Happy New Year!

My goal during our winter break was to blog. Right. Well, now that I have failed miserably at getting on my computer I can honestly say that I don't mind. Yes, I enjoy blogging and writing about my class. I also enjoy writing a little more now than I used to. But seriously, walking away from my computer and putting up my 'out of town' auto response in my email was fantastic!

Looking ahead to the next half of the school year I have a few new things I'm going to try. I have a site set up, and approved through my district, on kidblog.com. I'm looking forward to being able to teach students the joys of writing publicly (I'm hoping that it will improve some of the grammar issues if they know others will be reading and responding to their work).

It's a really easy site to set up and the teacher controls are easy to use. I'm also looking at ways to incorporate journaling into writing class. Like, crazy doodling, lists, high/lows, all over, type journaling. I want my students to be able to express themselves in less structured ways so that we can use that format to make some of our more tedious tasks (like comparing and analyzing poetry) more enjoyable. I got some ideas on Pinterest already. Feel free to check out my Classroom Ideas board: http://www.pinterest.com/leekm2006/classroom-ideas/.

This one is probably my favorite version so far:

http://hopewallace.com/gallery/ringed

I'll post pictures of mine soon. I'm wanted to share with my students how fun, messy, and creative this could be. I'd love ideas on how to make this work for curriculum areas!

And finally, as I prepare to go off for an end of the year hair cut and pop by my classroom to build some book shelves, I want to wish you all a Happy New Year. Please be safe, read a good book, and make for yourself a goal that will sustain you through the next few months of teaching.