What I read here follows what I have been reading about acquisition of literacy from Calkins, Atwell, Fountas and Pinnell, and other prominent literacy teachers/authors.

 Intuitively, I am drawn to constructivism. I certainly find I learn best through hands-on exploration into a topic that interests me and with support from an expert who can help me along (much like my current self-immersion into edtech!)

But, I am NOT providing my middle school kids with much of this kind of learning, and I feel that it’s still not well-accepted in my school with a mostly low-SES ethnic population.

My main problem: Finding topics that inspire my students to practice the language arts in meaningful ways. Everything seems to bore them beyond social interactions and the people of popular media culture.

I would love to have a mentor on whose expertise I could rely to help me create the constructivist classroom I envision.

I believe those mentors are what I’m searching for in this foray into web 2.0.

I may just have to bite the bullet and get a better computer myself.

I also had ordered Seeking Diversity by Linda Reif last week from amazon.com. It came Saturday, and I read the first chapter where Linda explains that she had been teaching 10 years. Nancie Atwell also wrote her book after about 10 years. I have been teaching 14 years and don’t feel nearly competent enough to write a book about my methods! How do these people feel get so good? I guess they are just “born” with it. Maybe I just haven’t found my “niche” yet…using technology in the classroom may be it, since I LOVE it!!!

Still administering state tests today.

 Colleague Discussion

I had a reassuring discussion with a colleague this morning.

Understand that I am a veteran teacher…14 years behind me.

 Tomorrow I will be having my appraisal observation from my assistant principal. I was telling my colleague that I am embarrassed by my lesson plans as documentation of my teaching through the year. My principal requests references to the TEKS covered in the lesson, a reference to what AVID methodology is used (writing,inquiry, collaboration, reading-there is a chart of AVID strategies under each of these headings), and what level of Costa’s questioning is used.

Both my colleague and I know we don’t consistently include all of this information in our plans that are to be turned in every grading period. Because of this embarrassment, we don’t always even turn in the plans (and worry about being called out on it). We both strive to use workshop methods in our classrooms, offering authentic reading and writing experiences and some choice to the students we teach in our Title 1 school. This often has me writing post-lesson plans about what occurred in my room on a given day.

I searched the web for online lesson plan templates/services that allowed me to maintain my plans online. I found and purchased Lesson Plan Locker, but have not been real happy with it. I have had printing issues (like it prints a blank form even when on the desktop it’s filled and saved). The collaborative elements promised are not there (because no one has used them, I assume).

We want to be GOOD (no, GREAT) teachers. We feel bad about our shortcomings. Is this a PD issue? A motivation issue (am I just lazy???) Am I overwhelmed by all I have to teach and how many choices I have that planning seems impossible? Is planning in a workshop model so different from traditional planning that I’m stymied?

It was reassuring to know I am not the only one who feels this way. I am on a personal search to resolve this issue and proudly have lesson plans that serve my and my administrator’s needs.

I would love comments about other teacher’s feelings about lesson planning!

My campus is really lucky to have a Distance Learning Lab that I have used about 3 times this year in an attempt to get used to how the whole thing works. I have to admit that what I participated in wasn’t well coordinated to fit my curriculum. I teach ESL, though, so the experiences (one about migration of cranes and the other at Christmas about storytelling) were valid in terms of language development.

That said, I would like to get more on the ball and take advantage of not only sessions, but collaborative opportunities for next year. I have a membership with CILC, so over the summer I hope to get some programs planned for next year.

OK, got the Voki off the sidebar…:(

Now, trying to get del.icio.us to work…:(

How do I create/post tinyurls into a Tweet onTwitter?

I posted a tweet asking how to do this, and one of my followers, kolson29, obligingly answered me! She tweeted the url for tweetburner, which automatically changes a regular url to a tinyurl. How cooool is that???? Then it prompts you to create your tweet right from that page!

I came back to school today with ugly lesions on my right arm from the poison ivy. 12-14 year old boys especially loved the gross-out factor.

Anyway, the doc says that the stuff isn’t contagious, so I’ll be back in the classroom tomorrow. I also got a nice shot in the rearend that I hope will help me feel better.

 Now, how canI get my techie stuff organized???? That is the project for the moment since I have some time today.

I have a myyahoo account, which is my primary email, a myspace page, delicious, twitter, and gmail (which forwards to my yahoo acct and is used with aliases to create blogs for my students to use). I rss a few blogs onto myyahoo (even got the education and home building separated into 2 pages!! woohoo!)

I use twhirl to twitter on my desktop. Maybe I do have everything pretty well connected and easy to access now that I think about it.

What I want to know:

 Can have my voki avatar only on my blog sidebar, but not on all my pages. Is that possible??

How do I retweet on twitter, and how do I create tinyurls?

I will head over to Classroom20 and post on the forum there to see if anyone knows!

 I did a search for careers on yahooligans, and found that the BLS has a site for kids 4-8 grades!

I didn’t think the students had a truly authentic reason for writing a letter to me describing what they learned about the career and if they still wanted to pursue it. The letters were not good at all. I also offered for a higher grade that the students create a brochure in MS Word that explains the career. Only a couple of students were interested in doing that. The info probably wouldn’t be that great because of the difficulty the kids had with the BLS website.

My idea is to have the students create a wiki. Each student (or pairs interested in the same career) create a page on the wiki.

I have gone to pbwiki.com and begun the creation of a wiki for us to use, but I am lost on how to really use this!

 I have posted onto the classroom 2.0 forum to see if I can get some help. I’m crossing my fingers that I get some help!!!