The Bengal Blog: 12-12-2014

What a great feast we shared yesterday. Just as good as the food, was seeing so many people share a meal filled with conversation and laughter. Thanks to Ellen and Pat for all of the work they did to organize and put together the meal.

Usually I get all of my web resources from twitter, but today they are from your fellow teachers: The first is the Tween Trib from Alex A. This is a great link to current news articles that list the lexile level of the article and gives a critical thinking question(s) at the end. You can search different grade bands for your lower or higher level students and articles can be read in spanish as well. This is a free resource from the Smithsonian. http://www.tweentribune.com/

Melissa and Mark put on a wonderful concert Wednesday Night. The audience was standing room only and the kids sounded great because of the practice and hard work of students and staff.

The second staff link comes from Linda Calvo and it is a website called Kahoot. This allows you to input quiz or test questions into a game type format and then the kids compete to answer questions on their devices as the questions appear on the board. It keeps score based on how fast they answer and gives updates on the top 5. The greatest part of Kahoot is when the quiz is over it gives the teacher a printout of every students score and what questions they got right or wrong. When I saw the students using the program you would of thought that they were studying pop culture and the prize was a million dollars instead of world history and bragging rights on the line. https://getkahoot.com/

Thanks to Michelle F for working with the 7th grade students on their national parks research project and 5th grade students on internet safety. We appreciate the great resource that you are to students and staff.

Didn't I just say that? Teaching and reteaching: http://blog.classdojo.com/post/104289707150/didnt-i-just-say-that-teaching-and-reteaching

Thanks to Nicole and Todd (and Jessica E) for presenting on our referral system at our last Learning Meeting. The presentation and the discussion from everyone showed that we are all working together to help the kids with the most needs.

5 questions to encourage student voice:

As you finalize your eligibility list this morning, please make sure that you are calling parents if anyone in your class is failing(winter athlete or not).

Give the Gift of Words:

Thanks to John, Jen and Lynette for agreeing to open up their gym on April 24th for a great opportunity for Benjamin students. Medical students from Midwestern University will be coming in to present a Mini-medical school. This will run all day long in the students PE classes and will not interfere with anyone's schedule.

Thanks to Melissa F for adjusting her schedule to allow her students to watch the Orion spacecraft make it's approach back to earth. Watching current events as they happen will make a lasting impression on what could be history in their furure.

Be great in act, as you have been in thought.

William Shakespeare

The time to relax is when you don't have time for it.