Gheens Academy

Today we went to Gheens. It was a pretty nice trip. I had been there a few times to work on 4-H projects, but it looked a little different today.

They had a ton of books. I looked at them for more ideas for my electricity unit, but I didn't find anything that I liked better than what I already had. I decided to laminate sentence strips so that I could have my Learning Targets posted for my students even though I do not have enough time to write them during my lesson. (I never got around to laminating my sentence strips, but I did buy some. I will write all of my LT's in permanent marker on the strips then when I am finished, I can use a dry erase marker to clean the strip. I will post the targets on the white board during my lesson using poster putty.

I was afraid to get started on too many projects without having my lesson ideas checked so I was not as productive as I could have been. (My teachers were not able to meet with me today.) I decided to look at my lesson plan ideas. First, I read my ideas and wrote in any new ideas. Next, I looked at the extensive rubric for this project and added any items that would satisfy some of the points from the rubric. Finally, I read my pretest and discovered that I had forgotten to include two of the items that will be on the post test, so I wrote those into my unit plan.

I decided to clear my head by walking around. The idea of making window clings had stuck with me all day, vinyl is only 75 cents per page and window clings can make learning seem cooler. I decided to get an orange sheet and a blue sheet in honor the school colors of the school where I am student teaching. Other than a lightning bolt, the die cuts and the special die cut machine did not have anything for electricity, I found this to be very surprising. I decided to cut out the vocabulary words. The staff members were very kind and showed me how to use the die cut machine to create my window clings. I learned a lot about making these window clings. I was surprised because it took so long and it wasn't as easy as cutting card stock or construction paper.

I am glad that Gheens is so close to home, it is a great resource.