Text Poetry Image

Once again, my seventh graders and I have enjoyed doing our text poetry activity. I'm currently looking for a new way to share their poems, something that will actually look like they texted me their assignment...without me having to give them my cellphone number. (This is always my students' first suggestion, by the way.)

I came across the website iFakeText via Tammy Worcester's Tech Tip of the Week and thought I'd give it a try:

The html code provided by the website didn't seem to work with my blog, so I took a screenshot to share with everyone. Unfortunately, it doesn't allow me to share the entire poem at one time. I'd have to create multiple entries along with several screenshots. It does look pretty cool, though!

Let's Jump Right In

First day back after Christmas vacation for my students; how would I get us started? I stressed a little bit about this over the weekend.

Ok...actually, I stressed A LOT about this over the weekend! I wanted it to be something special, something poignant; something they would remember THE. REST. OF. THEIR. LIVES.

No pressure. And, clearly, no sense of reality either.

Finally, I decided to keep it simple...and fun. So we began our day today with a quick YouTube video. I prefaced this video with, "Now, I don't know what the person who posted this video wanted the title to be, but after you watch this I'll tell you what title I've given it. It has to do with starting back to school."



"And my title," I told the kids, "is....

Let's Jump Right In!"

Howls of laughter ensued. Well, it might have been more like very loud groans, but I choose to remember laughter.


Special thanks to Lee Kolbert for sharing this video on Facebook!

Happy New Year's Eve!

May your New Year be filled with many blessings and plenty of warm memories!

Time For Change

A couple of months ago I was walking along the beach at Bodega Head in Northern California, and I had something of a revelation. It was during the week that I had taken my seventh graders to camp and, while they spent the morning hiking around the cliffs with their teacher-naturalists, I had some quiet time to just be. It's not often that a teacher gets some time to herself; time that isn't filled with papers, emails, meetings, or lesson plans.

I'll admit that it was a bit disconcerting at first. I've become, sadly, unused to having time for myself. Even when I do take a break from the work that has taken over my life, my "free time" is spent reading blogs, books, and magazines that are all about education. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying this is a bad thing. Education is something I am very passionate about, and I truly enjoy reading and learning all that I can. What I am saying, however, is that there can be more to my life.

There just doesn't seem to be.

What I realized at the beach that day was this has to change!

When I was growing up, I was incredibly passionate about three things: reading, writing, and photography. I could very easily lose myself for an entire day in any one of those three hobbies. Now, I can't seem to remember the last time I did that. Instead of losing myself in the pursuit of one of my passions, I feel as though I've just lost myself.

So, either I start wearing a t-shirt that says, "If found, please make me stop and breathe for a moment," or I start making some changes.

Well, I can't wear t-shirts to work, so...

I'm not going to sit here and write, "I vow to read for pleasure, write one poem or blog post, and take 50 pictures EVERY DAY!" That's far too much to commit to and I would last all of two days, I'm sure. What I will do is promise myself to at least remember that these are the things that make me happy, and I deserve some happiness. Right?

Right!

I know that in order to give of myself to my students, there must be something more inside me than just a feeling of emptiness. I need to fill the void with the activities I love the most. I must do the things that make me happy. And that means finding the time...no, not "finding" the time...making the time for happiness.

This is my goal for 2012: to get back to the person I always imagined I would become.

Much work lies ahead, but I'm up to the task. I'm ready to make time for change...how about you?

I love taking pictures of bees!

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

~Leo Tolstoy

If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we aren't really living.

~Gail Sheehy

They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.

~Confucius

Shared Passages

Many thanks to those who have started sharing their favorite passages from literature. As they continue to come in I will add them to the following document so we can all enjoy them!

Favorite Lit Passages

If you have a favorite passage from literature that you would like to add to our document, please see the previous post Favorite Passages in Literature. My seventh graders and I greatly appreciate your help!

Favorite Passages in Literature

I struggle each year with how to teach writing to middle schoolers. I know I write fairly well, but actually teaching writing is a totally different animal. Last night the thought occurred to me, "Do my students know what excellent writing looks like? Would it help them become better writers to look at some well-written sentences or paragraphs?"

When I was growing up, I used to write down favorite passages from my reading in a notebook that I carried with me everywhere. I've lost track of that notebook, sadly, so I want to re-create it...Google-style. And with the help of my amazing PLN!

Do you have a favorite passage from literature? Have you read something recently that made you stop and say, "Wow! I wish I could write like that!" If you do, I'm hoping you wouldn't mind sharing it with us. The link that follows is to a Google Doc I've created to gather all of our favorite passages. Please feel free to add your passages here:

Favorite Passages From Literature

If you've never used a Google Doc before, you might be more comfortable using this form to share your favorite passages:





We truly appreciate any help you can offer us. I'll publish the document in a few days, after I start adding to it.

Photo Captions Contest Results

For the second year in a row, I have asked my friends from around the world to vote in our seventh grade photo captions contest. This year we more than tripled the number of votes received! I can't thank everyone enough for taking the time to cast their votes. If you didn't know about the contest and would still like to have your say, please do. This contest was also an opportunity for me to demonstrate to my students just how amazing a PLN (Personal/Professional Learning Network) is. By collecting the locations of all respondents, I was able to create a Google Map with pins all over the world. My students loved it!

Before sharing the winners, let me explain the contest. A couple of weeks ago, I showed the pictures in this slideshow to my seventh graders:




As I showed each picture on the ActivBoard, they were to write down one or two captions they felt went with the photograph. After they'd written their captions for the first picture, I asked for a few volunteers to share theirs. I wanted to make sure that everyone was clear on the assignment; I know examples always help me understand a task much better.

Their homework that evening was to add all of their captions into a Google Form that I had created for them. I waited a few days, and then I chose what I felt were the top five responses for each photo. That's when my wonderful PLN joined in. I created this Google Form and sent it out to the world via Twitter, Facebook, and Plurk.




As the votes came in, I took the location of each respondent and placed it into this Google Map:


View Photo Captions Contest in a larger map

I loved adding the pins and seeing where people were voting from! I just hope my students enjoyed it half as much as I did.

I use Google Forms frequently throughout the school year, and one of the things I love the most is the option for a summary response. So rather than going through all of the data from the spreadsheet that looks like this:

Click on "Form" and then "Show summary of responses" and you'll have a much quicker way to discover the winner of our contest.

So, speaking of the winners, I've revised the first Google Presentation to show the winning captions. Thank you, again, to all who have voted!