I have had a lot of teachers talk about finding a virtual field trip or an author to Skype with. After much searching and PLN discussing, here is a list of what we’ve come up with. I already have a rockstar teacher at Ethridge skyping with a teacher from Canada this week! Yea Andrea! If […]

Here is the letter that I’ve used and modified throughout the year to introduce blogging to the students and their parents. Feel free to modify and adjust as you see fit. Letter   informR, Amber  

One of the strategies we’ve worked so hard to integrate into our trainings were the cheers that we’ve now seen at a couple of different places. The facilitator’s first saw these at the fabulous ASCD conference we went to on peer coaching with Robin Fogarty and Brian Pete. (Who, btw, are incredible! Check them out when you can!)

Remember those word of the day calendars that would sit on your desk? I’d never remember to change it…so I’d be using the same big new word for like two weeks, until I frantically noticed and would then tear off two weeks worth of words I’d never get caught up on…sigh. Quite defeating. One of

I’ve said before that I think blogging has become ubiquitous. It’s like Brad Pitt, you can’t escape it! That being said, I think there are several things to understand and consider before one jumps into the foray of “blogging”, especially when talking about with a classroom. Are you blogging to communicate with your students? Their

One of my favorite IST peeps emailed me this week about a video on TeacherTube. I love the collaboration amongst our teams, we truly do all try to work together, don’t we? Take advantage of the smart pople in your world. In fact, I have a twiend (a twiter friend) who tweets quotes from historical

In keeping with the theme of the last post of helpful Garland peeps, Phoebe McAlister, our fabulous Library Systems Specialist, shared with me a site that discussed blogging with elementary students and the guidelines they developed. They closely resemble the ones from my fist blog post, but I like some of their additions. Keeping in

Via the Twitter (8Amber8) I was sent a GREAT link to all kinds of different ways that you can use the document camera, some of these we’ve seen…some are new! I thought I’d share my faves to remind you that the document camara can be SO much more than a place for you to work

I have written a couple of blog posts and mentioned tweets where I have referenced my PLN. I hate it when people use acronyms and just assume everyone knows what they mean, don’t you? I’m SO guilty of that, 🙂 even more so with the texting language I have started using. I told my daughter

Below is a SAMPLE first blog post…this is one that I used with my fourth graders many moons ago that started off our blogging adventure. (Feel free to use!!) During class we’d discussed the many do’s and don’t’s of our classroom blog, and also how we wanted others who read to see us. It was