Friday, February 21, 2014

EL Conference

Yesterday I attended the Indiana State EL conference (English Learner) with a team from my school. We were able to attend some meaningful sessions by various presenters. Michelle Luck shared great ideas for making learning more meaningful for kids by creating ways to make learning into games. Kids love games and I am excited to try out her game, Dots. http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Just-Game-Michele-Luck/dp/0578011182/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1393009294&sr=8-3&keywords=learning+is+just+a+game We were also able to present during one of the breakout sessions to educators about our Literacy Initiatives at Lincoln! We shared our story of book commercials turned into book trailers and postings on our youtube channel: mylincolnlion. We were excited to share our story with so many educators in Indiana! We hope that they will bring book commercials and book trailers back to their classrooms and their EL students!! What a great way to motivate kids to read!!

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Goal...accomplished!

Here I sit at school during another snow day! No kids, a million things to get done. Yesterday I got a call from a teacher, "do you have a minute to meet with a student?" I said sure, send him over. After 10 minutes, he had not arrived, I walked down the hall to the classroom. I went in the room and over to the boy who was organizing items in his folder during the literacy block. I bent down next to him and ask what's going on? He looked up at me, and said "I met my reading goal today." Awhile ago, I had "caught" this boy writing in class about how he wanted to reach his reading goal. We walked to my office and talked about how he met his goal, how he felt about it and his next goal. He was so excited to share with someone in addition to his teacher! Priceless.