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October 2020 Book Reviews
Well this month I definitely fell short of my goal of one book per week. In the entire month of October I only finished… one book! It wasn’t even an awesome one. Hopefully in November I’ll be back on track. Although this school year is really getting the best of me. So here goes! Sex and Vanity by Kevin Kwan If you’ve read the rest of my reviews, I LOVED the Crazy Rich Asians trilogy. When I saw that Kwan had written a new novel, I HAD to read it! This book was decent. I didn’t love it as much as I wanted to. This is the story of a…
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Ideas for Your Online Drama Club
This year has been a learning experience for all of us. If you have been reading my blog, you may know that I run my school’s drama club. In March, when everything shut down, I had to give up on my dream of Beauty and the Beast this year. But, with students missing out on so many things, I still wanted drama club to exist in some manner. So, to the drawing board! I created a Google Classroom for my drama club and tried to connect with them weekly. We created challenges and I compiled the good ones and shared them with my principal. As a former drama club director…
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August 2020 Book Reviews
Deadliest Enemy by Michael Osterholm Michael Osterholm is an epidemiologist. I read this book because I wanted to feel more informed when I’m watching all the news reports about COVID-19. Osterholm wrote this book years before COVID-19 happened but how accurate his predictions about what would happen are, were frightening! This book is very scientific and very dense, but it was also super interesting and informative. I gave this book 4 out of 5 stars. You Can Drop It! by Ilana Muhlstein This book is a part of the Beachbody family of healthy living. This is the book that the 2B mindset is based off of. I found this mindset…
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Teaching with Google Forms
Transitioning to teaching from home was a tough change for all of us. Some teachers were probably more equipped than others, teachers who already use a lot of technology in their lessons. But then there are the rest of us who have to figure everything out on the fly! Personally, I have spend a lot of the summer learning how to do this better so that if we do have to go online again, I will be prepared! Here are some ways you can use Google Forms in your classroom. Surveys Google Forms is a great way of providing your students in school, or at home, with a questionnaire. Are…
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July 2020 Book Reviews
The Road Back to You by Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabile I have been very interested in books about the Enneagram. A simple Enneagram test will tell you which of the nine personality types you are most like. Personally I am a type 2, “The Helper”. I thought that this book was a very detailed and clear explanation of the nine different personality types. If you don’t want to take the test, you can read a book such as this one and see which personality type speaks to you most. I really liked this book. It helped me understand myself better than I did before. I have this book…
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Tips for Co-Teaching Online
I am currently prepping for next year, and like the rest of you, I have no idea if I’m prepping for face to face teaching, or online teaching… or both. Because of this I am really starting to stress about how I am going to do my job. It has been made clear to us that we are still expected to meet every accommodation and service delivery minute of our students’ IEPs. I get why they’re setting that expectation, but how do I deliver the amount of inclusion minutes when I am not together with the other teachers and a lot of the other teachers aren’t doing live classes? I…
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Tips for Difficult Behaviors
Working in an inclusion setting leads to many different challenges. You are trying to manage many different learning styles, abilities, and often you are trying to juggle some behaviors as well. I think juggling really is the best description for what I do on a daily basis! I put together some of my best tips for dealing with behaviors in the inclusion setting. Be on the Same Page I work in a teamed middle school. My team consists of a math teacher, ELA, Science, Social Studies, a supplementary math class teacher, a specialist, a paraprofessional and myself, the special education teacher. I find that dealing with students who present behavior…
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Tips for Distance Learning
There are so many unknowns leading into the fall. Personally I live in Massachusetts, our COVID cases are going down and things are reopening without a huge jump in numbers. Also, we go back to school later than a lot of the country, allowing our officials more time to figure this out. But we still don’t know for sure if we are going to go back to school, in person, online, or a combination of the two. The thought of going back to school with distance learning is scary, but so isn’t the thought of going back in person. Because of this, I also have to mentally prepare for both…
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June 2020 Book Reviews
This June I read more than my goal. Which is good because I definitely had some catching up to do! Here are my reviews on the books I read in June. Catch and Kill By Ronan Farrow I really wanted to like this book. I wanted it to be the expose that I was expecting to read. I found this book to be very self-indulgent and boring. I did not like Farrow’s writing style, I felt like he went on and on for pages about things that were not important to the plot. Like I said earlier, I really wanted to like this book, it is such an important topic…
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7 Things to Do This Summer
Take a Course This summer you can take a course. I try to take courses often. Learning about teaching helps me stay with the research and up to date on all the new information. Personally, I use Learners Edge to take courses, their courses are reasonably priced and well designed. Reflect on Your Year What went well this year? What didn’t go so well? Reflect on the year that you had. Your successes, your failures, and everything in between. What can you do differently this year based on what you learned last year. Do you always feel rushed before homeroom so you may benefit from getting to school a little…
