My first blog nomination: The Liebster Award!

What a pleasant surprise!  Ali from Teaching (Powered by Caffeine) has nominated me for my first bloggy award!  So a massive thank you to Ali! 

Whilst I was doing this, I also got nominated from Deb at Crafting Connections, so really many thanks to the both you !

I've seen these awards on other teacher blogs and I find it with great interest reading about my fellow teachers across the globe!

Here are the rules to the Liebster Award:

• Link back to the blog that nominated me

• Nominate 5-11 blogs with fewer than 200 followers 

• Answer the questions posted for you by your nominator 

• Share 11 random facts about yourself 

• Create 11 questions for your nominees 

• Contact your nominees and let them know you nominated them

Ali's Questions:

1. What do you dread the most about starting the school year?

The one thing I dread the most is assessing the children. It is such a tedious task assessing 36 students .

2. What excites you the most about starting the school year?

Lots of things! Setting up my classroom, getting to know my students. This year, I got to attend the Reading Institute at the TCWRP, so i'm excited about implementing my newly learnt strategies into my class! 

3. What would you be doing if you weren't a teacher?

I would probably be a lawyer or doctor. 

4. What's the best advice someone gave you before or just after becoming a teacher?

If in doubt, pop into another teacher's classroom. When I first became a teacher, I learnt a lot from observing other teacher. So observe, learn and adapt 

5. Greatest vacation you ever had?

Greatest vacation... hmmm... recently, it would be my trip to Europe. 6 weeks in France, Spain and Italy. It was pretty amazing. 

6. The TV show you'd cry the most over if they took it off the air tomorrow?

Games of Thrones

7. If you had to choose, dogs or cats?

Dogs! My best friend has this amazing Golden doodle Sambal. And I'm positively dying to have one!!

8. If you could meet anyone famous living in the world today, who would it be and why?

Hilary Clinton.  She's been through so much, yet she still as so much poise and success. I think she would be fascinating to talk to. 

9.  Tell the funniest moment you can remember that happened in your classroom. 

There are so many hysterical moments in my classroom. I actually cant think of one right now.  

10. Got a weird talent?  What is it?

I can... play dodgeball?

11. And here's your pageant question: There are a myriad of problems our world faces today.  Of all the problems in this world, which one would you most want to solve and why?

Poverty.  Living conditions, food, money or the lack thereof is in my belief the reason why there is so much crime in the world. People often do things out of desperation. If poverty could be solved, then maybe the other problems could also be alleviated. 

Deb's Questions: 

1. What grades/subjects have you taught, and which is your favourite?

I have taught grade 6th and 7th English and Humanities, 9th grade History, 3rd grade Science, Maths, English and IT, and 4th grade Science and English. 

I have to say teaching history and science have been my favourites so far. I love doing hands on work with the kids in science. In history, I taught it through the IB curriculum, and I found that challenging  in a good way because it required a lot of out of the box thinking when planning the lessons. 

2.  What vacation destination was your favourite of all time?

Paris. I grew up in London - so popping over to Paris was just a skip and a hop. I love Paris, because not only it it a fantastic getaway with friends but I also love doing solo trips there. 

3.  What would you be doing if you weren't teaching?

I'd probably be a lawyer or a doctor.

4.  If you had to move, what state/country would you choose?

NYC

5.  Why did you start blogging?

Few weeks ago.

6.  Who is/was the teacher you find most inspiring, and why?

There's a fellow teacher at my school who I find particularly inspiring because she's super creative within her lessons. She's a bit of a dragon lady but the kids love her. 

7.  How long have you been teaching?

5 years

8.  What jobs did you have before you started teaching?

I worked at Abercrombie (LOL), was a nanny and spent 4 years as a publicist in Hollywood

9.  If you could teach any grade level or subject, what would you choose?

Grade 5-7, I like that age group.

10.  What is your favourite food?

Korean and Mexican. But not together. 

11.  What is your greatest accomplishment?

Finding the job that I love. 

11 Random Facts about Myself

1. I'm a gypsy. I've lived in 3 continents, 6 cities all before I was 25. 

2. I have two degrees, none in teaching. My BA was in Mass Communication and Journalism and French, and my MA was in Political Science - Public Diplomacy. 

3. I was an accidental teacher. I fell into teaching when I moved to Hong Kong, loved it and got my diploma in Education at Hong Kong University. I've now been teaching for 5 years.

4. I was on the equestrian team for 10 years. I miss riding a lot! 

5. I LOVE country music.  Yes, I'm that girl who loves to belt out a good country song at Karaoke. 

6. I used to be a publicist in LA. 

7. I can bake the best banana bread in the world. In my opinion anyways... 

8. I also make a pretty bad ass banoffie pie. 

9. I never played netball in school but now I play in adult league and I piloted/coach the netball team at my school, which is currently the most successful sport at the Academy. 

10. My two favourite foods are Mexican and Korean. 

11. I'm super accident prone. My best friend wanted to dress me up as bubble wrap for Halloween one year. 

Blogs I am nominating with the Liebster Award

1. Mary at Fit to Be Fourth 
2. Mrs. Monroe at School is a Happy Place
3. Lori at  Owl in a Vowel Tree
4. Tessa at Funnies in Fourth Grade
5. Mrs H @ Just a Primary Girl 

And my 11 questions: 

1. What was the most important book you have read to date and why?

2. What is your favourite read aloud and why?

3. What is your favourite unit to teach and why?

4. What is one item in your classroom that you could not live without?

5. If you could teach one extra curricular of your choice, what would it be? 

6. Your favourite literary character. 

7. If you could move to another country, where would it be and why?

8. What is your favourite TV show to wind down to?

9. Your favourite cuisine.

10. If you could teach any grade level, what would it be?

11. What is or are your teaching goal(s) this year? 

That was a long post! Thanks again Ali and Deb! :) 

Advice for New Teachers!

 Flying into First Grade is having a linky regarding advice for new teachers... so here goes: 

Buy: Clorox wipes (and Febreeze air freshener). They make any situation cleaner and fresher.

Always: Plan ahead. I'm a stickler for forward planning. Some teachers like to teach on the fly, but planning ahead gives you a clear vision of your goals ahead. Of course, with this you should also be flexible for changes as they arise. I do my planning at the beginning of the week every week and I try to look forward to two weeks at at time. Understanding by Design is a great framework to help you plan your work.

Never: Lose faith in yourself. There will always be toxic parents, colleagues, admin who has something negative to say to you or about your craft. Just don't let them affect you.

Find: Good teacher friends. You can learn a lot from them.

Make: Friends with your I.T. techs. You need them to come quickly and promptly when one of your 21st century devices need troubleshooting. My IT tech team are always on call and arrive within minutes of my tech problems. I always send cookies at the end of the school year to show appreciation.

Be: Confident!

Must Read Mentor Texts with Collaboration Cuties

The girls over at Collaboration Cuties  are doing a linky on Science mentor texts, so I decided to link up! During my NYC adventure, I popped into Bankstreet Bookstore on 112th and Broadway. Bankstreet has an extensive selection of children's books and of course I had to pick some out for my kiddos.

I picked out this fantastic book called 11 Experiments That Failed by Jenny Offill and Nancy Carpenter.

Each experiment goes through each step of the scientific in great hilarity but in terms in which the reader can understand each step of the scientific experiment.  This is going to be an excellent read with the kids!

Ecosystem Explorers, Green Screen and QR Codes

One big thing that I've really started doing in my class is incorporating lots of technology across the curriculum.  Every year, our school hosts Project Day aka glorified science fair. The difference between our Project Day and a typical American style science fair is that the projects are done in the classroom rather than at home. The fair is showcased in both Chinese - Mandarin and English

I have 18 kids in my class. The kiddos were separated into groups of 3-4. Because the the kids are expected to produce two separate science projects in both languages - you could imagine setting up the classroom to facilitate experiments and making sure all my parents fit into the classroom is a bit of a daunting task.

So I decided to pre-record their experiments using green screen and super imposing them onto their ecosystems. This way, it didn't seem that there were too much clutter in the classroom.  I had the kids dress up like they were going to be in that ecosystem, for example the Arctic Explorers brought in their winter coats and beanies and pretended they were in the Arctic. 

I set up a make shift green screen using a large green cloth and hung it on the wall.  I used iMovie to edit the videos as you can see below. I used a stock image that I found off the internet. 

When the videos are done, I uploaded them onto my Vimeo account. On the day, each group will present their ecosystem research reports and then I will play the their little video!

Now, onto the QR codes. Parents love, love, love accessibility to their kids work, so using a QR code generator such as http://www.the-qrcode-generator.com/ I linked up each video via my Vimeo account and created a QR code for each video. For privacy reason, I password protected my videos, but I created little take-away sheets for each group.

As you can see, I asked the parents to download the app "Scan", which is free and available across all platforms. They loved that they can download the videos onto their smartphones! 

On the day, students were able to showcase both their science boards, animal reports and their green screen videos! The kids has such fun working on their videos!

Teacher College Reading Writing Project and the New York Experience

Ok, so I've been super slacking off on this whole blogging thing and with good reason. I just got back from attending the TCRWP at Columbia University. The Reading Institute is a week long, 30 hour professional development run by Lucy Calkins and her amazing staff developers. TCRWP promotes using the Units of Study curriculum in both reading and writing. Our school does not use this curriculum, rather we use Reading Street (I'm not a big fan of using basel readers), but I did learn many strategies that I hope to implement into my classroom for this upcoming academic year. 30 hours of learning later, I found the importance of using post-it notes so the kiddos can record their wonderings and reading conversations, a huge toolkit for conferences, a plethora of awesome anchor charts, how to use conferring data to help you determine where your students are, the importance of reading logs and so much more. I can't believe I'm actually excited to teach reading this year!

Above, Christopher P. Curtis, author of Bud, Not Buddy - a truly inspirational man, with an insane sense of humour! Will be adding Bud, Not Buddy to my read aloud list this year! David Adler of the Cam Jamsen series also spoke too! 

Spending a fortnight in New York was such good fun. I'm a city girl, having lived in London, Los Angeles and Hong Kong for most of my life, so navigating NYC was relatively easy. I ate ALOT! I spent a lot of time running from restaurant to restaurant catching up with various friends. Sales were a massive hit! I also made my way into the only Scholastic Store in the world and OMG, I wanted to buy so much for my classroom. I ended up spending quite a fortune in there, but luckily there is a teacher's discount of 25%. My kiddos are going to be excited with the new additions to our classroom library! The staff at the store are super friendly and knowledgeable in current books ( I needed more "boy" books for my library), so if you are in the neighbourhood, I recommend you to pop in for a visit! 

I got to catch up with my friend Amanda aka the real life Lara Croft. We spent many days exploring the UWS for their drinking haunts.  This lovely lady has an impressive resume: ex Navy diver, Master Chef, Archaeologist, Fitness Model and now Masters student at Columbia's Journalism school.  Check out her blog www.apronsandsneakers.com. iPad users, download Glam Today, she is featured on their cover! 

NYC before sunset - Empire State Building