The school down the road has a garden that I know well. There, in the butterfly garden, are plants picked by former students and some selected by me, some were donated by parents or staff, and many were purchased. In the center is a large, overgrown, lilac bush. It serves as a shelter for butterflies…
Tuesdays are always a day I put a little more consideration into the topic on which I will write. It is because the piece will also be posted to the Slice Of Life Tuesdays blog forum from TwoWritingTeachers in which other educators also post their pieces. We share ideas, feelings, lesson plans, challenges, and rewards…
This morning, I woke to this sound coming faintly from outside our bedroom window at 4 a.m. It made me smile. Our resident Great Horned Owl was back in the coulee, probably looking for a meal. The wide, dry creek bed adjacent to our property was occupied by grazing cows up until this time last…
Working together on our haiku unit in the spring is one of my favorite writer’s circle activities. By the time students are in third grade, they are at least familiar with, if not adept, at counting the number of syllables present in words. Accuracy in counting syllabic parts of words is an essential part of…
By 6:50 a.m. this morning, they were gone. My two students were off to the high school for another year. One was excited, and one was reluctant but glad it was the beginning of the end of high school for him. He is ready for something more. On the first of this month, I wrote…
Six months ago, when I started blogging, I started a list of potential topics on which to write. This list is kept right on my WordPress account as drafts. Some potential posts, such as this one, have just a title, some are blog posts that I started but have yet to complete, and some were…
It sometimes amazes me how fast my mood can change. Although I have experienced quicker mood swings, I definitely feel different today than I did yesterday. I am always left trying to figure out what triggered it or why I might be more grouchy one day than another. Yesterday, I got up, did a few…
One of the most useful teaching techniques I have found is using awe to inspire learning. What is awe? This word is both a verb and a noun, according to the Oxford online dictionary: NOUN a feeling of reverential respect mixed with fear or wonder: “they gazed in awe at the small mountain of diamonds”…
Today’s post is truly a slice of my life. I am buried in work for my grad class on Advanced Interpretive Media Design. This will probably be the most busy week of the summer for me. My final project is due, along with the regular week’s worth of assignments. So far I am not all…
There is no doubt that I am a life long learner! In the midst of obtaining a second master’s degree, twenty-five years after my first in an arguably different discipline, very few could accuse me of not being committed to learning and growing through my life thus far. Taking graduate courses during the school year,…