SNOW DAY!!!

I have been awake since 5:30 am. For some strange reason, my body did not want to sync up with my brain because today is definitely a snow day! However, I felt like a little girl on a snowy Christmas morning watching the sunrise! I am still in some what of a trance five hours later!
Lots of new things going on lately....
(1) Making a renewed commitment to my blog (again). (2) Preparing to present at the state middle school conference...oh gah. (3) Started a TpT store AND (4) created a Resolution Revolution with about 12 friends where we make one resolution a month and update each other on our success/ failures.
In other news, we're starting our unit on monotheistic religions in class. My kids wanted to learn about Christianity first and I had 45 minutes to impart some knowledge. Instead of doing our traditional vocabulary (flashcards or foldables), I had the kids choose from one of three words from our lesson to define and draw a picture of as their bell ringer. Before the lesson, they partnered up and taught another student their word. This worked really well and took less than 10 minutes. Students were quick to identify the words throughout the lesson and could give the meaning in context by the end of class. Freak snow day success! I'll take it!

Now for editing/ updating site designs...
Happy Snow Day(s)!

First Semester Update: Part 1

I can hardly believe that I've literally not blogged since August! Time certainly does fly...

In my defense, I spent most of August through October completing requirements for my website on global education. A few new things are going to be added to the site over the next couple of weeks as I prepare to present at the SC Middle School Conference in February. You can access it here: Wildcats Globalized

In the classroom, I've been focusing on a few things this year including the following: technology use (with purpose), vocabulary strategies, and map skills.
I'm fortunate to teach about a variety of cultures, belief systems, and governments in my World History class. This year, I have 4 "regular" classes and 2 "advanced." Much of my time has been focused on developing an "advanced" curriculum since this is the first year we've had this track at my school. It has definitely been a learning process.

My first few posts of the new year will be dedicated to sharing some of the work of my students and some techniques that have worked and some that have failed.

Much of the first semester was spent of developing map/ geography skills. Many of my students couldn't label the seven continents on a map and also had difficultly finding North America. I knew we'd have our work cut out for us.
Already, students have completed several mapping assignments. Most are drawn/ traced by hand and labelled according to a requirement sheet. Two maps we've done this year are pictured.