Music Players a Hit as Reading Incentive

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We use Renaissance Learning for its Accelerated Reader and STAR Testing capabilities. My homeroom class of 8th Graders have historically gotten about 60% to 70% participation in the program per calendar month. I knew there had to be a way to increase that number. In a conversation with the other teachers on our staff, I brought up the idea of… Read more »

Using Wikis to Teach Literature

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In preparation for my presentation on Technology as Alternative Assessment at the Metro-Milwaukee Teachers Conference in March, I pitched my original lesson plans for the novel Freak the Mighty and decided to to something different. The summer before I started teaching, I stumbled upon this book and practically devoured it.  The book is narrated by Max, a boy who has… Read more »

A Wonderful Weekend

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Last weekend, I drove up to the Twin Cities to spend time with my boyfriend Tony, his siblings and their family. The drive from the Milwaukee area was uneventful and passed quickly, probably because I was excited to see everyone.  I hadn’t seen them since Christmas time, so it was a highly anticipated event. (Not to mention it was also… Read more »

Divine Call Received – It’s Sort of Like a Job Offer

On Monday night, right after I was done on Skype with a few friends, my phone started ringing. It was from a number in my area code, so I answered, thinking it was a parent of one of my students. It was a Pastor from a church about 40 minutes south of here and he called to tell me that… Read more »

Icebreaker Indoor Marathon Relay

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This entry is also being used for teacher challenge #5 – using images in posts. Last Saturday, I was healthy and privileged enough to be able to participate in the Icebreaker Indoor Marathon Relay. The Icebreaker weekend is a unique event which includes a full marathon, half-marathon, marathon relay, and 5K. The neat thing about the races is that they… Read more »

Capture, Record and Share your Screen with Jing

When I was pondering what to write about today, I looked in the box of tools that I use rather frequently with my job in education.  One of the tools I’d like to share with you is Jing, by Techsmith. I mainly use Jing for its screencapture tool. For instance, when I was teaching our faculty how to set and… Read more »

Teacher Challenge #4 – RSS, Avatars, Discussions: Oh my!

This week’s Teacher Challenge post talked about many different things that are important to blogging.  First, they mentioned RSS feeds and readers.  My favorite reader of choice is Google Reader due to the fact that I use a lot of Google products already (Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs are my favorite!) Second was the topic of avatars.  I’ve been… Read more »

12 Activities for Interactive Whiteboards You Can Use TODAY! – SimpleK12

One of the biggest challenges I have with many things in my life is being consistent. As you can see, my first week of blogging was filled with entries. Since then, virtual silence! I thought I’d share with you a post that I got from Twitter today. (See my little sidebar for my tweets!) I love Twitter because not only… Read more »

“The Red Pyramid” Projects

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My 7th and 8th grade Literature classes recently finished listening to the audiobook of The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan.  When I read the book last summer, I loved it and I knew I would have to share it with my class. Side note: I think that’s one of my favorite things about being a Literature teacher — you can… Read more »

7 Things You Didn’t (or Didn’t Want to) Know About Me

The second update of the Teacher Challenge talks about how to write a blog post.  Thankfully, I’ve been doing this for a little while and feel pretty comfortable with my writing.  I am learning the WordPress dashboard and editing system with ease.  I could understand how a non-tech-savvy person could be a little confused with how things work. (They had… Read more »