Kids aren't the only ones who have to go to school. I took three classes this summer as part of a continuing education requirement to maintain my teaching credentials with the Teacher's Standards and Practices Commission. The goal is to keep teacher's up-to-date and excited about some of the topics, tools, and practices associated with quality education.One of the classes I took was one day one credit class called Creating Better Writers. It was taught by a fourth grade teacher from Eugene with many years of experience and even more wonderful lessons and ideas to create motivated and successful young writers. 84% of her students past the state writing test last year, which is an amazing feat. I'm looking forward to implementing many of her suggestions and following her sequence of building skills in young writers throughout the year.
This blog is a product of a four credit course I'm taking this summer as well. I'm taking it online and it's uses for the classroom are exponential. I've enjoyed every aspect of the course so far and look forward to using with my class this upcoming school year.
The pictures above are a product of a three credit course I took a week ago called Connecting Art & Math. It was a week long course taught by a Portland artist/educator named Roger Kukes. He has come to Sexton Mountain before as a guest educator. All the pictures in this posting are of art work I completed in the class - with a torn ligament and splint on my right thumb! The class was invaluable and I came away from it with three-ring binder chalked full of lesson plans and ideas to help me continue to incorporate art into my classroom as much as possible. This course in particular focused on connecting art and math as the title suggests. The first picture is the culmination (final copy) of a lesson on geometric solids and the second and third pictures are final copies of polygon tessellations. I plan to do both of these lessons, as well as others, in my classroom next school year.
