General Delk's Army: 2013

Thursday, December 12, 2013

2nd Annual Science Night

As filmed by my Junior Film Directors. :)
Tonight was our 2nd annual science night, presented by the Creative Discovery Museum. I was once again in the Biodiversity & Interdependence room, all about food chains, habitats, and life cycles, and I got to work with Mrs. Jackson. (Yea for teamwork!)

Since I couldn't leave my assigned room, I sent my little directors (2 of my students) to get pictures and videos of the different rooms. My rules:
1. Don't get in the way
2. Don't let the videos get longer than 30 seconds (they take forever to download)
3. Find things that interest you

Here's what they found!
These were taken in my room.

In the room where you build a cup phone. (energy room, maybe?)

The room where you build a paper rocket and get to launch it.

Here are some videos they managed to get.

These are fun- they made smoke bubbles! (Topic- Matter)

Part 2

Learning about the Earth's layers

Making tornadoes

All in all, I think my helpers did a fabulous job. Thank you to my Junior Directors and to the Creative Discovery Museum for making tonight lots of fun!

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

What Good Writing Teachers DO:

a.k.a Becoming a Little Lucy

My school has adopted the Reading & Writing Workshop program (by Lucy Calkins) this year. Specifically, we are using the writing program. (Our small group reading program is the Jan Richardson model)

In an effort to share our professionally developed minds with our parents and students, here are some tips that we teachers came away with after our hour-long professional development today.

What Good Writing Teachers DO:

1. Provide explicit instruction and plenty of opportunity for practice

2. Provide opportunities for students to write for REAL audiences and readers

3. Allow for choice- let students write about what matters to them

4. Instruct in spelling, grammar, qualities, and strategies (this will be done during mini-lessons before writing time. Calkins' model doesn't really provide this)

5. Teach the writing process: rehearsing (I called it 'brainstorming' when I was a kid), drafting, revising, editing, and publishing

6. Study author's writing with students- I plan on using exemplar texts (really good books) as part of my mini lessons so students can hear the flow of good writing.

7. Establish clear goals
8. Provide frequent and useful feedback- I will make it a point to conference with students 1-2 times a week, depending on what time allows.

9. Remember who they're teaching. (referring to teachers) We are teaching kids, not prize-winning authors. There will be mistakes, but that's part of learning!

Before long, we will have some Master Writers!

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Landforms and Bodies of Water

We are studying landforms and bodies of water this week. What better way than to use a fun, interactive Power Point?!
I know I have shared this Power Point before, but here it is again.

Landforms Power Point

Here it is in picture form:

Here's the link on this page:

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/geography/landforms/glossary.shtml

Here's the link on this page:

http://www.reelfoot.com/legend_1.htm

Here's the link for this page:

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/ocean/

Here's this link:

http://library.thinkquest.org/5069/

Here's this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequatchie_Valley

Here's this link:

http://www.bobspixels.com/kaibab.org/geology/gc_geol.htm

Here's this link:

http://www.rubyfallsrocks.com/

The link I have on this page isn't working properly. Sorry!

Here's this link:

http://www.nature.org/wherewework/northamerica/states/tennessee/preserves/art19942.html

Here's this link:

http://www.weatherwizkids.com/volcano1.htm

Here's this link:

http://www.desertusa.com/life.html

Here's this link:

http://satftp.soest.hawaii.edu/space/hawaii/virtual.field.trips.html

We had a good time learning about landforms and bodies of water. We even learned some hand motions to go with them. I'll have to get pictures to show you how smart we are. :)

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Food Chain research projects

Each of my 3 classes will be studying a different habitat in order to create food chains and webs. Since I don't want my students going all over the Internet, I am going to have them start their search here!

** START HERE**