Tour of MrGoerend.com

A quick tour of this blog:

The first thing you should do is subscribe to get updates sent to your email. You can do that with the Subscribe gadget at the top of the sidebar to the right. As the year picks up and we quickly move from procedures to content, I will update more often with what we're doing in class.

I don't plan on updating this blog with a planner-like list of daily homework assignments. One of the expectations I have of my students is that they keep an updated planner for themselves. I give them time at the beginning of class to copy from the white board each class's agenda. Parents, this is something we can both work on to hold our students accountable. As I take attendance each class period, I walk around to make sure students are writing in their planners. Ask to see your student's planner at night.

Next on the sidebar is Search This Blog. Use this if you can't quite find something you know you saw on our blog. It only searches this blog.

After that are the Blog Archive and Labels. These are two ways to navigate and find things on the blog. The archive organizes blog posts by date. The labels organizes by the labels I put on each post. You can think of labels as folders. I'll put a couple labels on each post. For example, I'll label this post "tour" and "blog." As this blog grows, more posts will be added to each label. So, if you want to see all posts about this blog (new features, etc.) just click the label "blog."

Double click any word! is my favorite little toy on this blog. If you double click on any word, it will give you the definition of the word. As a Language Arts teacher, how could I not love this!

Last, but definitely not least, in our side bar is Call for help! If it hasn't been made obvious yet, along with a love of reading writing, I have a passion for technology. When I got my Google Voice account, I was extremely excited for the possibilities it held. If you ever have a question for me, click on that gadget, put your number in, check the "keep my number private" box if you'd like, and hit call. Within seconds, you will get a phone call. Answer it and it will connect you with me. I want to be accessible to students and parents, but I'm not ready to give out my personal cell phone number to all my students and parents. This gadget gives me the opportunity to open up that accessibility, while maintaining my privacy and yours. Use it when you need it!

That's it for this tour. If you have any questions, leave a comment!

Toy Paragraph

Students in Language Arts (I think their schedules call it English, but I must be old school; it'll always be Language Arts to me) have been writing Toy Paragraphs these last few days. It is a combined personal essay/comparative essay. I use "essay" loosely as most of the writings are a paragraph or two long. This is just what we're looking for at the beginning of the year. We would like to see where our students are as writers and this essay gives us a bit of a pre-test.

So far, students wrote a first draft, then shared it with partners using "pair-share" to find out what their readers felt were their best comparisons. After that they wrote a second draft emphasizing more detail on those comparisons. We're now working on getting rid of dead words, and students will hand in a final draft on Monday. The final draft should be either typed or written in blue or black in. Cursive or print is fine. In a final draft, I'm looking for a student to take pride in submitting their best work. I hope this pride translates into few if any punctuation and grammar errors and writing they have spent time polishing.

Ask your student to read their Toy Paragraph to you!

Wordles

As part of our classroom decor, I put up these "Dead Wordles." I used the website Wordle.net to create them. The biggest word is the "dead word," a word that is so overused it has nearly lost its meaning. The smaller words are "live" synonyms. Students can refer to these while writing.

Today, students created their own with paper and pencil. Look forward to pictures of their additions to our Wordle Wall soon.
The Wordles students created should be in their writing folders in their binders. If they brought their binders home, ask to see their Wordles!

Scribble Maps

Today we did an activity in Social Studies using a wall map and the website Scribblemaps on the LCD projector. Students discussed two locations: their favorite they've traveled to, and their dream destination. On the wall map, students put a blue sticky on the place they want to visit and an orange sticky where they've been. On our Scribblemap, I put a blue placemarker where students want to go and a yellow one where they've been (orange wasn't an option.)

Toward the end of the period, students shared that they learned about their classmates and also about where places are on the map. Success!

Here is a picture of the wall map:




Here is the interactive Scribblemap. You can drag it around to see the whole world, zoom in with the + and - in the upper left, and click on the placemarkers to see the first names of the kids.