Great Joy

Do you ever wonder why you became a teacher? Why do you spend the countless hours at home differentiating your lesson so that your students understand the concept you are trying to teach?  And why once a lesson is over you sit and think of how you can change and make that lesson better?  

Then it hits you! 

POW!!!!

The student who is smiling from ear to ear because they are so proud of what they wrote!  

Or the student who is so excited because they reached the correct answer in math!  

Or the student who just stood in front of the class and read an entire book with confidence and then the class gives them a standing ovation!

This was my day today!  Watching my students succeed and overcome obstacles is why I do what I do every day!  

Have you been to Berenstain Bear Country?

I was very sad today when I heard of the death of Jan Berenstain. Jan along with her husband Stan created an amazing set of books that will always teach children great lessons.  They wrote and illustrated over 300 books.  After Stan’s death in 2005, Mike, their son, helped Jan to continue creating wonderful books.  With Jan’s death today, I hope that Mike will continue the legacy that his parents started in the 1960s.

I cannot even begin to tell you how many books I “wore” out from reading them over and over again.  As a teacher, I absolutely LOVED reading these books to my students.  I always enjoyed telling my student how the Berenstain family were born, raised, and lived in Pennsylvania.  The students always thought that was amazing to think that the “Berenstain Bears lived in our state”.  These books were not only entertaining but they taught the students many lessons.

The Berenstain Bears has a fabulous site, check it out!

https://www.berenstainbears.com/

Please share your favorite Berenstain Bear book below…

PETE&C Pre-Conference Day of Discovery!

Wow!  What a wonderful day of Discovery!  I look forward to Discovery Education offering a wonderful pre-conference day at Pete & C each year.  I have never attended Pete & C but after this year I decided I am not missing it next year!

The opening presentation was a collaboration demonstration by Hall Davison, Lance Rougeux, and Steve Dembo.  They talked about how we need to look at the 22^nd Century because many schools are surpassing the 21^st Century.   One great app they talked about was “Life of George” created by Legos.  It’s an amazing app and you will want to check out for your classroom!  I left their presentation excited about the rest of the day!

The first session I attended was the Collective Brain given by Lance Rougeux.  He showed us many fabulous websites that would be a wonderful resource in our classroom, such as http://www.yasiv.com  (Amazon’s Product Visualization) and http://agoogleaday.com, which asks a question a day.  Great ideas!

The second session was iThink iNeed iPads in my Classroom presented by Steve Dembo.  Steve showed us many amazing apps along with Apple TV.  He showed us how beneficial it was to have Apple TV in our classroom if you are using iPads.  It was amazing to show our favorite apps by displaying our iPad on the screen.

After lunch there was a DEN Star Showcase. I had the great privilege to share Web 2.0 Tools, which I love.  It was called Beyond the Classroom Walls.  I met so many wonderful people and had the opportunity to share all the wonderful things that are taking place in my school.

My final session of the day was learning about Scratch. Scratch is a great downloadable package to teach programing.   I remember programming years ago and it seem like you wrote a hundred lines to have Hello come up on your screen.  I am so excited that teachers are still teaching it because I think it is important that students understand have programs work.

Once again, it was a fun-filled and educational day.  Reed Timmer, Discovery Education Meteorologist, made a guest appearance today! WOW!  That was awesome!

Overall it was a great day of learning! Can’t wait for the next one!

Welcome

Welcome to my blog!  My name is Christelle and I am on a journey as a Life-Long Learner.  Many educators are on the same journey as I am but I decided that I wanted the opportunity to share my journey with others. I would like to share books, thoughts, and experiences with everyone.


I have been traveling through this journey for seven years now.  However, the upcoming year is definitely a defining moment for me.  I am leaving the classroom and embarking on a new road.  I am becoming an Instructional Technology Coach and will be collaborating and co-teaching with my wonderful colleagues.


Enjoy your journey and I hope you enjoy mine!