Muslim Woman in Amman

Our school has a subscription to Learning A to Z and Raz-Kids for the kids. While a great tool to help kids with reading there are a few problems. Here are my pros and cons for the site. Pros: Lots of material. Different reading levels for the same book to accommodate struggling readers. The ability to assign reading to students and keep track of progress. Different activities for different aims. Awards students for progress. Cons: Hard to find appropriate books for our unit of study. Reading levels not high enough to accommodate advanced readers.  So far Pros outweigh the Cons. Especially considering they just added two new reading levels to accommodate advanced readers. I will be pushing more Raz-Kids this year mostly during Independent Study specifically for students who do not have access to a computer at home. I will update this periodically as we use it.

At the end of last year I was talking with my students and they mentioned that September 19th was Talk Like a Pirate Day. Listening to them I had a great idea. As our first unit is about explorers, and one of my favorite explorers is Sir Francis Drake, I thought let's have dress like a pirate day in September. I have been planning this all summer and on Thursday, because Friday was a Staff Day, we had our Dress Like a Pirate Day and it was amazing. The kids came dressed up in all different types of pirate outfits. Some were store bought and some were homemade but the results were amazing. I personally think I was the best pirate there.

     A while ago I wrote about my dismissal packet for the end of the day. I have a lot of different activities in the packet but my kids are obsessed with the cryptogram. I had to tell them the first two words to help them out, but after that they loved figuring out the rest. I had one student who refused to go home till he finished it. I had another group of girls who worked together to solve it and they got super excited every time they figured out a new letter. Needless to say I will be making a whole lot more of them.

     First day of school is over and I am tired. It was great seeing all my old kiddos now grown up a little. And it is a little sad to not see the others who have left the school. I also have a ton of new kids to get to know and love. Though first day was hectic and I had a ton of things to do and I was running around the whole time. If I was teaching I was prepping for teaching. The printers at school were acting up and that can be stressful especially when you have a ton of teachers trying to prep. Almost came to blows one time (JK). Despite the running around I have high hopes for the year.

I've been in Jordan since the end of Ramadan. While it is nice to visit with family, and my nephew is the cutest kid ever. I really miss my WiFi. Right now I'm at my sister's typing this on my phone using her slow WiFi. The thing I'm really having problems with is planing for next year. I need to look up things and do research but I can't. On the plus side I get to swim one a week.

So I was planning to move my science into the NGSS next year. It was kinda hard to plan the units because we have a combined class of 4th and 5th so I had to figure out how to put the two years together within only four units, but I think I got it. Geology and Biology were pretty easy to put together and what year to place them in. The problem I had was putting Energy, Matter, Space and Waves into units. But after thinking about it Energy and Matter go well together and I have some solid bones for the unit plan. After lot of thought I decided to break up the space standards and place  them with different units. It is looking good so far and I am really happy with what I have. My units so far are as follows: Odd to Even Years Exploration Energy and Matter Native Americans Waves American Revolution Even to Odd Years Earth Systems Spanish Mexican California Rain forest Gold Rush Modern California Each one takes about two months except for one each year that is...

      After a long year of kids acting up at dismissal time I decided I need a little more structure at the end of the day. So I thought I should give the kids activities to do while they wait for their parents. So I decided to put together a dismissal packet filled with different activities that all relate to our unit.      Next year our first unit is about Exploration. So I started putting together a few pages I have eight activities so far and I am really excited about them. I have a basic coloring page, a matching activity, a cryptogram, a word search, a cross word puzzle, a board game, and a draw page. I hope to add at least one for every day of the unit though some like the board game can be used more then once.  Here is a link to what I have so far. I added the solution to the cryptogram. Unfortunately my word search does not format well on Power Point so it is a separate file. Exploration Unit Dismissal Packet Dismissal Packet Word search ...