Teaching About Weather

Well, I'll admit... The best part of teaching fourth grade is the Virginia Studies curriculum. Anyone that is a history buff would love teaching fourth grade in a Virginia Public School System. As a teacher, time is my enemy... I have my reading groups.... I have my math groups.... I have my writing groups... I have my lunch groups.... I have my recess groups... No, just kiddin... Enough is enough with groups!!! But.... If there was one subject that really gets put on the backend in my classroom.... It's Science!

Now, I love teaching Science. When I taught 3rd grade - there was nothing better than covering all the many SOL standards. In many ways, the fourth grade Science SOLs are a review of third grade. Really, the only difference is teaching about WEATHER!

Many of my co-workers taught weather back in the fall. I did not. I saved it for this time of year. Think about it?!?!? This is when we care about weather. This is also when the kids care too! They want time off just as we do. Well, why not take their excitment and build it around what SOLs I need to teach...

With this so called "HUGE POSSIBLE STORM"... it made it into a science lesson. We watched video clips, looked at different sites, looked at maps, talked about key vocabulary... we made predictions... it was about 10 different lessons wrapped up into one hour!

After the lesson, I thought... Wow. A blog could really be useful. I'm excited about this... The kids are as well. It would be great to build on tomorrow. Oh darn! Tomorrow is Saturday... By Monday, the "moment" is gone. There HW over the weekend was to watch the weather patterns, view the websites, and keep a journal log of the changes from Friday to Monday.... Man, a blog could of made this fun!

Snow Day

Well, here we are - the first snow day of the school year. I was beginning to worry. We only have about 3-5 weeks left for this little white stuff. I am glad we're off today. Now I am already getting greedy for tomorrow. If we are going to be off tomorrow, I hope they cancel today. It would be nice to stay up past 8:30pm! :)

As I was shoveling the driveway today, I began to think . . . . Is there a chance that someday on a snow day I am still going to be required to teach my students? Sure, they have assignments they could be doing from home today. But besides www.studyisland.com I don't really "know" what they are doing.

In a few years, who knows? Maybe I could be teaching my fourth graders from home on a snowday. Or maybe even on a sunny day... hmmm... what do you think?

The BLOG World

Well, here I am. My first ever post on my own BLOG. I'll admit, I'm not much one of a blog user or poster. In fact, I am not sure if "poster" is the correct terminalogy. I've used newsgroups before, and I've been on mIRC (Internet Relay Chat) and message boards - but blogging will be a new adventure.

The purpose of trying this out is to see if I can gain meaning for using this in my profession. I am hoping to gain the insights on how having a blog can improve me as a teacher, but also improve my students as learners.

I'm sure this will be a new adventure. I look forward to previewing other BLOGS, but also creating mine to be something of value.