I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season.

While shopping at the mall just before Christmas, I was utterly disgusted with the behavior of the shopping patrons.  I understand this time of the year can be a bit stressful but if I remember right, the idea of the holiday season is to care about your fellow man, be extra considerate and kind to others.  We shall just say that I had to put on an extra smile and show my kids what the proper shopping behavior should have been (not an easy task under the circumstances).  We decided to make a game of it and see and list what we witnessed.  We saw an older lady almost hit by a car in the cross walk.  We heard people complaining because the lines were too long (imagine that during the last shopping weekend before the holidays), and many people being verrrry rude to the sales people.  With all of this craziness going on it reminded me of a story I once heard…..

A mouse looked through the crack in the wall to see the farmer and his wife open a package.  What food might this contain?” The mouse wondered - he was devastated to discover it was a mousetrap.  Retreating to the farmyard, the mouse proclaimed the warning.  There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!”

The chicken clucked and scratched, raised her head and said, “Mr. Mouse, I can tell this is a grave concern to you, but it is of no consequence to me.   I cannot be bothered by it.”

The mouse turned to the pig and told him, “There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!” The pig sympathized, but said, I am so very sorry, Mr. Mouse, but there is nothing I can do about it but pray. Be assured you are in my thoughts.”    

The mouse turned to the cow and said “There is a mousetrap in the house!  There is a mousetrap in the house!”  The cow said, “Wow, Mr. Mouse. I’m sorry for you, but it’s no skin off my nose.”  

So, the mouse returned to the house, head down and dejected, to face the farmer’s mousetrap alone. That very night a sound was heard throughout the house — like the sound of a mousetrap catching its prey. The farmer’s wife rushed to see what was caught. In the darkness, she did not see the venomous snake whose tail the trap had caught.  The snake bit the farmer’s wife. The farmer rushed her to the hospital, where she was treated and returned home but still with a fever.  

Everyone knows you treat a fever with fresh chicken soup, so the farmer took his hatchet to the farmyard for the soup’s main ingredient.

But his wife’s sickness continued, so friends and neighbors came to sit with her around the clock.   To feed them, the farmer butchered the pig.  The farmer’s wife did not get well; she sadly died.  So many people came for her funeral, that the farmer had the cow slaughtered to provide enough meat for all of them.

The mouse looked upon it all safely from his crack in the wall with great sadness.  So, the next time you hear someone is facing a problem and think it doesn’t concern you, remember — when one of us is threatened, we are all at risk.
The End
Author Unknown

We are all involved in this journey called life. We must keep an eye out for one another and make an extra effort to encourage each other.

With this is mind, try to remember that caring about other people during not just the holidays, but all year long, is more important than long lines, traffic and being in a rush. 

Teach your students that a smile or kind word can go a long way in the face of a frustrating day, their own or someone else’s.

Be kind your fellow man….treat them as you wish to be treated.

Tags: Franki, homeroom, lesson, moral, students, Teaching Stories

Grade 2 Language Arts File Folder Games To Go - Retail $14.99

Availabe for grades K through 3rd. 
 
I really enjoy using this product.  I have found a great use for it beyond the scope of which I assume it was initially intended.  I use this product as an additional tool to help non-English speaking students learn these particular elements of the language, as well as using the colorful pictures as points of conversation.  I would recommend this product to other educators.

HomeroomDirect.com

Tags: classroom activities, educational games, games to go, homeroom, homeroom direct, Product Reviews

Homeroom would like to wish all teachers, their students, school support staff, family and friends a wonderful, safe and Happy Holiday Season.

May you all be blessed with the spirit of the season, now and throughout the New Year.

Tags: homeroom, homeroom direct, season's greetings

Tonight is the first of the local school holiday performances!  It is such hard work practicing and perfecting the show but always such a great joy to see the end result.  The kids always seem to out do themselves.  Just a year ago we had the greatest holiday performance surprise ever!  Our class was having a horrendous time coming up with what we wanted to do to represent the 3rd grade class.  We thought and thought and finally we had a few ideas to vote on.  It was decided that our class would sing and dance to the song Jingle Bell Rock.  Great idea if you were anyone but Juan or Tracy…..

Juan was a very special boy who had led a pretty hard life.  The child had witnessed things that no child should ever have to experience.  Due to his early childhood traumas he had also not learned to speak English and until becoming part of our class family; he had not attempted to.  This lead up is going somewhere, I promise.  Juan was a very shy boy but very emotive and loving.  He was much more physically mature than the other boys as well.   Tracy had been raised in a disadvantaged household. She was a pretty girl with a great deal of potential but had severe anger management issues as did Juan.  Neither child was interested in being part of the performance; or so we thought.

Through the 1st three weeks of December we rushed through our days to get to practice. Neither Juan or Tracy never really showed much interest in the whole thing.  To keep them involved we requested that they be the review team and ensure that we were performance ready.  In exchange they would not have to perform with the class on stage.  They both agreed to this plan.  We worked during lunch break, before and after school, and any chance we had to fit in a few minute review of our song and dance.  With each review our class became a closer knit group.  The students were having a ball.  During these times our non-performers would monitor our mistakes and let us know how we were doing.  Two days before performance time the students were getting the holiday bug and were quite giggly.  We couldn’t get it to flow and this was bothering Juan.  Here comes our holiday miracle.  Juan stood up and yelled across the group in his broken English to get it together, we only have 2 more days to practice.  This shocked all of us, not that Juan had been so vocal because he was known for outbursts but for the fact that he cared.  The class settled down and surprisingly got right to work.  In the dance the kids had a swing style step that was a tad complicated for 9 and 10 year olds.  Most of them were doing pretty well but the step was not tight. 

Upon completion of that review, we stopped, and asked Juan how they had done.  Crossed armed and obviously unhappy, he said NO, NO good!  With this he turned the music back on grabbed Tracy and said this is how you do it.  With that he stepped in to position with Tracy by his side and showed the class how to do the dance the correctly.  It was if Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers had walked into the room.  The grace, the attention to detail in every step, and the snap to their moves was unbelievable.   Mind you neither of them had ever practiced the dance.  Upon completion Juan stated, “That is how you do it.”  He went back to the corner of the room to continue his monitoring job while the class broke into an uproar of applause and shock.  They were amazing.  The entire class begged the pair to be in the performance.  Reluctantly the pair agreed to perform.  After class I asked Juan and Tracy how they knew how to dance like that?  Not surprisingly they both answered, “I don’t know….I just do it.”  I explained to them both that they had done something that no one else in our class had been able to do.   It was at this point that they realized that there was some thing that they could do better than the other children.  They had not thought of it as anything of any great importance.  Out of frustration had come a gift to themselves and to the school as a whole.

Two days later the performance came.  All decked out in their scarves, mittens, and hats we waited for our turn on stage.  The cafeteria was packed with students and parents and the emotions were running high.   Of course, five minutes before performance time Tracy and Juan got into an argument swearing they weren’t going to dance together but by some miracle they agreed to continue the dispute after our performance.  The kids got up on stage, Tracy and Juan in the center of the group and the other couples staggered and surrounding them.  We were all nervous.  The music started, their little voices timidly started to sing.  Out of Tracy’s little soul came this beautiful deep  voice.  Jingle Bell Rock had never sounded so sweet.  With our star performers’ confidence, our room came together as a solid team.  They completed their performance to a rouse of applause.

Where they the best performance that day?  Maybe not in the eyes of a critic, but was the holiday spirit felt in a way none of us had felt before?  Most defiantely! The class hugged, laughed, and congratulated each other all the way back to our portable.  They were so proud of themselves and each other.   A new respect for the “tough kids” was formed that day.  Tracy and Juan had learned they were an important part of our class family and that our show would not have been nearly as good with out them.  The “scholastically more gifted kids” learned that there was a lot more to life than just good grades.  I learned that what I thought of as stress was actually character building school.  Without my challenging kids what kind of teacher would I be?  Thank you Juan and Tracy for our holiday miracle.

Tags: 3rd grade, christmas miracle, Franki, homeroom direct, school musical, school performance, teaching story

Here are a few great deals (freebies!), some interesting & time saving websites, and a great science center that I have run across this week. Just had to share.  Some of you may have seen these but thought they were worth bringing to everyone’s attention.

 

For Educators

 

 

12/1/2008
Where is Santa? When will he visit my house? Find out! Google is delighted to once again be the technology partner for NORAD Tracks Santa, enabling kids of all ages to learn about geography as they follow Santa on his Christmas eve journey around the world.
Simply go to www.google.com/educators, a can’t be missed site for the younger set and the kids at heart as well.

Also at Google ……. Computer Science Unplugged [PDF]
            An enrichment and extension program for primary-aged children
            Tim Bell, Ian H. Witten and Mike Fellows, Teachers

   A simple and thorough binary lessons unit with a Holiday exercise as well!! 
Weekly Reader, December 2, 2008 Issue has some great science center ideas.  I particularly enjoyed the short demonstration/explanation of sound waves AKA “Now Hear This.”  It has a very simplistic approach yet it hits all the points. 
The other topics covered were Sound, Tornadoes, Internal Combustion Systems, DNA, and Electricity.  I was a tad worried that the verbiage might be a little difficult so I tested my question on 3 of my tutoring students who are 11, 13, and 15.  Thankfully they agreed that they were all entertaining yet educational or in their words, “They were pretty tight.”  From the mouths of babes.  Weeklyreader.com Give it a shot and let me know what you think.

Teacherspayteachers.com
An open market place for teachers including but not limited to:
 time savers (always a must),
 speech writing tips for students,
 graphic organizers (of course) for reading instruction,
 critical thinking through graphing, (my personal favorite)
 writing biography tips for students, (this one was very helpful this evening  
while helping a freshman with her first biography)
 multicultural science contributions,
 clock templates,
adult education materials, (this is a hard one to find-adult & ESL)

Tags: computer science unplugged, educators, Franki, freebies, google for educators, homeroom direct, links for teachers, norad track santa, student activities, weekly reader

For those of us living in the West especially in Nevada and Arizona the Native American and South Western culture is a way of life or at least it was in my family’s life.   My parents were and still are Indian art fiends.  At the time I did not realize the significance that their love for this distinct culture would play in my later life or for my  students. 

Each year in mid to late fall we as a class cover our American Indian unit.  I didn’t realize how excited I was about the subject and how much anticipation I had built for it until my third year of teaching this same unit.  Many of our families have stair-step siblings. With our track scheduling every attempt is made to keep the families on the same track.  Thus the siblings share many of the same teachers and projects over the years.  It wasn’t until my third year with the subject matter that I realized how this little project had become something that was anticipated by the siblings of the following year’s class.  My parents had unknowingly bestowed a bigger gift upon us than I had realized. 

 

Since living in the Southwest territories we generally stick to studying the Western tribes.  Our unit always covers the basics such as the foods the tribes ate, the homes they built and lived in, the clothing styles they wore, the family unit style (maternal vs. paternal), and what type of tribe they were (hunting, gathering, farming, warring, or fishing).  Of course in whole group during the anticipatory set we cover some of the basic characteristics and qualities of a number of the Southwestern tribes but the fun comes when the students individually choose their desired tribe of study, groups are formed upon these choices. The groups work together to discover more about their tribe and as a group must later share and teach the rest of the class.

 

The groups must complete a written project board for the class museum walk, teach and demonstrate an art, whether that be a work of printed art, a dance, music, or some type of needlework representative of their tribe, and build an actual example of their tribal housing structure.  It is an involved project but the kids love it.  At the end of the project a test is given covering all of the information that the students have found during their research of their individual tribes.  Each year by the 2nd to 3rd day of whole group instruction the students are asking when they will get to start their group projects.  By the 2nd day of group work they are begging for more time to work and requesting to stay in at lunch and after school to work on their projects.  The first time this happened I thought I was hearing things.  I thought, “Are you crazy?  Its lunch time…go outside and play.  What’s wrong with you guys?” 

 

The first time I used this format was during my student teaching.  I was simply trying to wow my supervisor and that I did but something else happened as well.  What had started as a way to impress the “boss” wound up teaching me a few lessons.   If I put the effort forward to make the project important to me, it in turn made the project doubly important to the kids.  They took such interest and pride in their projects.  The second lesson I learned was not to make it too entertaining for your supervisor because he will come back every time you are teaching an American Indian lesson.  He only needed to see one lesson and he came back for 4 more!  That will teach me! 

 

 

I wish I could share more pictures of the kid’s projects with you all; unfortunately only one picture survived the move. 

 

One of the groups from my last semester decided they wanted their group to teach the entire class sand painting.  It turned out pretty cool and the class as a whole had a blast. 

 

Thanks to my mom and dad, thanks to my teaching supervisor, and especially thanks to my very special students who always remind me how much fun learning can be. 

 

 

 

Tags: classroom, Franki, group project, homeroom, homeroom direct, native american studies, Teaching Blog

Homeroom is proud to introduce our Product Reviews.

We have asked teachers to use some of our products in their classrooms and tell us what they think. We distribute the products to a school adminstrator who decides which classroom or teacher will get a product for review. In exchange for a written review, we donate the item used to the school system that we sent the products to. We simply ask that the teachers tell us, honestly, what they think.

Should you have any experience with the products reviewed, we ask you to rate the product as well. You can vote with our star rating.

Here is the first review.

Product: Teachin’ Cheap Book for grades K-3
Grade 2 teacher review
Used for 5 days and 4 different activities were completed (one activity took two days)
 

This book is filled with dynamite activities for teachers to use with any content area.  The best part is that the activity suggestions are quick, easy, and most importantly, cheap, as we all know “we teachers” spend a lot of our own money on materials and resources.  I have completed a number of the activities and have come to clearly recognize that all the activities are like disguised learning for students.  In many cases, students are engaged in activities/projects that are fun and hands on and students don’t even realize they are working on critical literacy, writing and math concepts/skills such as sequencing, problem solving, summarizing, classifying, and recognizing similarities and differences.  Parents have given positive comments on some of the projects that have gone home and have shared how enthusiastic and excited their child was while sharing and “showing off” their work.  When students have a work product to hold in their hands and manipulate, the learning and retention of material is meaningful and deep.  I would highly recommend this book to any teacher who is looking to incorporate fun, easy, cheap and meaningful activities into their daily lessons.   ***** (five stars)

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HomeroomDirect.com

Tags: classroom, homeroom, Product Reviews, school administrator, Teachin Cheap book

With Thanksgiving only a few days away and the holidays fast approaching I was trying to think of a different but fun experiment to demonstrate how the food we ingest actually assists in repairing and maintaining the health of the human body.

 Where else does one go for fun experiments but to the science wizard?  The prof., who wishes to remain anonymous, sent me this amazing list of healthy hints to the world of dietary needs and challenged myself and our afternoon tutoring group to give it a try and see what we thought.  We conducted this experiment in two days.  I informed the group that each item on the list correlated with a part of the human body and that their job was to match each food item with a part of the human anatomy and then show the group why they felt this way.  The first day we collected all of the food items listed below and discussed what body part each food item might represent.  The second afternoon we verified our hunches, wrote up our, “scientific findings”, and then made a huge salad with our left over materials from out little experiment.  It was a great way to finish off the project and celebrate a different but healthy Thanksgiving feast.

 

Nature is so amazing!  Too often the clues to our lives and bodies are before our very eyes and somehow we miss them.  Here is a little reminder…..

 

These are best & more powerful when eaten raw.
Here are some great clues as to what foods help which part of our body!

The Earth’s Pharmacy! Amazing!

A sliced Carrot looks like the human eye.  The pupil, iris and radiating lines look just like the human eye… and YES, science now shows carrots greatly enhance blood flow to and function of the eyes.

A Tomato has four chambers and is red. The heart has four chambers and is red. All of the research shows tomatoes are loaded with lycopine and are indeed pure heart and blood food.

Grapes hang in a cluster that has the shape of the heart.  Each grape looks like a blood cell and all of the research today shows grapes are also profound heart and blood vitalizing food.

A Walnut looks like a little brain, a left and right hemisphere, upper cerebrums and lower cerebellums.  Even the wrinkles or folds on the nut are just like the neo-cortex. We now know walnuts help develop more than three (3) dozen neuron-transmitters for brain function.

Kidney Beans actually heal and help maintain kidney function and yes, they look exactly like the human kidneys.

Celery, Bok Choy, Rhubarb and many more look just like bones. These foods specifically target bone strength. Bones are 23% sodium and these foods are 23% sodium. If you don’t have enough sodium in your diet, the body pulls it from the bones, thus making them weak.  These foods replenish the skeletal needs of the body.

Avocadoes, Eggplant and Pears target the health and function of the womb and cervix of the female - they look just like these organs. Today’s research shows that when a woman eats one avocado a week, it balances hormones, sheds unwanted birth weight, and prevents cervical cancers. And how profound is this?   It takes exactly nine (9) months to grow an avocado from blossom to ripened fruit. There are over 14,000 photolytic chemical constituents of nutrition in each one of these foods (modern science has only studied and named about 141 of them).

Figs are full of seeds and hang in twos when they grow.  Figs increase the mobility of male sperm and increase the numbers of Sperm as well to overcome male sterility.  

Sweet Potatoes look like the pancreas and actually balance the glycemic index of diabetics.

Olives assist in the health and function of the ovaries

Oranges, Grapefruits, and other Citrus fruits look just like the mammary glands of the female and actually assist the health of the breasts and the movement of lymph in and out of the breasts.

Onions look like the body’s cells. Today’s research shows onions help clear waste materials from all of the body cells. They even produce tears which wash the epithelial layers of the eyes.

 

A working companion, Garlic, also helps eliminate waste materials and dangerous free radicals from the body.

 

Not only was this experiment educational, it was fun, full of laughs, and after adding some salad dressing and a few crackers to it…..we even got a great meal out of it.  On the experimental scale, our group gave it a very high rating and recommended it as a must do in understanding the correlation between foods and the human anatomy.

 

Thanks were given to our marvelous science professor and Thanksgiving was shared this afternoon.  May you all have a wonderful and blessed holiday with your family, friends, and remember we are what we eat. 

 

 

 

 

 

Tags: experiment, Franki, homeroom, Homeroom Blog, homeroom direct, lessons, science, teachers

With the holidays coming, test practice ramping up, and end of the trimester fast approaching I thought we were all in need of a good laugh.  After running into a very harried friend of mine who is completing her student teaching practicum, the thought was verified.  With that being sent I wanted to pass on a great email a music teacher friend had sent me.  Enjoy the laughs and don’t forget to give yourselves a break, after all we can only do so much in a day.  Have a great week!

 

The Five Stages of Teaching

 

Phase 1.  You are listening to jazz — Your first day at work is great. Your fellow teachers are wonderful, your classroom is cute, you love your students, and your principal is the best!

 

Phase 2. You are listening to pop music — After a while you are so busy that you are not sure if you’re coming or going anymore.

 

Phase 3.You are listening to heavy metal — This is what you feel like after ONE month.

 

Phase 4. You are listening to hip hop — You become bloated due to stress, you’re gaining weight due to lack of exercise because you are so tired and have so much school work to do when you get home, you feel sluggish and suffer from constipation. Your fellow teachers are too cheerful for your liking and the walls of your classroom are closing in. You have started thinking ‘WHATEVER’ about your principal.

 

Phase 5. You are listening to GANGSTA RAP — After more time passes, your eyes start to twitch, you forget what a ‘good hair day’ feels like as you just fall out of bed and load up on caffeine.

 

Phase. 6 You are listening to the voices in your head — You have a lock on your classroom door to keep people out, You wonder WHY you are even here in the first place and WHY did I become a teacher!

 

Laugh often, long and loud.
Laugh until you gasp for breath.
And if you have a friend who makes you laugh,
spend lots and lots of time with them

Tags: francesca, Franki, homeroom, teachers, teaching humor, Teaching Stories

November 2008

While turning in my husband’s absentee ballot earlier last week I was confronted with an unexpected and exciting picture.  The entire board of elections building was surrounded and three parking lots were filled to capacity with people circling the lot like bees over a honey pot.  For the first time in my voting life I witnessed the fact that people were actually participating but more importantly they were excited to be participating in the voting process.  As Americans we have an inalienable right and duty to vote.  As many of us have heard from students and friends alike and we ourselves may have even stated, “Why should I vote?  My vote won’t count anyway. All votes count.

Which ever candidate you chose was a personal choice.  It isn’t about who won or who lost but the fact was that Americans’ cast their ballots with excitement and by the droves.  My mom and I chatted throughout the evening as the polls were closing about the process and how different her experience has been while casting her ballot as well.  She stated, “I am 65 years old and have voted in every primary and election since I was 18 years old and have never experienced such patriotism and excitement for the process as I have these past few weeks.”  Our country is badly in need of a change and for the 1st time in a long time people actually stood up and made their voices heard.  Let us hope that this passion continues. 

Either candidate would have brought change but only one could win the election. So congratulations to the winners of this week’s elections and may you continue to hold the favor of the people.  John F. Kennedy said it best, “We observe today not as a victory of party but as a celebration of freedom.”  The choice of the people voice was heard in this week’s election process.  Our founding fathers would be proud.  This week we made history.  Not only did this election have one of the highest voter turn outs ever but we elected the first man of mixed racial heritage to the presidency.   Some amazing events & changes have occurred this week.  America is an ever changing country, which in itself is what makes us one of the greatest countries in the world. 

Below you will find the information for The National Constitution Center.  I receive emails from them approximately once a month.  This site has been invaluable to me in many ways.  For those of you looking for a great center activity, you might want to take a look.  My students loved playing the educational games, which prompted some great class discussions.  Have fun and enjoy!  For those you who were curious but don’t have a lot of research time, I have listed the games that are currently being offered on the site.  These games are appropriate for students from 3rd grade through 12th grade.

The site address is www.constitutioncenter.org
From the complete, annotated Constitution, to a variety of games, podcasts and videos, the National Constitution Center’s online resources provide in-depth understanding of the Constitution and its relevance to citizens of every age.
Seize the Vote! Test your knowledge of voting rights and gain the right to participate in the ultimate act of citizenship for your characters!

Interactive Constitution The U.S. Constitution, including detailed explanations of the text is just a click away.

Citizenship Timeline This online experience highlights some of the key dates and events that mark more than 200 years of U.S. constitutional history.

Lincoln’s Crossroads What would you have done in Abraham Lincoln’s shoes? Uncover the decisions Abraham Lincoln made in the interactive game, Lincoln’s Crossroads.
Bill of Rights Game

Tags: elections, francesca, homeroom, teacher, teacher blog, voting