*LIVESTRONG*LOVESTRONGER*
LAUGH HARDER*TRAVEL ALL DAY TO
GET TO NEW YORK!*
Showing posts with label new york. Show all posts
Showing posts with label new york. Show all posts
Sunday, August 11, 2013
Tuesday, August 6, 2013
Ready, Set.....
.... BACK TO SCHOOL NO! GO ON VACATION!!
It feels like summer is just beginning for me....Sunday I leave for New York. I will spend a week at Columbia University's Teacher's College for the Reading Institute. I am soooo excited.
When it ends on Friday, I will meet up with The Captain at a hotel. I am sure I will be ready for our own room after staying in a hostel all week. On Saturday we have tickets to the CROWN of the Statue of Liberty and then we will take in a Broadway show that night. Then on Sunday we will take Amtrak to Niagara Falls in Ontario. That is what we have planned so far....and our return tickets. We will be home for two days and then we will leave for backpacking on Santa Cruz Island, in Channel Island National Park.
School does not begin for kids until September 11, due to the remodeling of all the schools. I am sooooo enjoying this long summer. All my bloggy friends are getting their classrooms ready and I am going on vacation! I am sure I will be posting a different version of this next June when everyone is out of school and I am still working until JUNE 25!! But for now I will enjoy my summer.
I usually don't post my vacation plans but we have people staying at our house and taking care of the animals...so if you planned to steal my Pez collection you'll have to try another time.
Today I finished canning the last of the salsa thanks to a friend for bringing me a ton of tomatoes! I also canned tomatoes with basil and garlic when I ran out of the rest of the peppers and celantro....that will make for some great spaghetti sauce and chili! I just wish I had apricots to make jam.
It feels like summer is just beginning for me....Sunday I leave for New York. I will spend a week at Columbia University's Teacher's College for the Reading Institute. I am soooo excited.
When it ends on Friday, I will meet up with The Captain at a hotel. I am sure I will be ready for our own room after staying in a hostel all week. On Saturday we have tickets to the CROWN of the Statue of Liberty and then we will take in a Broadway show that night. Then on Sunday we will take Amtrak to Niagara Falls in Ontario. That is what we have planned so far....and our return tickets. We will be home for two days and then we will leave for backpacking on Santa Cruz Island, in Channel Island National Park.
School does not begin for kids until September 11, due to the remodeling of all the schools. I am sooooo enjoying this long summer. All my bloggy friends are getting their classrooms ready and I am going on vacation! I am sure I will be posting a different version of this next June when everyone is out of school and I am still working until JUNE 25!! But for now I will enjoy my summer.
I usually don't post my vacation plans but we have people staying at our house and taking care of the animals...so if you planned to steal my Pez collection you'll have to try another time.
Today I finished canning the last of the salsa thanks to a friend for bringing me a ton of tomatoes! I also canned tomatoes with basil and garlic when I ran out of the rest of the peppers and celantro....that will make for some great spaghetti sauce and chili! I just wish I had apricots to make jam.
*LIVESTRONG*LOVESTRONGER*LAUGH HARDER* ENJOY THE LONG SUMMER*
Saturday, June 1, 2013
Reading Assessments Part II
I have a giant box for reading assessments....everything you wanted to know and more. My job is to level the each student's reading...which means I listen to each child read a book from the giant box (and mark errors on a paper, time the reading then add and divide errors by self corrections and then figure words read per minute )... There are two books from each level; a non-fiction book and a fiction book. In the fall I used fiction books...generally easier to read and appropriate for beginner readers.
This first grade reading stuff is all new to me...I didn't have texts or a reading program to use so every month I went to the library and checked out 70 books from a leveled book list online and we read...and read. I read Henry Huggins and Beezus and Ramona books aloud....Magic Tree House books (ghak!!!,) and every book about silk worms and caterpillars and the water cycle I could find....and hatching chick eggs and every Mo Willems' book at least 50x. We looked at books inside and out....where was it published?...when was it written?...Who was it dedicated to?...Does it have a table of contents? We learned to read the pictures...starting with Rosie's Walk...did you know the inside cover has a map of the farm? And you can follow her path by studying the each picture?
And consequentially, the kids learned to read....some of them so well that they surpassed the benchmark for end of year first grade and well into second and some at beginning third grade. I guess I did something right.
So here I am at the end of the year, listening to each child read to me from the non-fiction books in the assessment box. And that stupid bubble book is one that every child has read to me....it is actually a fun, factual book....but after hearing it read, 9 times in the two hours I had to assess on Thursday, I could feel the heat rising from the vapors in my brain- my cerebral cortex ready to explode- or spontaneously combust at any second. I do believe I heard it in my sleep Thursday night...I think the dog was reading to me....
But FRIDAY morning, when I opened the inbox of my work email I found wonderful news!! I was accepted into the Reading Institute at Columbia University in August! I was on the wait list since the end of March...I had been in contact with the person who does the admittance and I think that helped get me in. So I will be flying myself on airline miles to New York City!! I will be paying my hotel- since the dorm rooms are all booked- and my school will pay the $700 institute fees. I was able to attend two years ago when I was enrolled in the Kindergarten institute....but teaching reading beyond kindergarten is a whole different ballgame...and moving onto second grade in the fall I feel totally in need of assistance. I am sooooo looking forward to this....and I love New York City! I love the heat smacking me in the face when I leave the hotel in the morning and how the transit system can take you anywhere at anytime. I am very lucky to be returning to New York!!
This first grade reading stuff is all new to me...I didn't have texts or a reading program to use so every month I went to the library and checked out 70 books from a leveled book list online and we read...and read. I read Henry Huggins and Beezus and Ramona books aloud....Magic Tree House books (ghak!!!,) and every book about silk worms and caterpillars and the water cycle I could find....and hatching chick eggs and every Mo Willems' book at least 50x. We looked at books inside and out....where was it published?...when was it written?...Who was it dedicated to?...Does it have a table of contents? We learned to read the pictures...starting with Rosie's Walk...did you know the inside cover has a map of the farm? And you can follow her path by studying the each picture?
And consequentially, the kids learned to read....some of them so well that they surpassed the benchmark for end of year first grade and well into second and some at beginning third grade. I guess I did something right.
So here I am at the end of the year, listening to each child read to me from the non-fiction books in the assessment box. And that stupid bubble book is one that every child has read to me....it is actually a fun, factual book....but after hearing it read, 9 times in the two hours I had to assess on Thursday, I could feel the heat rising from the vapors in my brain- my cerebral cortex ready to explode- or spontaneously combust at any second. I do believe I heard it in my sleep Thursday night...I think the dog was reading to me....
But FRIDAY morning, when I opened the inbox of my work email I found wonderful news!! I was accepted into the Reading Institute at Columbia University in August! I was on the wait list since the end of March...I had been in contact with the person who does the admittance and I think that helped get me in. So I will be flying myself on airline miles to New York City!! I will be paying my hotel- since the dorm rooms are all booked- and my school will pay the $700 institute fees. I was able to attend two years ago when I was enrolled in the Kindergarten institute....but teaching reading beyond kindergarten is a whole different ballgame...and moving onto second grade in the fall I feel totally in need of assistance. I am sooooo looking forward to this....and I love New York City! I love the heat smacking me in the face when I leave the hotel in the morning and how the transit system can take you anywhere at anytime. I am very lucky to be returning to New York!!
*LIVESTRONG*LOVESTRONGER*LAUGH HARDER*LEARN TO READ*
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