The Amazon Rainforest

Image from: http://www.dist102.k12.il.us/resources/Rainforest05/chimpanzee-pictures.jpg

The Amazon Rainforest in South America is such a beautiful and unique gem of our planet. Unfortunately, it is being cut down at an alarming rate. The elimination, or cutting down of trees in the rainforest is called deforestation. Deforestation is happening so often that it is said that each day an area is cut down the size of New Jersey!

Humans and wildlife need trees to survive. The rainforest is a huge part of our healthy living. What are some of the disadvantages to losing so much of the rainforest each day? Who is it hurting, and what is happening because of all of this? Click on the comments section and write a response answering these questions. Make sure you include many reasons why, instead of just explaining what is happening in complete senctences. Once you are finished check your work and submit it! Good luck!

Go Obama!

I work at a Charter School and since I have began I have received twice as many negative comments than positive comments about working there or even having this school exist. Funny enough, I didn't even know what a Charter School was until I began to work here. I try to stay pretty level-headed and see both sides, but many times I have to laugh at the comments. In the end, people just need to get their facts straight. Charter Schools do work. In fact, the one in which I work at is one of the top Charter School in the nation. We continue to have high enrollment, and we may be the only school in Michigan this year that is expanding our building to make more room. I believe that schools need to begin to change. I feel that Charter Schools have jumped on board to make that change. I support the idea, and I just wish more people would educate themselves with the idea and look at the positives more than the negatives. Thank goodness for Obama. It's nice to hear that even the president is on my side!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/11/us/politics/11web-educ.html?_r=1&ref=education

Writing Resources

So once again, I'm commenting about this website and blog that I subscribe to for elementary teaching resources. If anything, her ideas are very inspiring and get me thinking about some wonderful ways that I can improve literacy and writing within my classroom. Just recently I have taken on a whole new perspective to writer's workshop. The school in which I work at has been trying very hard to improve our writing curriculum over the years. We recently jumped on board and purchased the Lucy Calkins writing program from grades Kindergarten through 5th. Since the program is still so new to me, I'm still undecided on how I feel about it. The program is a set of books that walks you through a step-by-step approach to achieving great writing with your students. I felt it kept walking me through the same lesson over and over again until just recently. I decided to move onto the second book after getting very frustrated with the lessons, flipped through a few chapters and found a great way to get my students to pull the reader's more into their writing. We begin each narrative now with a piece of dialogue or a small action, and it made a huge differance! A few days a week now we share these narratives as I group and I completely enjoy this writing time with the students, which is something I used to dread.

The reason I say the host of this site is so inspiring is because she inspired me and motivated me to do more. She is able to teach some amazing things to kindergarten students...ideas that I find difficult to have my third graders comprehend. If anything, she will make you feel like you need to be having more fun when teaching reading and writing in the classroom...no matter what grade you teach!

Check it out for yourself!

http://elementary-teacher-resources.blogspot.com/

A little bit about my RSS feed...

So, this whole world of blogging is still very absurd to me. I understand how it can be useful to many, but I don't see how so many people in the world could care about others rambling about their every day adventures online! :) Well, since we were to post about an RSS feed that we subscribe to, I subscribe to one called "Elementary Teaching Resources." The lady that runs this site and blog is a kindergarten teacher that just has some amazing ideas. She posts different podcasts that welcome teachers into her classroom, and I look to this site for some new ideas into my classroom. I feel what she is able to accomplish each year with a group of 5 year olds is just pretty amazing.