Growth

As we get ready to leave for the holiday break we have been doing all kinds of testing before the kids forget everything we have taught them. I spend most of the year worrying about the lack of perfomance so I am going to celebrate right now and worry again when the new year comes.  Overall we have seen movement!!!!! Wooo HOOO! I am so excited for the incredible growth of some of my kids! But along with these great success I also have some challenges and I am not sure how to take their lack of growth!
SOOO,  I am going to focus on the positive.

What are your successes? What can you celebrate before we have to got back to worrying.

Learning and the Holidays

Hmmm. The holidays! We have students who have been back for a week and half and still have not recovered from the Thanksgiving break! With a TWO week break coming up how do you keep the kids focused before the holiday and how do you get them back into good learning habits when they get back?

Physical Therapy

Well I went for my first physical therapy session. My therapist is great. I learned that the knee really only follows the hip and ankle so If I reactivate my big muscles in my leg then I will be able to function without my ACL. I also learned that even just 1 cc of fluid on the knee will affect the muscles and makes your muscles stop working. I have to work on activating my hamstring and big thigh muscle working again. Surgery is still an option but I would like not to have any if possible.

I also found out that even though I am "old" according to my Doc. I still have great flexibility in my hips and hamstrings. This made me feel a little better.

What has made you feel old lately?

Electronics

How did we ever travel without electronics! We traveled to all over Kansas this Holiday break and the trip went so much better with the kids glued to movies, ipods and computers. There was peace in the car. The adults carried on conversations. We even enjoyed the view along the way but what are we teaching our children? They have not learned patience or how to carry on a conversation with others. They are certainly not asking any questions besides "are we there yet". It is important to  unplug and teach our children the wonder of nature and how to ask questions.

I will also add that I will still use videos and ipods but we will turn them off once in a while to work on those skills.

Turkey day

What Part Of A Wild Turkey Is Its Snood?
Thanksgiving is called Turkey Day by many and the turkey is clearly a part of our holiday culture.

This site has a lot of fun facts you can wow and entertain your family with over the holiday break.

Record keeping

As we are getting more into PLC's how do you keep track of the data? What have you found that works the best for the weekly quick checks? Reading levels and notes about reading issues? I am not very adept at excel. I am looking for ideas because my desk in beginning to become buried along with me and my brain. I am getting more and more stressed with the amount of Stuff I have to keep track of and plan for. I need some help with tools to make things easier. Any suggestions?

Break Through

Well I have really been struggling with PLC's (Personal Learning Communities) at my school. I was buried in a lot of random data and overwhelmed with what were supposed to be doing last year. This year did not look any better the stakes were much higher. But today we were looking at some data, pulling information about what we had done and what had gone well. We found the area we had made a difference and discussed what we had done to make this happen and made instructional decision based on this information! We finally did it! I can't believe it and I don't know if we can keep it up but it was nice to have some type of positive moment!