Raising Awareness - One Bucket At A Time!!

Yesterday, I was nominated to do the ice bucket challenge to raise awareness for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease.

Today, I accepted and completed that challenge!!

I had hoped to film at school, but I just couldn't find time during the day with such short notice!  Instead, I am going to be using this social media phenomenon to address the disease and all the good the Ice Bucket challenge has done for the ALSA!!

Tomorrow, I plan on having HALF of my 6th and 7th grade students do a close read of the ALS Disease, and the other HALF of them will be doing a close read of the Ice Bucket Challenge impact on the ALSA!  I have high hopes for great academic discussion and would love to be able to have my students complete the challenge as well (even if I can only share it with my staff and not on social media).

I also showed an amazing video that completely brought this cause and disease to reality with me and my students.  You can read all you want about it, but until you hear someone's story who is actually living with ALS and dealing with it, it doesn't really 'click.'  Here is the video that I found on YouTube.

If you haven't completed the challenge, and are reading this, I CHALLENGE YOU to not only complete the Ice Bucket Challenge, but also to donate at least $10 to the ALSA using this link!!  If you accept my challenge, please post it to facebook/instagram using #MiddleSchoolMadnessALS so that I can see all your videos!!!

What ways are you connecting Social Media and Pop Culture into your classroom?

It has arrived...

The school year has officially began for me.  This last Monday, marked the first day of Returning Teacher Week at Canyon Breeze Elementary School in Avondale, AZ!!  It was so amazing to see so many familiar faces, and so many new faces, of my amazing coworkers!!

I can't lie, I've been coming into school nearly every day since July 7th to get my classroom started and I can't say that I feel any more prepared than I have for previous years where I didn't start early.  How is that possible?  I feel so far behind this year and completely unprepared... but nevertheless, tomorrow is the first day of school and I am still pretty excited about it!!

The last 3 years, I had taught 7th grade Science and I absolutely loved it!!  Though it came with challenges, it was always a rewarding learning experience for me.  This year, our staff was cut down and we lost our 4th teacher in 7th grade, which in turn led me to change my position to being the Science teacher for both 6th and 7th grade.  I have been battling in my mind about whether I am actually excited about the addition or terrified about teaching two grade levels' full-year content, in half the time.... I still haven't decided how I really feel.  What I do know, is that my classroom is as done as it is going to be before school starts.  I still have small things to add to my Focus Wall bulletin boards for them to function as they should, but I'm pretty happy about it overall.  Here are some pictures of the room!!

 (The front of the room)

 (Thinking Maps - 'Organizing Our Thoughts')

(The Back of the Room)

 (Weekly Agenda)

 (My desk)

(Another view of my desk)

This past week has been a lot of work with my coworkers.  This year's theme was "What do You see? - it's not what your looking at that matters, but what you see."  We did a bunch of things that related back to this theme, but my favorite was a 'blank canvas' activity.  We were given this picture:

We were told to paint what we saw on our canvas that was given to us.  Thankfully I was in a group with our art teacher and we did a pretty good job!!

(Final product)

Every group was given a part of a larger picture (of a kaleidoscope image) and together we made a unique visual based on what we saw in our pictures.  Needless to say it didn't look like the picture that was separated and given to us, but it did look pretty unique!!

I am as ready for the school year as I'm going to be.  I have my plans for this week done, copies of my syllabus printed, and my "About the Teacher" video updated and ready to show my kids.  If only I had another weekend tacked on to  this one, I'm pretty sure I would be rested and ready... but ready or not here they come!!!

I have put in my About the Teacher video if you would like to take a peak.  I made it using Stupeflix last year and just added a few edits to pertain to this year.  To my fellow teachers out there who still have a few ounces of summer, I am envious - enjoy the rest of it.