Mumpley Middle School

And the Mumpley Middle School winner is #3, Deborah Benavides!

The winner will be contacted shortly! Once I figure out how to do this. Never done a publisher giveaway before. Get the address and pass it on, I would guess. Anyway. It was a fun little book. Not Shakespeare or DiCamillo or Seuss but still a fun little book.


Enter the 8X10 canvas print giveaway through the rafflecopter at the end of this post here. It's open through the 30th.


This week has been all about Digital Citizenship. Which is SO important ... and yet in some ways hard to get across to elementary. Especially plagiarism. Makes so much more sense in context with a research question. We'll talk about it again, I'm sure. Today was an intro and checking it off the "must do" list.

First attempts ... disaster. I used the lesson script from the district but it was ... dare I say it ... kind of dull. Second attempt ... a little better but I cannot do a pirate accent. Just so you know.

Finally ... enter the Digital Citizenship Kit! Of which I don't have a cute picture because mine is not cute yet. It's still in a random shopping bag because I only gathered the items last night.Totally stolen from this blog post. Go. Gather. Went over much better with 3rd grade. Still not perfect and definitely needs tweaking for more emphasis on plagiarism (that was supposed to be my part of the lesson cycle)... but so much better in terms of student engagement.


I'm debating doing the same thing with 4th grade tomorrow. OR ... give each table a "situation" and let them make a short Sock Puppets or Puppet Pals video on what the right thing to do would be? We only have MAYBE 40 minutes if we push it. Closer to 30. Could they create something in that short of time? When they haven't seen the app before? Neither are hard so we'll see.


One of my nephews called me last night. He wanted to talk Harry Potter, Star Wars Legos, and Captain Underpants. I enjoy two of those three. You can probably guess which.

I've never done small group tutoring before this year. I'm ... the kids are cool but I'm not very impressed with the leveled readers. Guess it's naiveté. Knew they were out there. And I'm sure there are "research based" reasons for them being so boring. Kids need the repetitive structure? But reading each one three times? When they are so dull? No wonder some kiddos don't care for reading. And having to fill out a different organizer each time? Insult to injury. But my strengths are not in the How of reading but more the Why and the Love. So I still do what teachers and admin ask. At least until they are more sure what we're doing in small groups and can give me goals a little further out. Then I can figure out maybe how to get us there.



Blogger Rule #1
Have images.

I'm trying to be better! Wouldn't know it from this text heavy post.