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Saturday, January 24, 2015

lately


This is going to be a great movie: While We're Young.

And this is going to be a really great movie: Inside Out. Plus, it looks a great link with our Physical Well-being unit, which is a super bonus AND it's Pixar.

Have you seen this one? It was one I watched on a plane and it's pretty cute.

Also, In A World is hilarious! Best 99 cents we've ever spent on iTunes.

I'm happy to report that Boyhood has a big ole 99% on Rotten Tomatoes. After I got psyched about it and showed the trailer to a friend of mine in the summer, he literally said, "maybe i under-appreciated it, but your 'boyhood' idea is that it is a movie filmed slowly over a long period of time so the same actors can play the same characters during different ages.  Is there more to it than that?  cause if that is it (and maybe its not) then I think fantastic might be a bit of an overstatement." And yes, I searched way back in my email for that - an actual quote. I think I win this one. (Maybe I should watch it first before I really cast judgement?)

Moving on...

This is a great post and a perspective I need to adopt - all the rosehip seed oil in the world isn't going to fill my smile lines!

In a couple weeks I'm heading to Japan with some colleagues for a PD weekend with Yokohama International School. This is extra exciting because I've only been to Japan one other time, on a quick three-day weekend. Had to buy yet another winter jacket as it's going to be a major temperature drop from Manila's 25+! and get out the leather boots...

On footwear: my most recent can-wear-to-work sandal purchase here. Seriously, Renegade Folk has the absolute b.e.s.t. customer service policy - a virtually nonexistent concept in Manila. I also have this pair.

Our baby is skipping crawling and moving on to walking! Nine months is a pretty crazy time of change... Wish us luck!


Saturday, January 17, 2015

tuning in to r.j. palacio's wonder

For our new read aloud, the students were already excited about Wonder.


As a tuning in activity, we linked our knowledge of making inferences and identifying character traits. I scanned the first thirty pages or so of the book, and picked out a few strong examples of voice from August Pullman's narrative. I typed these up and the kids started reading, discussing character traits based on the excerpt, and justifying their inferences.

(Big problems uploading photos of student learning, so these are a few of the speech bubbles they read.)

This took about 20 minutes to prepare, and the kids were really excited to read more about August! This was even before I read the dust-cover teaser, too. We've probably read those first thirty pages together now, and my third graders are completely hooked.