The Sunrise Story

I saw this on Facebook this morning: This makes me so happy! It's true that learning makes an impact when it's important and it matters to the learner. She has been tweeting for a year and it finally clicked at the conference! :) That's how it happened for me too! Heather is an amazing teacher with a new blog. (Hint, hint...hoping Heather shares it soon!!) She's always searching for ways to improve her craft as a teacher. She inspires and helps so many!! Today, she's at ISTE learning all sorts of amazing new things! Here's a tweet from the conference that I just love... Live your life in beta. Give yourself permission to take risks, and fail and challenge the norm. #iste2014 — Steven W. Anderson (@web20classroom) June 29, 2014 I love this quote. "Live your life in beta." Here's to Heather and all of the other teachers out there today who are taking risks and learning and stretching and growing! Way to go, Heather! Have lots of fun at IS...

Please join us at Margaret Simon's blog  Reflections on the Teche  on Sundays.  We post about digital literacy! Today's post raises more questions than answers. Last year, I started to use Evernote. I'd heard wonderful things about it from teachers near and far. I used it when I attended the Summer Reading Institute at Teacher's College and I used it to take meeting notes at school and I loved to use it for conference notes with my students! I used it until...I had to pay for it. One of my favorite things about Evernote is the ability to take pictures of student work and annotate on and around it. That clicked for me and I loved it. Evernote has a free version or a premium version. The premium is what I want to use to be able to upload unlimited pictures of student work. The cost is too much. It's $45 a year. I didn't feel like it was worth it to me, so I stopped. I missed it...but I got by without it. This summer, I'm hearing about Confer. It's a ...

Each week on Saturday  bloggers celebrate at  Ruth Ayres Writes .  Won't you join us?  Last week I celebrated the meandering days of summer...and then lived one of the busiest weeks of the year! Camp was amazing... better than I expected! You can read my posts from this week right here on my blog. We learned and laughed and stretched ourselves and shared our experiences.  I'd been feeling a bit jealous about all of the amazing conferences around the country that I wanted to attend, but couldn't...All Write, Boothbay, Choice Literacy, Teachers College...this week I realized how lucky I am! Here in my very own county, we have so many opportunities! Our technology conference ActivLoudoun, where I got to present and see awesome presenters like Steven Anderson ! I even won a Google Chromebook at that conference too. And then there's camp. We planned and presented it, but as always, I feel like I learned as much as those who attended. I'm leaving this...

English Workshop Toolkit  Summer Camp 2014 Today we finished camp. The four days brought us together. We created a community and that is precious to me. Thank you to each of the campers/participants. YOU made camp what it was! Your expertise. Your knowledge. Your curiosity. Your openness. Your joy made camp an experience to remember!  Thank you to Michele Schmidt-Moore. Her leadership inspires us all. Each of the presenters spent valuable time preparing and presenting. We are better for learning from you. And Niki, the ultimate camp counselor, teacher and friend!  Niki began our time together with a creative and fun team building activity. Table groups worked together to create a quote that describes the time they spent here this week. (Niki uses this in class for theme as well.) Groups worked closely to create funny, interesting and touching quotes.  Our last time sharing beautiful words...inspired by the art of Andres Amadour. We watched this vid...

English Workshop Toolkit  Summer Camp 2014 Camp continues to get better each day! I'm afraid this post will be shorter (with no pictures today...so much to do and so little time).  We started today with two truths and a lie. I learned that one teacher played with Amy Carter in the White House when she was little and another teacher just finished a half marathon. That game is always interesting. Once again we wrote beautiful words, inspired by Naomi Shihab Nye's poem "Famous".  At the end of each the day, the sharing of our beautiful words has resulted in beautiful tears. The writers we have astound and impress me.  The morning was spent learning about strategy groups and conferencing. Laura Tucker presented today and challenged our thinking. It was good. It was that kind of learning that makes us uncomfortable...so uncomfortable that we know we need to change something. The teachers leapt at the chance to learn how to conference more effectively an...

Holly Mueller is hosting a  Spiritual Journey Thursday  on her  blog .  Thank you Holly the opportunity to focus on the spiritual life. This week's topic is about renewal. Ahhh, it's 9:37pm and it's the first moment I've had to sit down and compose this post. Ironic that the topic is renewal. Holly asked, "What are ways I renew my spirit?" Prayer. What does prayer look like for me?  It's a day long conversation with God.  It's the... ...gratitude email I share with family and friends to focus on my blessings ...Matthew West or Plumb or Rend Collective blasting from my iPhone as I drive to work. ...devotional I read during the moment of silence. ...doodling, praying in color, in my notebook. ...quiet moments I steal during the day to continue the conversation. ...blogs about faith that I read during the day. ...grace I show others because of the grace He always shows me. Here's a video of one of my...

English Workshop Toolkit  Summer Camp 2014 A rainbow is a great start to the day! Day two of camp was about notebooks. I love getting there early and setting up before everyone arrives... Ooohh, PENS!!! Rebecca is so excited about her new pens! Our tables with sandboxes in the middle. Catching up before the day starts. Good morning! We started with a hilarious version of rock, paper, scissors. Here are some pictures of people really getting into the game... This group of teachers takes risks! They leap into whatever we ask with everything they have...they inspire me. After our getting to know you game, we opened our notebooks, ready to write beautiful words. We read a poem by Nikki Grimes about summer and decided to compose in the humid summer air... The humidity didn't dampen our writing. We wrote and remembered how powerful it is to change your perspective.  Then we dove into notebooks. Niki...

English Workshop Toolkit  Summer Camp 2014 Today we had our first day of camp.  Figuring out technology for camp. What is camp? It's a combination of curriculum development, planning, collaboration, and lots of fun! Each day starts off with getting to know you activity and it's followed by beautiful words.  We listened to "Shake the Dust" by Anis Mojgani and used that as inspiration to write. I tweeted about it and LOOK: He favorited my tweet! Yipppeee! We will write and read, just like our students, to help us find the most effective tools to add to our toolkit!  Each of the four days has a focus and today's focus was Interactive Read Aloud. Colleen Milligan and Bea Neukirk shared their experience and expertise in utilizing read aloud instructionally. They modeled with short story, picture book, and excerpt from a longer text. Once the teachers observed them, they were off creating their own plans to incorporate interactive rea...

Slice of Life Challenge Please join the challenge over at  Two Writing Teachers ! Today I start camp. Yes, I said camp. Four days of laughing and learning together. I am a counselor. We've been planning this for weeks and it all starts today! Camp is the theme for our four days of curriculum development for middle school English.  Twenty five teachers will gather together for four days of planning, collaborating, questioning, writing, reading and learning. Each day is lead by amazing teachers in the county who are experts at their task!  I am the constant...the counselor. I begin and end each day with activities to get the participants to open up, have fun, and reflect! We are going to share Beautiful Words everyday. Teachers will write and share their writing. The inspiration for our writing today will be an uplifting and powerful poem from Anis Mojgani called Shake the Dust. Here's my introduction to Beautiful Words...Take his ...

Inspired by Julie Johnson's blog post yesterday...look what I made... Having fun playing around with technology! What a great way to introduce myself to students & parents!

Each week on Saturday  bloggers celebrate at  Ruth Ayres Writes .  Won't you join us?  Today I celebrate meandering days. I celebrate the freedom to schedule my time however I like. Summer is a time of projects and planning and catching up. It's also a time of relaxing and enjoying and meandering. Yesterday, I finished one book and started another. I worked on some projects for the English Department. I played with Bella, did laundry, met a friend for dinner, went for a walk...I meandered. Bella enjoying a summer morning... I love that word...meander. It's like there's a long, winding path in front of me that I follow, stopping whenever I like...in no hurry to arrive at my destination. That's how I see summer. There are things to be done, but my focus isn't finish, finish, finish...it's enjoy the journey.  I mentioned the English Department...I celebrate the amazing leadership the English Department in my county. Dr. Michele Schmidt-...