A Healthier ME!

While a goal of mine is definitely to begin blogging more and reaching the status of many other educators out there in our field.  I'm linking up with 4th Grade Frolics, a blog that I began following a few years back when I used to teach 4th grade.

I've always wanted to join a linky, so I guess this is now the perfect time to do it. :) As educators, we always strive to do the best for our students and we work constantly to make sure that happens. However, often doing that we forget about taking care of the teacher.

2013 was a busy year for me. Not only did I change grade levels and get to spend two years in a row with my lovely students, but I accomplished a whole year of being vegan and completing 2, half marathons! That is something I never dreamed of doing. A large goal of mine is to run the Walt Disney World Marathon one day, but in order to do that I need to take care of me first.

My struggle with fatigue has been something that has increased over the years. Granted I have worked in two very active careers after college, but there is nothing medically that can be found as the cause. In order to take better care of myself, I'm testing out being gluten-free as well in 2014. There are many vegan blogs and articles in cyber world that link gluten and fatigue together, so hopefully this will give me the small boost that I need to keep active for my 27 children at school and my lovely 2 year old princess at home. If anything, it will definitely make me a healthier eater in the end.

Have a happy, healthy New Year!

Padlet

I apologize for the incredibly late post. Between report cards and gearing up for winter break, I really do look up to those that can blog on a regular basis.

One website I have been meaning to write a review on is Padlet. I originally found this website while browsing an educational blog by, Mr. G. Online. After discovering an idea for the Think 3D app on the iPad, Mr. G. also was discussing his integration of Padlet as an ongoing management tool in the classroom. So..... I decided to check it out.

I have used Padlet twice in the class thus far, both for math instruction. It is a really cool website to host a math talk on, where it will allow everyone to contribute to a post at once. The nice thing about the discussion is that you can even post pictures.

If you go to Padlet and create an account, you can start your very own collection of walls. For this specific example, I assigned my students a "Volume at Home" activity. They had to find a prism at home that they could snap a picture of with their iPads. Then, they used Skitch to label the dimensions of the figure.

Once the students came prepared to school, we took our images and posted to Padlet for our math talk. Students then selected an image to calculate the volume of. This is a great, quick and fun way to incorporate math from home and have everyone contribute at once. Imagine using this for literally any discussion in your classroom. Your students won't need an account to participate, just share the QR code, link or embed it into another website for them to see. Enjoy!