Catching Up!



According to the Practicum Portfolio checklist for February 20th, I am on schedule.  I only have a few things left to embed.  Then, I can start with some more of the checklist items.  I have been working hard on the portfolio the past few weeks trying to make sure everything is in order. I was a little confused on where to embed all my key assessments, but I finally got everything figured out.  HOORAY!!   For valentines this week I showed my class http://www.thisissand.com/  They were so excited- it was a great Valentines present for me to give them.  During the time they were playing on the sand, I spent that time catching up with my class blog reading task.  The class has all read "The Mitten", and I made a display board for our school about the author.  The class made Wordles about the story and we printed them and took them home.  Above you can see a picture of a class working on their wordles.  Wordle is such an excellent Web 2.0 tool to show what you have learned about a story.  The students particularly like it because they can write words instead of sentences.  It seems students are always looking for shortcuts in the world of education- so technology makes it easy to learn, show, and assess!  Between the class blog and our wordle projects our reading unit has been lots of FUN!   I am working on a rubric to grade my students motivation, effort, and work on the reading enrichment unit.  So far, everyones motivation is through the roof- technology does that to students!  I love being an educator in today's time.  Taking my students to the 21st century is an awesome experience.