Five for Friday - Septemeber 13

Wow!  It's been a crazy week, and I have been a bad blogger in the process.  But, TGIF and it's time for another Five for Friday with Doodle Bugs.

I've been able to have the kids on the laptops just about everyday this week.  It's usally the first question the kids ask, "Mrs. Webber, are we going to use the laptops today?"  When the answer is yes, man do they get excited!

Here they are working on Scootpad.  You can learn more about it, here!

 Not only am trying to get my kids on the laptops regularly, but I am trying to push my own boundaries with using technology.  One of things I tried this week was using planbook.com.  When you sign up you get a free 30 day trial and after that it's only $12 a year.  Really that's not much more than buying a planbook at your local school supply store.  You can connect all of the Common Core standards to your lessons and it keeps track of what standards you've taught and how many times you've taught it.  You can also attach documents to your plans so you know exactly what you are going to use and then pull them up on the smartboard as we use attachments in class.  I'm still learning all of the options that are available through the site.  Here is a screenshot of my plans for next week.

 I found a wonderful blog this week called Purely Paperless.  Kate has some amazing resources tutorials including lots about Evernote.  I've had an Evernote account for about 6 months and have used it here and there, but didn't really use it consistently. This week, I decided that I was going to give Evernote a try for keeping track of my math intervention group.  I took some pictures with my phone as we were working and created notes for each of my students taking notes as to what they needed work/help on.  Now I have data and I track my students' progress as we work on place value, addition, and subtraction.

 I got out into my garden for a little while this afternoon as we had some nice temperatures in the 80's today.  I finally pulled out all my dead zucchini plants. I need to plant some fall plants in this bed.  I had a little helper as you can see!

I think the highlight of my week was starting a connection group for our church at our house on Monday.  We only had one other couple come, but Jamie (the wife) has quickly become a wonderful friend.  We both have little girls that were born 3 weeks apart.  Jamie's daughter, Callie Anne, was born with Apert syndrom.  She has a fused skull, mitten hands, and feet. You can read more about her story here. She is the sweetest little thing with amazingly beautiful eyes!  While connecting with our friends, Ainsleigh and Callie Anne played with an abundance of toys between the two of them.  Ainsleigh loves to bang toys together and did so for the hour we connected.  Jamie told us that they had been working on getting Callie to bang toys at therapy.  Before they left for evening, Callie was banging toys together after watching Ainsleigh do it all night.  Jamie and I both had tears flowing as we encountered God (our sermon we were focusing on) in our own children.  It was beautiful thing and we are all overjoyed!  Here is Callie banging her toys.

How was your week?