Parent Teacher Conferences

This week was my first ever parent teacher conferences. I spent Tuesday and Wednesday talking to 55 different sets of parents. Since we departmentalize in fifth grade, the tradition at the school is to have student lead conferences and talk with the parents of every student. This was quite overwhelming! The first night we were really backed up as the students talked, and talked, and talked, and talked. We ended up leaving an hour and a half late. For the most part, the parents were happy with things so it wasn't horribly bad. The second night ran pretty smoothly and again we had no issues. It was nice to be able to talk to mom or dad of all the students that I teach. At first I was skeptical about doing this but it turned out to be ok. They were long days but a teacher comp day is always nice. I really thought I was going to be more nervous than I was. It wasn't difficult at all and some parents were even full of compliments which was nice.

District Newspaper

I was recently approached by an assistant superintendent and asked if I was interested in tackling a project with my fifth grade writing classes. She asked me if I wanted to create a feature story for the district newspaper. She went on to tell me that I had a week to complete it if I were to take it on. As a new teacher, I figured all I could do was smile and say, "of course I will do that". As I scrambled to try and find ideas for the paper the week deadline seemed like it was rapidly approaching.

Here is what I came up with. (I teach writing to all three fifth grade classes).
1. Class number one-Research photography and learn how to write captions. Have the class walk around the school and snap photos they feel may fit well in a feature story. After taking the pictures, have the students create catchy captions to go along with them.
2. Class number two-Create a short story using the five senses about our school. Use the writing process to complete the story.
3. Class number three-Conduct an press conference with the school principal. After researching and learning about the lives of news reporters this class actually held a press conference with the principal.

It was a long week that took a lot of hard work to pull off but in the end the kids did a fantastic job with it. The feature story was a success! I received an email from the superintendent himself saying how great the story turned out. That was very nice to hear but in the end all of the credit goes to my students. After all, they were the ones that put in the work.

Geek Your Teaching

This site is fantastic for teachers. There are so many valuable tools for a teacher to use. For instance, there is a stopwatch which could be valuable if a teacher can project their computer screen for all the kids to see. There are so many times that kids only have so much time it would be nice to be able to display this so they can keep track on their own. There are also a lot of interactive activities that are awesome. There are things from metric conversions to maps of the United States to spelling bees on it. Worlde is also a great tool for a teacher. I have actually used it to create bookmarks for my students. I can just type in a set of words and it will create a word cloud that the students think are pretty cool. Also, the glass giant allows you to upload photos and manipulate them in fun ways. This site has an endless number of educational opportunities for students and a large amount of teaching tools that are great.

You can find this site at the following address:

http://geekteach.synthasite.com/