Tis the Season

Tis the season for conferences, that is. I'm very excited to be participating and also presenting at AETC tomorrow and Thursday. Then, it's off to ISTE in San Antonio. After that, I'll be presenting and attending several sessions through our board of education. 

I love conferences! Teaching can be a very isolated profession in which you rarely even speak to your coworker during the course of a day. Attending and presenting sessions not only helps me sharpen my skills, but is a great way to network and connect with other educators. They sort of recharge me, and keep me excited about trying new things with my students. 

I'm such a school nerd! I wonder how many others out there are like me? Do you go to professional development during the summer?

CORE Academy

I'm very excited to be a part of JSU's CORE Academy for the next few days. I'll be presenting two sessions with my friend, Cara (Teaching...My Calling), over the next two days dealing with integrating technology and using social media.

Here's a sneak peak of our LiveBinder of resources we plan to share:

Hope to see you there!

Planning Already

How soon do you do it? Start planning for next  year, I mean. Throughout the year, I'm constantly thinking to myself, "I want to do that again," or "NEVER again!" So I'm linking up with Kim at Finding Joy in 6th for her awesome linky party to share some of my plans for next year.

I started running about two months ago (read more about it on my other blog), and it has been an amazing journey! I've seen so many positive outcomes, not just in myself, but in my students as well. I definitely want to keep this up.

I partially implemented Everyday Math this year with my fourth graders, and I saw amazing results in retention of some common math concepts. Next year I'm moving to fifth for a year, but I want to keep up the calendar math routine, tweaked with 5th grade level activities. Here's a link to the files I made for the 4th grade calendar math if you're interested.

Because I work in a small school, we sometimes have to shift grade levels due to enrollment. For the next school year, my cohort will have the entire 4th grade, and I will move up to 5th. While I'm super excited to get to teach a new curriculum and have some of my students again, I will really miss her! We work so well together.

How about you? Have you started thinking about next year yet? Join the linky and share!

An Ending

The close of the school year is upon us, and it is definitely bittersweet. I'm so excited to get to spend time with my family this summer, and I'm looking forward to teaching and attending professional development conferences. But at the same time, I'm sad to see the end of such a great year.

I will really miss the daily conversations, activities, and laughs that were so common this year with my group. I will miss seeing their curious faces and the excited looks on their faces when we'd learn something particularly fun. I will miss their work ethic and determination, and their encouragement.

With this sadness comes excitement, though, at knowing that next year brings a fresh start for us. That's one of the great things about teaching. We get to start over each August!

As I write this post I'm reminded of a line from my favorite book series, The Wheel of Time, by Robert Jordan. "There are no endings, and will never be endings, to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was AN ending."

This is my favorite line in the series. It reminds me that with each ending brings about a new beginning.

They're Watching

During the past few weeks I've been really striving to live a healthy, balanced lifestyle in order to honor God with my physical body. I've stopped drinking coffee at school. They noticed. I've been bringing a healthy lunch everyday. "What are you eating, Mrs. Kilgo? Smells delicious!" they say. They've seen me politely turn down offers of special birthday treats, and on occasion have even seen me in my work out clothes jogging after school.

Although I didn't have my students in mind when I began making these changes, I can see that it is effecting them. We're talking about exercise, building stamina in sports, healthy eating, and training for 5Ks. They're asking questions. But what really got me thinking about how much they're actually watching was a statement written by one of my kiddos.

They were asked to compare a character in a selected text to someone they knew and one child wrote, "Dr. Shannon is like Mrs. Kilgo because they both work really hard to be healthy and stay in shape..."

Wow! Yet another eye opener of how much they are watching and how much influence we have over our kiddos. Knowing I'm far from perfect, I pray that most of my impact on them will be positive.

Politics and Education....: Supporting the CCRS - Open Letter to Mrs. Zeanah

Politics and Education....: Supporting the CCRS - Open Letter to Mrs. Zeanah: Open letter to Mrs. Elois Zeanah,  President of the Alabama Federation of Republican Women  Mrs. Zeanah opposes the use of Common Core ...

Geometry Galore!

I was so excited to finally make it to the geometry section in our math book a few weeks ago. That is, until my kiddos gave me that worried look at the beginning of the chapter. I could tell they were nervous about these concepts and knew I needed to get busy! Enter these awesome resources that I made/found:

Looking for apps? Geometry Quest is a HUGE hit in my classroom! My kids absolutely adore this game, and I love that they're getting a constant review of lines, angles, shapes, etc...There is a lite version, which is what we started with, but my kids were so engaged that I bought the app. WELL worth $1.99! 

Source: teacherspayteachers.com via Farrah on Pinterest

We constantly play Guess My Number, a game in which the teacher thinks of a number and the students ask questions with yes/no answers to try and figure out the number. So when I found this free Guess Who? game about shapes, I knew my kiddos would love it!

We love "I have, who has" games! In my class we race to see how quickly we can complete the game and if we can beat the previous score. This game is a quick, fun review that encourages students to read geometry terms correctly. You can find it in my store here.

I created these task cards for a center. The students follow the directions on the front, then turn them over to check. You can find them in my store here.

This is another center activity I created to help familiarize students with the correct ways to name lines, line segments, and angles. They read what is on the card and choose the correct answer. Scanning the QR code tells students whether or not the choose correctly. You can get it here. 

We've been having a great time learning about geometry now. Hopefully you can use some of them, too!

The Truth About SB-190

I almost never post about political happenings, but I just couldn't sit back this time. There are too many people out there bombarding the public with false information under the guise of "helping students." How is it okay for a group who claims to support Christian values and morals to propagate half truths and out-right lies?!

The group I'm referring to has made outrageous claims that are easily proven false. Here are just a few examples:

Myth: Common Core is secret and many parents are unaware of the standards.
TRUTH: They're right here on the state department's website, accessible to anyone.

Myth: Common Core is anti-Christian and anti-American.
TRUTH: Standards are objectives to be met, not curriculum. Standards refer to the goals and outcomes of the learning, while curriculum is the medium used to teach the objectives. As an example, an objective might be "Use text clues and background knowledge to draw conclusions." The curriculum I use to teach this objective could be my text book, trade books, website, science books, newspapers, or any other appropriate material. Common Core does not dictate material.

Myth: Common Core takes control away from the State Department of Education in determining standards.
TRUTH: The SDE chose to use the standards as well as add some specific only to Alabama, renaming the new document Alabama's College and Career Ready Standards, with the goal being that all students who graduate from an Alabama high school will be ready to enter either college or the work force.

Myth: Common Core invades students' privacy by collecting data and "tracking them through retirement."
TRUTH: Standards are objectives, not a data collection mandate. States that are part of the Race To the Top grant must collect data as part of the grant, but Alabama is not a RTT state.

Myth: Under Common Core, high school seniors are only required to read at an eighth grade level.
TRUTH: From the CCRS document, twelfth grade standard 9.) By the end of Grade 12, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poems, at the high end of the Grades 11-College and Career Readiness (CCR) text complexity band independently and proficiently. [RL.11-12.10]


Senate Bill 190 is a bill that would repeal Alabama's College and Career Ready Standards, and set our state on a backwards track. If passed, we would be required to STOP teaching the rigorous standards and revert back to our previous courses of study. No material that is "Common Core" approved or written to address Common Core standards could be purchased with state funds or used. Scariest of all, this bill strips power from the SDE to create standards and gives it to the legislature.

If you are a legislator, I urge you to vote no on this bill. Please do not stop the forward progress that we are making as a state. Our students deserve to learn and be held to the same standard (or higher) than the rest of the country! They're competing for jobs and scholarships with students across the nation, and even globally. CCRS are the rigorous standards that Alabama's students need!

If you're a parent, grandparent, or concerned citizen, please let your voice be heard by signing this petition or contacting our legislators and telling them to vote no on SB-190. 

Clutter Free Classroom Project

I'm a little late jumping on this band wagon, but better late than never, right? I absolutely love the tips from one of my favorite blogs, Clutter-Free Classroom, and I've decided to join up with her Clutter Free Classroom Project, starting with #5:

I started with this particular project because my teacher area is usually the LAST thing that I worry about! I'm so busy working with the kiddos that my area becomes a place to pile papers or whatever until I can get to them later, resulting in a huge mess. I delayed posting this because I wanted to test myself and see if I could actually stick with my newly cleaned, organized area. I did!!! Check out my results:

Most of the items you see here were just piled there waiting to be put away! My days of the week drawers were piled on top (sorry you can't see that in the picture). And can you see my lesson plans taped to the computer CPU? 

Ah! Neatness! And you can see the top of my desk! I'll have to add some photos showing the desktop (forgot to take them). 

The result: I feel like I can think more clearly and find things more easily. I "found" some things I thought I'd lost. I have a clean, clear work space for grading papers and doing lesson plans. Love it!

Still to do: Clean out the files and drawers in my desk. They're not so bad, as I organized them over the summer, but they need a little attention. 

Want to see more classroom transformations? Check out her linky here.