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Friday, May 24, 2013

Tasty Text Tuesdays- Teach Like a Pirate

No more pencils, no more books, no more students' dirty looks! :)

What's a teacher supposed to do with his or her time during the summer? Have a book study!


Have you ever seen a book that just screams, "I'm so good, you'll gobble me up!" Well, this book spoke to me! Welcome to the newest segment of General Delk's Army- Tasty Text Tuesday!

If you're a fellow teacher blogger, there is a good chance you've seen other blogs talking about the book Teach Like a Pirate. In fact, that's where I got the idea to read it for myself. I came across the blog Math Coach's Corner where she went through the book. I gotta say, it looked really neat!

So, here's the deal... we are going to do this Clifton Hills style! It's informal and not mandatory, but I promise it will be a lot of fun! We will officially start in July since we have another book study that is both formal and mandatory from our administrators. And, since it is in July it will be fresh in our minds for August!

Here's the outline for all of you who want to get a head start:

July 1- Part I: P, I, R

July 8- Part I: A, T, E

July 15- Part II: The Third Circle, Crash Course, "I like to move it, move it", Long Live the Arts, What's in it for me?

July 22- Part II: All the World's a Stage, Stand and Deliver, Advanced Tactics, Around the Edges

July 29- Part III: Building a Better Pirate (all)

I hope you'll chose to join me! I look forward to comments and discussions!

Pirate Joke of the day:
What's a pirate's favorite letter?


Answer:
AARRRRRR!

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

FOCUS: Elevating the Essentials

Our administration has chosen our book for this year's summer book study.

This book comes highly recommended by our Assistant Principal, Mrs. Overton, and by Dr. Faber who was our literacy consultant this year. The purpose of the book, if you haven't looked at the title yet, is to help our faculty to have a laser-like focus on enhancing student learning and academic growth.

In our recent faculty meeting, we briefly spoke about the main 3 points of the book. Mrs. Overton, realizing that teachers are visual learners, had video clips to match the points and FOCUS questions to guide our talk time.

1. Simplicity- Waiting for Superman
How does the video exemplify FOCUS and what we teach?


2. Clarity- I need help!
How does the video exemplify learning and how we teach?


3. Priority- TV Time
How does the video exemplify priorities and authentic literacy?


At the beginning of the next school year we will all do presentations on each of the chapters. (We were divided up into groups) I know I can't wait to see what we learn!

5th grade Graduation

This is the slideshow that Ms. Harris created to watch during our 5th grade graduation today.





Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Fun in the Sun!

Summer vacation is just around the corner and you might be wondering what you can do with the kids while they are at home. Well, have no fear, one of the blogs I love created a list of 67 things to keep kids occupied this summer!


 

Saturday, May 11, 2013

Celebrity Story Saturday- Lost in Spice

I'm late getting to post today, but here is another Celebrity Story Saturday to add to our amazing collection!

This past Tuesday we at the Hills were blessed to have a guest reader visit our class. Ms. Catherine is a friend of one of our ESOL teachers and she was excited about coming to read to General Delk's Army. Of course, we had to get her to read for the blog!

Since we have been doing author studies, we chose a book that went along with our topic.

Skippyjon Jones: Lost in Spice!!




 Part 2


 
Thank you, Ms. Catherine for coming to visit our class! You're welcome back anytime!

 


Saturday, May 4, 2013

Field Day 2013

Once again we were visited by Chattanooga Christian School!

We love that they have adopted us as their service project! We started at 8:50, and 3 hours later we were wiped out! Needless to say, it was a success.
 :)

Here are some pictures and videos from the different stations.

Musical Chairs



Basketball


Hula hoop and jump rope





Dance and freeze


3-legged race



50 yard dash


Clothes relay






Tug-o-war




Soccer bowling


This isn't a complete list. I didn't get pictures of everything. There were 16 stations total and my students were worn out by the end. (perfect!)

Thank you CCS for once again creating a fun atmosphere for our students!


Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Planting a Mystery Garden

 This science experiment started innocently enough. All I wanted was to irritate my husband. Honestly, it doesn't take that much. You see, we have a garden in our backyard. My husband has built 40 raised garden beds for his gardening projects. Tomatoes, cucumbers, corn, squash, zucchini, lettuce, berries, you name it and my husband grows it!

Here are some pictures from last year's garden:

My husband is showing my mom the garden.

Here's my daughter showing off her sunflowers.

This year, wonder of wonders, my husband has allowed me to have one garden bed. That's right. Out of 40, he has allowed me 1. How gracious of him.

Now my hubby is completely OCD when it comes to his garden. Every bed is planned out to perfection and each seed is given it's time to germinate on our growing table before being planted in it's garden home. What could I do to shake him up a bit?

I could find a seed so obscure that it would throw him into a tizzy! So, I went online and found this site:



Not only to they specialize in seeds of all kinds, all the seeds are heirloom, which means you can harvest the seeds from the plants you grow to use the next season! Score!
So  I went to the Seed Mixes section and found the PERFECT mix of seeds for my evil plan... the KID MIX! It's a random mix of seeds from the previous season- in other words, you don't know what you're going to get! Veggies, fruits, or flowers? Who knows!? And what could be more annoying to an OCD gardener than having a mystery garden?!

The best part is that the seed packets are so cheap- just 50 cents! I bought 4 packets. I wanted my (personal) kids to get in on the action, and I wanted to share the fun with my students as well.


The Mystery Garden

I let my students in on my evil gardening plan and they thought it was hilarious. When I told them I wanted us to plant some mystery seeds, they were thrilled! We started by watching a short Curious George video called Seed Trouble



It's about George having to sort seeds using their attributes- size, shape, color. I wanted my students to have to do the same thing. I gave each team a small amount of seeds from one of the seed packets. (there were a ton of seeds in that packet!) They were to examine the seeds and sort them into groups according to their attributes. Once they were sorted, my students had to label them as being vegetable, fruit, or flower seeds.





After sorting, students chose 4 seeds (of the same kind) and came to my table. Last season I made a binder of all the different seeds my husband used in his garden. My students used the binder to see if they could identify their seeds.


It took me 2 hours, but the binder is worth it! Do you know my crazy husband had 14 types of tomatoes?

 Showing off the seeds they chose

 Going through the binder to guess what they have

 They labeled their cup with their name and their guess 

Time to plant! Dirt, seed, more dirt, water!

Only time will tell what our mystery garden will grow! Some of the seeds were easy to label since I had some matching seeds in my binder. However, the seed mix was so extensive, we have some seeds planted that we couldn't identify! A true mystery!