about animal adaptations. One of their projects is to try and hide a frog in plain sight throughout the school by camouflaging the frog’s color. Some are very obvious, and some are very tricky and well-hidden! To incorporate technology this year, the brilliant Science teachers first had the students scout the school and take a photograph of the ‘environment’ where they wanted to place their frog. Back in the classroom, they could color match to their photograph. Isn’t this a great project? I look forward to it every year, as it really adds excitement in the hallways!
5. This Awesome Poster – Doesn’t this just say it all? I love it!
So how was your week? Did you get a Cold/Snow day?
Hellooooooo, Winter Break! Oh how much I’ve looked forward to seeing you! Here are the highlights from week 16:
1. Chair Bungees for Restless Students: I discovered a really great, inexpensive, QUIET, unobtrusive fidget tool for the classroom – chair bungees. There’s not much to it, you just wrap a bungee cord or some kind of sturdy, elastic material around 2 chair legs. This gives students something to lightly bounce their legs against during class. Hopefully, this won’t disturb their neighbors or make any noise, but will provide sensory feedback for the student and a mindless outlet for fidgety behavior. I like that it occupies their legs instead of their hands, which we need for work!
2. Ready for January! I am all set to come back for break, which is a great feeling. I don’t have any correcting or lesson planning to do over my winter break, which means I can focus my energy on my family and on my dissertation. My calendar and assignment board are all set!
3. Phonics Spelling App – I found a great new app for our students struggling with phoneme-grapheme mapping, sight words, and basic foundational skills. Of course this is only one component of our multi-faceted reading intervention program for students who are reading 2 or more levels below grade level. The Simplex Phonics Spelling App costs $5, so I am working on locating the funds to purchase this app for our small-but-growing list of identified students. My hope is that I can introduce them to the app at school, but they will practice the app at home and with their parents. I installed and interacted with the app for a while, and I liked that it offered lots of support and that it didn’t seem too ‘babyish’ for our 6th through 8th graders. Here’s hoping this is a winner for our students!
4. Spirit Week! Leading up to winter break, we have had a ‘Spirit’ or ‘Dress-up’ day each day this week. Monday = Pajama Day / Tuesday = Twin Day / Wednesday = Blue Day to honor our custodian with cancer / Thursday = Nerd Day / Friday = Red Day. I love dressing up with a theme, so of course I was on Cloud 9 all week!
5. Like a Rock Star: I made the front page of TpT! I was so excited to see this!
So how was your week? I hope you are already (or thinking about) enjoying your Winter Break!!! See you in January 😉
Wahoo and goodbye to Week 15! Only one more week until Winter Break – can you stand it? Everyone is so excited! We just have to keep it together for 5 MORE DAYS! Below are the highlights from Week 15:
1. Fakebook assignment – For the past couple of years, I have used this Fakebook Template I purchased on Teachers Pay Teachers as a 2nd Quarter Independent Reading project. The students read either a novel or a biography, and they create the Fakebook Page based on a main character or figure. They have to do quite a bit of reflecting and inferring – identifying the character’s friends, hobbies/interests, personality traits (WITH evidence!), important events, and finally explain a statement the character made and what they may have meant by that statement. Clearly, the students put a lot of work into this and enjoy it as well. We hang them up in the library to share and encourage others to read. They turned out so wonderful this year, I just had to share!
2. Midwest Weather – As you may have seen on the news, or experienced first hand if you live here, it’s been…. interesting weather in Wisconsin for the past week. I won’t even re-hash all the details, because High Five For Friday is about celebrating what’s going well! I will share with you this picture of the view from my ‘office’ (aka classroom). I know I am extremely blessed to have this job, and this view is just another cherry on the sundae. It’s easy for the students and myself to stare out the window and become lost in nature. I love it!
3. My Resilient Talented Niece – Resiliency is such a powerful skill that we must teach our children. I had the privilege of attending my niece’s figure skating competition this weekend. She took second place, and was disappointed, but I couldn’t have been more proud if she had taken first place. Let me tell you the strength of character that my niece demonstrated. During her routine, she tripped and fell flat on her stomach – a thud reverberated across the rink, and her parents, my husband and myself all caught our breath in our throats. “Oh dear! We must run to her, scoop her up, cuddle her and wipe away her tears!” NO. Not at all – we must resist this urge to intervene. Instead, I watched what happened next in wonder. My niece’s coach helped her up, dusted her off, gave her a 3-second pep talk and a few high-tens, and off she went, back on the ice to finish her routine. WOW! Would other children have given up and quit? What was it about my niece that got her back on the ice? Resiliency. What a powerful lesson she learned that day. And to be honest, I learned an important lesson, too – let our students fall and pick THEMSELVES back up. Such a proud aunt am I!
4. Prank Wars! Oh, it’s ON! So I have this student – a rare student you are blessed with only one in a while – who is quite the hilarious jokester. He has been pulling pranks on other students for a while, and I gotta admit – they’re pretty funny (and also harmless). I love students like this, because they keep class interesting (in a good-natured way) and keep me on my toes. Well, now it is my turn – I am the victim! On Tuesday, I was sitting at my desk grading papers during study hall, and the room was completely silent as my little cherubs were busy at work. Suddenly, I look up and see a fork dancing on the edge of my desk. How did he get there? Well my jokester had army crawled across the room and was lying on the floor in front my desk, puppeteering the goofy creation. Oh how I laughed! Then, the next day, the student hid a ‘dollar’ where he thought I wound find it and pick it up. A very tempting prank, indeed. The ‘dollar,’ however, is only 49% of a dollar – this student knows that the remaining 51% is actually still redeemable for value, while the 49% is essentially trash. So there the dollar sits, teasing all passersby who glance at my pencil sharpener. What a stinker this kid is! Well I need to get him back, and boy am I racking my brain to drum up a few ideas. Let me know in the comments below if you can think of anything!
5. 100 Followers – Wahoo, I can’t believe it! I reached 100 wonderful, awesome, amazing followers on Teachers Pay Teachers! It was an exciting milestone to reach, and I am proud of my little shop, and so very grateful for all of my wonderful followers and customers.
So… how was your week? Are you all set for the holiday break?
Wow, quarter 2 is flying by! It’s already time for progress reports. With only 2 weeks left until winter break, this week seemed to go by in a blink. Here are the highlights:
1. Choir Practice – Our 6th, 7th, and 8th grade choirs are rehearsing for their upcoming winter concert. Since my room is right across the hall from the gymnasium, I’ve been enjoying the beautiful music for the past couple of days. We have some very talented students! Post-Thanksgiving, I can’t get enough Christmas music 🙂
2. Catching Fire – I finally got to go see Hunger Games: Catching Fire! It was a very captivating, engaging movie. I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but I found it (gulp)… better than the book. The second book had a very slow progression, and it become stale and boring at times; it was not my favorite of the 3 books. But the silver screen affords many opportunities for editing and pacing to help refocus and inject some action and excitement into the story. I felt it was still true to the book, while emphasizing important plot points and glossing over less essential information to engage viewers and keep the plot moving. It didn’t feel as gruesome or shocking as the onscreen action in the first Hunger Games movie. If you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend it (but watch Hunger Games first, of course!).
3. The Paper Chain – I am really enjoying using my first self-published ebook with my students: The Paper Chain. I have sent them the book, chapter by chapter, on ebackpack (our school’s electronic file-sharing app). Having the ebook in digital form allows students to keep track of the file without misplacing it. They can manipulate the book themselves, adding annotation such as highlighting, images, text, and notes. The digital format has also allowed me to share color files with students, which has proven essential for engaging students and keeping them organized (I can simply say, “Look at the blue box.” or “Read the text in green.”). These iPads have really been a huge benefit for our Language Arts classroom, and I don’t think I could ever go back to pencil and paper!
4. Solutions – As part of our Argumentation Unit, students just completed a collaborative discussion on our class topic of Fast Food Restaurants. Half of the students represented stakeholders that oppose fast food, and half represented stakeholders that support fast food. Having wrapped up our verbal debate, students moved on to generating possible solutions / compromises – a topic which will be included in the conclusion of their Final Argument Paper. I was very proud of the great solutions they generated as a class! See the list above, and be proud of our future 🙂
5. Dembro Doggy Daycare – Yes, my sister is out of town on her penultimate dental school interview (8 of 9 interviews). The madness is almost over! We are watching her dog, Tyger, while she is away. Add that to the madness that is our house – incorporating a new dog, Ruffy, into the mix – and we have a bit of chaos. It’s a lot of barking, a lot of walks, pets, treats, belly rubs – a lot of everything! The dogs are very happy though, and isn’t that what it’s all about? Right now, they are all sleeping on the couch, very peacefully, so I’ll have to enjoy this brief moment of quiet before my husband comes home or a dog comes on the TV or some other catalyst for crazy.
Week 12 has come to a close, and it is time to reflect on the memorable moments and highlights.
1. Laptop Decal – This week, I’m giving a shoutout to my awesome laptop decal. All of the teachers in my school have been issued a Macbook (I have an Air). What an amazing gift! Being me, of course mine has to look different. I bought this adorable tree decal on Amazon for only about $2.50 – what a bargain!
2. Credible Sites – I posted earlier this week about how our class is investigating credible sites and learning how to do appropriate Internet searches. I added this new free product to my TpT store here. It has really improved my students’ critical thinking abilities as well as the quality of resources they are using in our Argument Paper.
3. Poms Jacket – My spirit wear arrived! I ordered a Poms jacket, with my name embroidered on it of course. I think it looks so schnazzy 🙂
4. Scarlet by Marissa Meyer – I finished my book this week. What a wild ride! I really enjoyed reading Cinder, and Scarlet was a perfect sequel. I can’t wait for Cress to be available! I think these are excellent books to recommend to adolescent readers. Meyer reinvisions the traditional fairy tales of Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood in a science fiction, futuristic setting. Cinderella is actually part cyborg (she has robotic elements to replace limbs she lost in a fire), and Scarlet falls in love with Wolf, who is part human, but part Lunar. There are elements of magic and fantasy as well. What I love most about Meyer’s writing is that while it follows the traditional fairy tales, it also departs from them in exciting and unpredictable ways – it really keeps you guessing! And the vocabulary and imagery are appropriately challenging for middle school readers. There is some violence and romance, but Meyers keeps it PG for our young readers. The Lunar Chronicles are definitely a great read!
5. Meet Ruffy – Ruffy was my grandparents’ dog. He is a 7-year-old Yorkshire Terrier. My grandmother passed away last Monday, and Ruffy needed a new home. After his 7 years of excellent lap-warming services, cuddles, and kisses, we all agreed that he needed to stay in the family and retire like a king. And so, this is the tale of how he came to live with Team Dembro. Since Ruffy was living with an elderly couple, he was not used to many things like noise, activity, or a dog-friendly schedule. He was not fully house-trained or trained at all, and he never interacted with other dogs. He cried every night for a week when we crated him, and he had many accidents in our house. But he is improving each day! He is snoring right now on my lap as I type this. He and our other dog Rocket will hopefully become very good friends, and soon Ruffy will learn to be one of the pack. We will send him to Doggy Daycare once a week to help him acclimate to other dogs, activity, and playing. I hope Grandma and Grandpa are smiling knowing that we are taking excellent care of him.
Sayonara, Week 11! Below are the silver linings and highlights of the week:
1. Pizza Party! I planned a pizza party this week for the 19 gracious, patient students who took the ORCA Assessment with me and allowed me to interview them for my research. I was absolutely FLOORED when I got this letter attached to my stack of pizzas. Have you ever heard of such a kindness? A teacher ‘discount’ exists in my dreams, but NO CHARGE? Unheard of! And every single student who ate the pizza kept asking, “This is really good – where’s it from?” I’ll be a customer of Jackson’s Blue Ribbon Pub for life!
2. The Paper Chain – My book arrived! I am so stinkin’ excited to see my name in print! I worked so very long and hard on this, and it felt like Christmas when the books arrived. The hard copy isn’t available for purchase yet, but you can purchase a digital copy here.
3. Graduate Class – I recently found out I that my graduate class was approved! I am an adjunct professor for Viterbo University in LaCrosse, Wisconsin. I will be teaching a course on Children and Adolescent Literature as part of the Reading Program for obtaining a Reading License. I am very excited for this opportunity! The two required texts will be Readicide by Kelly Gallagher (my favorite teacher author!) and The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller. Excellent books!
4. More Puppy Fun – I am still doggy-sitting for my sister, who is off interviewing for dental residency programs. My dog, Rocket (left) and her dog, Tyger (right) get along like peas and carrots. Giving them a bath was just hysterical – they even put on their miserable, pitiful faces just for my amusement.
5. …WHAT?!? There is something so fundamentally wrong with this picture. Halloween and snow – ugh. Is there anything I can say / buy / do to keep the cold, wet, white stuff from off my lawn?!? Silver lining though – it is very pretty, and I enjoy watching my dog ‘rediscover’ snow each winter.
Adios, week 10! It was a difficult and LONG week, especially with WKCE State Testing, but there are always the highlights to celebrate.
1. Share Responsibly – I love seeing this Technology Poster hanging outside my room and throughout my school. I think it is wonderful that adults are realizing the role we play in modeling and guiding students to make good decisions online. How will students ever learn these skills otherwise? Well, besides the few students who have crashed, burned, and learned the hard way. We need to be proactive and provide lessons in respectful and responsible digital citizenship. Man, I never had to worry about any of this as a kid – it’s tough being a teen today!
2. Sunny Mornings – The end of Daylight Savings is actually a really sad event for me. I try very hard to shirk my season depression each year, but it is a real challenge. Right now in Wisconsin, we only get about 8-9 hours of sunlight each day. And it’s only going to get worse. I MISS SUMMER!!! Even taking the dog for a walk after I get home from work is difficult as the sunlight begins to fade. The one highlight I have (since that is what High Five For Friday is all about) is that I am enjoying seeing the sun a bit more on my way to work in the morning. This was the gorgeous view on Tuesday.
3. Letter Tiles and Highlight Strips – I’ve ordered some new materials for my reading interventions. I tell you, as an 8th grade middle school teacher, these are just not items that we normally expect to see and use in a middle school classroom, so this took some investigating to specifically pinpoint student needs. I have purchased letter tiles and highlight strips. I plan to do some phoneme-grapheme mapping with my struggling readers to help get them up to speed with phonics. I will also use the highlight strips with several students to help them focus on one line of text at a time – attention is a real issue for several students, and I think this will help (while also being somewhat private and not making the student feel ‘stupid.’). I will introduce these tools to my group next week and we will attach these foundational skills head on!!! They will catch up to speed with their peers!!
4. The Looooooong Hallway – Okay this is just silly, I know. When the students are at their Specials/Applieds classes, this is my prep time. I spend it working feverishly and running around with my head cut off, of course. But the hallways are so… empty. And long! I get a lot of walking in. My Fitbit says I walk around 5 miles a day at work. So one thing I do – I guess just to feel alive – is I close my eyes while I walk down the long hallway. I challenge myself to see how many steps I can get before opening my eyes. I’m at 15, in case you were going to ask.
5. The Dogs – While my sister is out of town interviewing for dental school residency positions, I have been dog-sitting. My dog Rocket (black and white, left side) and her dog Tyger (white, right side) get along fantastically. As you can guess, they get into a heap of trouble, too! They constantly play fight, which is awesome. It tires them both out, and they love it. In this picture, though, they are both sitting on the back of the couch, a no-no, looking so innocent. “What? We’re just chilling, watching the street for potential people/dogs/leaves/cars/etc. to bark at. Nothing to see here.” Stinkers! I love them <3
Holy Toledo – it’s NoVeMbEr?!? That’s crAzy!!!
Here are my highlights from week 9.
1. Science Corridor – I broke into the Science Corridor this week. You see, in our school, all of the science teachers share a common hallway between their classrooms. This is where they house all of their special, awesome science equipment, and where they prep for labs. No one is allowed in the back without a special secret password, handshake, security deposit, retinal scan… just kidding. I’ve always been pretty envious of the science teachers – they’re like a special club. Well I started nosing around the Science Corridor, and I couldn’t believe all of the neat things I was finding. I especially love the anatomical figure they have guarding their coffee station 🙂
2. The Real Halloween – Our school actually celebrated Halloween last Friday. I already shared my costume from that day, but when the official Halloween came around, I just couldn’t help myself! I had to dress up again! Here I am, dressed as “Honey Boo-Boo.” It was quite enjoyable watching the students try and figure out this pun-y costume. I eventually had to tell most of them, at which point they smiled and laughed genuinely. My students are very good-natured this year, and I think they’re all so sweet!
3. Data – I feel like I am drowning in data. As I have mentioned, I am collecting data for my dissertation. It is very very very (yes 3 verys) overwhelming at times. But gosh, isn’t it pretty to look at? When I realize I am starting to go crazy and my mind is becoming numb, I guess it’s a comforting thought that I can just look at all the pretty colors… O.o
4. Reading Interventions – I’ve purchased 2 books this week that I am excited to read. I am intending to use them with my group of intervention students – the students who are currently behind grade level with reading comprehension. After doing some extensive testing and investigating, I have come to find that they aren’t lacking in reading comprehension strategies, but they are actually lacking in foundational reading skills. This is not something that a middle school teacher usually looks for or expects in a 7th or 8th grader, but I see it becoming a more prevalent problem. We are going to wind up going back to basics with phonics, phoneme-grapheme mapping, syllabication, morphemes and word study. I’m hoping that we can give these students the missing ingredients they need to catch them up to their peers with reading fluency and comprehension.
5. New Camcorder – Well, my husband and I decided to crack into the savings a bit and purchase a new camcorder for my school work. As I am working with students who are taking the ORCA, I need to record our conversations and their navigational habits. After doing some research, we decided on this Canon VIXIA HF R42 – Camcorder, and I’m very happy with it. It is simple to use, takes high quality video, allows me to also snap pictures, and the audio is unbelievable. (BTW we found an open item at Best Buy and saved a lot of money!) I’m playing back our recordings, and I can hear what the teacher is talking about in the next room! I wish I had purchased this camcorder when I was working on my National Board Certification, and for all of the other data collection projects I have done as part of my dissertation. I had been using the Flip Video, but this camcorder can record for much longer since I can use SD cards, and the video quality is much higher.
