Election Fun

The election buzz is obviously electrifying today. Charlie and I have had several opportunities to hear many people's opinions with the candidates at all levels. Well today we each got to go cast our vote. Anticipating lines, Charlie went to Richfield Middle School this morning and fortunately beat the morning rush. I went after school today at 3:15 PM and was also fortunate to have no line.

Over the past 2-3 weeks, we have been doing several voting activities in class. Our district is part of the Kids Voting, giving kids under 18 a chance to experience voting as they travel to the polls with their parents. My homeroom students have been fired up and many students are going to vote tonight. The Edina local TV network is going to interview and update the kids vote results as well. To get the kids fired up as they left today we watched a great youtube video that the Ron Clark Academy students created for the elections. I included the lyrics below too - I definitely needed them.



The kids from the Ron Clark Academy sang “You Can Vote However You Like,” a parody to T.I.’s “Whatever You Like” recently.“You Can Vote However You Like,” lyrics are below:

Obama on the left
McCain on the right
We can talk politics all night
And you can vote however you like
You can vote however you like, yeah

Democratic left
Republican right
November 4th we decide
And you can vote however you like
You can vote however you like, yeah

(McCain supporters)
McCain’s the best candidate
With Palin as his running mate
They’ll fight for gun rights, pro life,
The conservative right
Our future is bright
Better economy in site
And all the world will feel our military might

(Obama supporters)
But McCain and Bush are real close right
They vote alike and keep it tight
Obama’s new, he’s younger too
The Middle Class he will help you
He’ll bring a change, he’s got the brains
McCain and Bush are just the same
You are to blame, Iraq’s a shame
Four more years would be insane

Lower your Taxes - you know Obama Won’t
PROTECT THE LOWER CLASS - You know McCain won’t!
Have enough experience - you know that they don’t
STOP GLOBAL WARMING - you know that you won’t

I want Obama
FORGET OBAMA
Stick with McCain and you’re going to have some drama
We need it
HE’LL BRING IT
He’ll be it
YOU’LL SEE IT
We’ll do it
GET TO IT
Let’s move it
DO IT!

Obama on the left
McCain on the right
We can talk politics all night
And you can vote however you like
You can vote however you like, yeah

Democratic left
Republican right
November 4th we decide
And you can vote however you like, I said
You can vote however you like, yeah

I’m talking big pipe lines, and low gas prices
Below $2.00 that would be nice

But to do it right we gotta start today
Finding renewable ways that are here to stay

I want Obama
FORGET OBAMA,
Stick wit McCain you gone have some drama
MORE WAR IN IRAQ
Iran he will attack
CAN’T BRING OUR TROOPS BACK
We gotta vote Barack!

Obama on the left
McCain on the right
We can talk politics all night
And you can vote however you like, I said
You can vote however you like, yeah

Democratic left
Republican right
November 4th we decide
And you can vote however you like, I said
You can vote however you like, yeah

The Lawrence Welk Show

One of my favorite skits from Camp St. Croix revolved around the Saturday Night Live Lawrence Welk Show performance. The students changed the skit a bit - instead of Denise (you will know her when you see her) they have replaced her with Mrs. Potts. The students who did this skit knew the SNL version all too well. Enjoy this hilarious video!

Camp St. Croix

Another successful year of Camp St. Croix has been recorded. Team Globetrotters arrived back to school yesterday afternoon with smiles and sleepy eyes. Parents anxiously waited for their children, excited to hear about their trip. Students peered out of the bus windows as we approached, signaling to their parents as they dreamed of their own bed, warm shower, TV, and a delicious meal (camp food this year was exceptionally bad).

Camp was great this year. The weather was fabulous even with the rain the first day. Everyone participated in the orienteering activities, river walk, night hike, team intiatives, camp fire skits, and climbing wall.

Some highlights for me included the river walk, camp fire, initiatives, and climbing wall. On the second day, in the afternoon, I went with a group to the St. Croix River. It was absolutely beautiful by the river. The trees were changing color and the sun was casting amazing light effects through the forest. I saw my first bald eagle's nest as well. Those nests are incredibly huge! I learned a lot of interesting facts as well - like the tongue structure of a woodpecker, the feather count on a bald eagle, the life span of an eagle, and the "dead zone" of the Mississippi River near the Gulf of Mexico.

The climbing wall was another successful event as I was able to climb to the top and to complete the climb in a new PR time. With practice each year, I am getting faster - just call me Mrs. Spidey.
The camp fire was another fun event. For the third year in a row, it was "Pick on Potts" night for the skits. The students enjoy the chance to tease their teacher. Although this group was very different than last year's group of students - I had 6 of the 12 groups ask if it was okay that they were teasing me and apologize to me several times. They are a pretty sweet bunch of students. Most of the skits involved my fear of squirrels so the teasing wasn't too intense.

Speaking of squirrels, the squirrels at Camp St. Croix have a mind of their own. They are even more scary at camp because they aren't afraid of people and they hang around looking for food. GROSS! There is one particular squirrel that enjoys the dining hall and hangs around the building all the time. To make matters worse, it is an albino squirrel named Marshmellow. Albino squirrels are creepy! I saw Marshmellow way too many times to be comfortable on my hike to the dining hall.

The Big Four!

Only four more days left! Today I gave my math final and the students on the accelerated math track freaked out a little bit. I am so mean!

You can tell school should be almost over when the students are sweating profusely as they just sit at their table. It is really nasty in the classroom but thank goodness we haven't reached 80 degrees outside!

Three more teaching days and one field trip day! WOOHOO!! Oh wait, I still have to go to class until June 26 - BOO!

COUNTDOWN!

With my last group of kids out the door today - only 8 more days of school (really 7 teaching days since the last day is one super field trip)! I am super excited for summer vacation or as I see it, an annual 10 week retirement.

Ebonomics - Masters Smasters

After a nice winter break from my master program classes, I am back at it again. My new class began on January 17. I am currently taking a special education class, Students with Linguistic Disabilities. For a masters program in differentiated instruction, I am learning more about special education rather than the entire spectrum of gifted and talented children and"regular" children. I thought the whole goal of differentiated instruction was to be able to teach all children of all levels. Not the case at CSP or I have been seriously misinformed! Apparently Carol Ann Tomlinson is wrong!

Back to my point, I am currently enrolled in a linguistic class. It is taught by an African American female professor. The students in my cohort are all white, suburban teachers. I am building background knowledge, for you, the reader. So our assignment last class was to read an article entitled, "Ebonics, a dialect of American English." Our professor quickly hands out the article at the end of class and asks us to read it and be prepared to discuss it.

Being the studious person I am, I read the article, and even highlighted and marked text. We get to class and begin discussing the article. My professor (let me remind you of the above background information), asks us what we think about the "Ebonomics" article. We were all dumbfounded. Perhaps she gave us the wrong article because we read about ebonics not ebonomics. It turns out, in a linguistic class taught by an African American professor, that ebonics is pronounced EBONOMICS! I used my decoding skills I learned in this class and I still can't figure out how you get ebonomics. It must be due to the fact that I am white and racists (thanks Carolyn O'Grady!).

Oh, I hope this masters degree proves that I learned something!

School Conferences

This is all I am thinking about at this point. I am excited to sleep!

Classroom Fame

I hope it is alright with everyone but I talk about my family a lot to in my classroom (don't worry it is all good stuff). My homeroom students heard a lot about Charlie and my trip to North Carolina. And with our trip, they have heard a lot about Hannah.

Hannah and Emmit stories occur frequently in my classroom. We often imitate Hannah's little tongue "toot" she makes and Emmit's "woo-woo" dance. Well, the students' writing prompt for language arts this weekend involved a picture of Hannah (see below). The students wrote some great pieces to go with the picture. I have included a piece of writing that one of my students wrote on Tuesday.

Baby Ride
Written by Jack

Vvvvrrrrrooooommmm, vvvvvvrrrrrooommm, eeeeekkkkkkk.
Yo it's Hannah here and we're gettin' ready for
"Pimp My Ride Baby Addition To Da Max!"
Despite our off the hook name,
this show is all about creatin' and pimpin' baby seats!
Well what are we waitin' for, let's go dawg!

School Inservice Days

Today I had the privilege of a school inservice day. Most of the time these days are long and boring. However this year each teacher belongs to a community of practice. Of course I joined the technology community of practice (CoP).

We, the technology CoP, meet several times during the year to play with technology tools we are or would like to implement into our classroom. It totally rocks! But there is too much stuff out there and I have way too much fun playing around with the new stuff. I want to implement it all into my classroom but realize I have to slow down and start small first.

Today I played around with Toondoo, Kerpoof, Edublogs, and NetVibes. NetVibes is a place to store all your RSS feeds from your favorite blogs, newspapers, weather sites, etc. Now I can login to NetVibes and it automatically will keep refreshing all of my listed sites to check for any new information. Any time you all update your blogs - I get the update on NetVibes.

Toondoo and Kerpoof are cartoon making sites. I am going to use this to create spelling comic strips this week in class. We will see how it goes. I had fun playing around with it!

Edublogs is a blogging site, like blogger, that is more safe for students. I have the opportunity to set up my class with their own blogs if I wish. We won't go that far yet. But I have linked my new class blog, The Sixth Grade Experience from Room 313, for you all to see and enjoy. Please don't post comments as my students will see it. :)

As you can see I did a lot of playing around on the computer today!

Camp St. Croix

On October 15, Team Globetrotters left South View Middle School at 9:00 AM eager for the annual trip to Camp St. Croix. The 6th grade students were very excited for the 3 day, 2 night adventure. The teachers were a little nervous about the weather.

Camp St. Croix is a YMCA camp located minutes from Hudson, Wisconsin. It is nestled in the corn fields and forests of western Wisconsin overlooking the St. Croix river. During our time at camp, we enjoy several team-building activities. We explore together on a river walk - looking at cool shells, bird nests, and rock formations. The kids also learn to work together through various initiatives. Students also get a chance to try their skills at orienteering and rock climbing. We end each night with a night hike and a campfire.

Thankfully the weather was very cooperative. It sprinkled on Monday for most of the day. It poured on Tuesday for only a few hours. It didn't stop us (at least until the lightning came). We were all soaked but had a blast running in the mud. The rest of Tuesday and Wednesday was beautiful as the sun finally came out.

Camp was great this year and I finally made it to the top of the climbing tower!

School Days

The first week of school has come and gone. The start of year three has gone well so far. The room is set-up, lesson plans are roughly sketched out, and the shopping for school clothes has been completed (yes, even teachers must go school shopping).

It is an adjustment this year as we have three new teams of teachers as well as adding Reading to my set of curriculum. However I am excited with how our team works together. Team Globetrotters is going to be a fun team!

It is also my first year being in a district for back-to-back years. So starting at South View again, it has been nice to have last year's students pop into my room. The 7th grade health and Spanish room s are right next to my classroom so I have had several students stop in to say hi. Seeing those students and having them want to come talk to me has definitely been the highlight of the past week.

Here are some pictures of the pre-room set-up before anxious sixth graders come in and make it their home for the year.

Viva Las Vegas

I am heading to Vegas for the first time in my life. Well, me and thousands of teachers. Can't you just picture thousands of teachers swarming "The Stripe" in Vegas after a day of workshops?!!

Hey, is that a Bally's?!! Think my gym membership will work there too?

South View Midde School is sending 10 staff to Las Vegas, Nevada for the National Conference on Differentiated Instruction July 14-18. Some big names in education will be there like Rick Wormeli and Mel Levine. It is kind of a bummer that Ann Tomlinson will be at the Differentiated Instruction Conference in Salt Lake City this summer. She is an amazing educator in terms of differentiation.

We were asked to sign up in advance and send in our list of workshops/sessions with our registration. There were so many interesting options to choose from that it was difficult to pick. But I am really excited about the ones I did choose. I have some sessions specific to math, middle school, and ELL students. Our team will have ELL students again next year so I am hoping for some good ideas and suggestions.

I also chose a lot of sessions with Rick Wormeli. I have read a few of his books and I just think he is amazing. He actually writes like he is a teacher with years of experience. He is practical, current, and funny. I don't know if it is just me but often times I read a staff development book and find it to be written by someone that has a Ph. D but taught for 2 years and KNOWS EVERYTHING. It is like they are writing a book to feel important. It is probably just illiterate me.

I will for sure have stories and pictures from the Vegas trip to blog about in late July.

Roller Gardens

I mentioned early that on Friday, June 8, the 6th graders and staff went to the roller gardens for the day. It was really fun. Katie and I hung out and goofed around with the kids.

Katie was recently hired as the new 6th grade math teacher. She taught science for half of the year on our team as one of our "original" team teachers was on sabbatical. I am really excited to have her here teaching math. She has a math concentration and can help me out a lot! Plus she is another new person. It was very different being the new teacher on the 6th grade staff that had all been teaching 6th grade in the district for at least the past 6 years.

Here are some photos of us at the Roller Gardens:

They tricked me into doing the chicken dance. Some of the kids thought it would be funny if Katie would spin me really fast.

Two stellar math teachers!

School's Out!

School is officially over! We ended school on Friday by skating at the roller gardens in St. Louis Park and playing at Pamela Park near our school. I brought my rollerblades and skated with the kids. The kids were amazed that I could skate. I still find it funny when students think teachers seem odd and out of place when they aren't in the classroom (perhaps it is just me). I was the same way. I remember freaking out when I saw my second grade teacher in the grocery store.

While the students are out enjoying summer, the teachers return for two more days. Teachers must report on Monday and Tuesday of next week. However it is a pretty relaxed environment. We have to be to school some time on Monday to clean up our room and enter grades. Grades are due by 4:00 PM. I will be there before 11:00 AM because we have a staff pizza party to celebrate!

On Tuesday we have a staff breakfast put on by the PTO/PTA (Edina calls it PTO - they even have their own website linked on the district site). Apparently this breakfast is amazing. I am saving up for it already.

Monday and Tuesday I don't have much to do because the custodial staff already removed everything from my room on Friday! We returned from our field trip at 2:30 PM and my room was empty of all desks, tables, bookshelves, and chairs. I heard from teachers that they clean the 3rd floor first because it gets so hot in the summer.

The kids thought my empty room was awesome, so we played a quick game of wiffle ball before the bell rang at 2:40 PM. The kids were great and I am excited to see them next school year. I was lucky to have another great group of students. I even got some hugs on the way out the door.

After the kids left on Friday, I frantically labelled all of the items from my room that were now sitting in the hallway. I guess if you don't label it, it may not end up in your room. I am learning so much these past two days.

Everything ended up working out great and my room is completely clean and organized. I picked up and prepared my room for the summer after school on Friday. I also entered all my grades this weekend. So Monday and Tuesday I will just enjoy the food and check out. I should be out the door early and off to our yard to start landscaping!

Finally a Clean and Organized Classroom

It is 95% official that I will be back next year as a 6th grade math, LA, and reading teacher in Edina. Not 100% because there is still time for me to do something stupid to mess things up in school. Pink slips also went out before spring break and I did not receive one which is wonderful!

Knowing I will be back, I used my first day and half of break to clean out and organize my classroom. I have a lot of things from the previous math teacher that I don't use so I packed it up to save for her. I also was in need of a spring cleaning and change of scenery. So I rearranged things in my room.
I know many people reading this blog have never seen my classroom but here are some photos of the newly cleaned and organized room (now I won't be able to find anything next week during class).

Spring Break

I have had the pleasure of enjoying spring break this week. It officially started on April 1 and continues until Easter Sunday. For the past five days I have been busy with many spring break type activities (I wish the weather made it feel like spring break instead of winter break). So in attempt to fill everyone in with my latest life events, here are some pictures which will explain it all.

I am really good at this spring break activity.

I have eaten A LOT! I would highly recommend these chocolate and caramel chex. They are tasty!


I have watched hours of TV.

I have read a few pages here and there as well. Nothing like a good middle school science fiction book over spring break.

Okay, here are some of the more productive activities of my break.Laundry.

Vacuuming.

Disclaimer with poor pictures and photography: I am on spring break - showers are rare, wearing pajamas all day is a must, and combing my hair doesn't really happen. And taking pictures of yourself, by yourself, is very difficult.

School Year Approaches

Well the new school year is right around the corner. With it quickly approaching, I thought it would be appropriate to blog about school.

Last year was my first official year of teaching. I taught 7th grade at New Prague Middle School. I taught on a small team of just two teachers. We each split the core subjects. My team teacher, Renae, taught Social Studies and Language Arts. I taught Science, Tech Ed, and FACS. I really enjoyed it and learned a lot! The learning curve the first year is very steep (especially when you throw in multiple subjects). I had a fun time with my teammates and students.

This upcoming school year I will be teaching at South View Middle School in Edina. I will be teaching 6th grade math. I am very excited for this opportunity as math is one of my favorite subjects. I know the learning curve will continue to be steep but having at least one year experience really makes a difference. I am getting nervous as my first workshop is this Thursday. However I am excited to get started. I think Charlie is ready for me to have something to do too. :)