Busy Summer!

I was busy, busy, busy this summer!  Four days after school let out, I was in the car with my mom and my aunt (my favorite traveling companions!) heading out on an 18-day adventure.  First stop: Twin Falls, ID.  This was a nine-hour end point on our first day.  On Day Two, we stopped at Shoshone Falls on our way out of town.  It was beautiful.  It is called the Little Niagara of the West.  If you are in the area, please do yourself a favor and stop.  The grounds are well kept and ideal for a picnic.  My only word of caution is to check to ensure the water is flowing.  Apparently it is not always a thundering waterfall.

From Twin Falls, we drove to West Yellowstone, Montana.  It is on the northwest edge of Yellowstone National Park.  It is on the edge of heaven!  The town was very cute and I would stay there again in a heartbeat.  The locals were friendly and we had a nice time shopping and dining.

We spent two full days in the park.  The first day we drove down to Jackson, WY with stops at Old Faithful and some prime photography spots.  Jackson was a cute town, glad I stopped, probably won't go there again. It was VERY expensive!!

Old Faithful

The Grand Tetons

Me under the antler arch in Town Square

A quaint church with a beautiful view

A little turnout on the road back to W. Yellowstone

The other side of the road

An elk crossing the road

Bison herd was crossing the road

Sunset on Day Three

On Day Four we did the Grand Loop in Yellowstone.  Wow.  We saw the Fountain Paint Pot, geysers, bubbling mud pots, pools.  It was all amazing.  We saw a mama bear with baby cubs.  We saw a huge spring.  We went to the "Grand Canyon" of Yellowstone.  I stood at the Brink of the Falls.  We saw the continued devastation of the '88 fire.  Learning about the Yellowstone Caldera was interesting.  I am looking forward to sharing this with my new class!

Fountain Paint Pot

                                      

Fountain Paint Pot

Self-explanatory!

Yellowstone Lake

We pulled off at a restroom and there was a lovely view and hike there.

bubbling water!

Lower Falls

Upper Falls

Looking down on the Brink of the Falls

Me at the Brink of the Falls

Pretty wildflowers everywhere!

Mama Bear with her two babies

Mammoth Springs

On our way back to West Yellowstone

Madison River

Day Five was another big travel day for us.  We stopped in Bozeman, MT to have breakfast with my cousin.  We had bison sausage for the first time!  It was good.  Expensive, but good!  Then we went to Crow Agency, Montana and did the "Custer's Last Stand" tour.  They have a wonderful gift shop and museum.  There is also a National Cemetery. It was amazing to me that most of the land features are still there. You look down at a signboard, then up to see the exact landscape.  It was HOT and this was when the wildfires were burning in CO, MT, and WY so we pretty much stayed in the car.  I took pics from the window most of the time.

The markers signify where warriors fell.  White for the US Army, red for the Native groups.

Burial markers dot the landscape.  Not many of them are together like these.

Down below where the Indians surprised the heck out of Reno!

Signboard...

Today

Signboard...

and today!  Made it all seem very real.

Last Stand

Custer, who is buried at West Point, has a grave marker here on the hill.

Custer and his men.  

From here we drove to Glendive, MT where my aunt and uncle live.  We spent three days with them.  Then we drove on to North Dakota.  Our goal was Minot AFB just north of Minot, ND to visit my daughter who is an Airman.  On our way, we stopped to take pictures of The Badlands.  They are ugly and barren, but somehow that barren ugliness is beautiful.  

The Badlands

My Baby Girl and me.  I'm getting ready to drop her off at her work. So proud of her!!

We spent four glorious days with my daughter.  We had a great Fourth of July meal with her friends.  On July 5th we had to leave.  =(  We drove to Rapid City, SD.  We spent three days and saw Crazy Horse, Mount Rushmore, Sturgis, and Deadwood.  I also spent my first night in Rapid City under a tornado watch.  Nobody from the midwest may laugh at me.  I'm a Californian and we don't have this stuff you all call weather!  At Mount Rushmore, there was a huge emphasis on veterans and active military. It was very touching, and obviously near and dear to my heart.  It was all very spectacular. 

Crazy Horse on super-duper zoom!

Me at Crazy Horse

Lots of shops and a museum.  Great place to visit and learn!

The backside of Mount Rushmore...location spot for National Treasure 2.

Mount Rushmore

The active military and vets were invited up to retire the flag.  They were all allowed to introduce themselves and tell what branch of service they were from and some added specific battles.  Very touching!

The monument with all the state flags. 

Self-explanatory

Deadwood and the location where "Wild Bill" Hickok was shot.

A shoot-out in the street @ Deadwood

Mt. Moriah cemetery in Deadwood.

The final resting place

Almost done!  One night in Cheyenne, WY to break up our trip and so I could visit with my sister-in-law.  Then we drove on to Salt Lake City.  It is just beautiful there.  We toured Temple Square and met up with friends for lunch and a dinner.  No surprise here, it was hot!

The backside of the Temple

The beautiful grounds

Day 18 and we drove back to California.  I rested for a day and a half, then was back in the car to attend a family reunion two hours away.  Home on the train and then spent three weeks at home.  Last week we were in Oregon to attend Romeo and Juliet in Ashland, OR.  It was AWESOME!!

And now I'm back to work.  No students yet, but they'll start Wednesday.  I've been on Pinterest raiding it daily for new ideas.  Starting a math notebook and have paper and folders for all the foldables I've planned.  Looking forward to a new school year!!

Open House

In California, we have Back-to-School Night at the beginning of the year where we tell parents what we'll teach throughout the year.  Then in the late spring, we'll have an Open House where the parents get to come in and see the fruits of what we outlined for them at B-T-S Night.  Open House is informal and fun.  And it's a lot of work!  I've taken what a lot of bloggers have done and used it gleefully for our Open House (which is tomorrow!) and the work the students produced was pretty spectacular.  Although I've saved work throughout the year, here is a sampling.

First up...Math Art.

I didn't want my students to know what I was up to, so we did the art part first.  I told them to pick between 4 and 6 colors.  Then I showed them how to make perfect one inch squares.  After we had our grid, I told them to color the squares with their crayons, but to leave some squares white.

The next day I gave them the math paper above.  They had to take their picture and tell me what the perimeter and area were, then the fractions they saw, the percentages, and then I had them glue down a slip of paper over the original fractions and simplify them.  Last we did mean, median, mode, and range.  The numbers weren't awful, but they had to know (and show) the process.  So, even though it was "work" for them, it was fun work.

Next, we did President Reports.  I did the tri-fold which included little foldables about wars and significant decisions, military service, a timeline, trivia, something unique to that president, and party/years in office/Veep.  They checked out a president biography and read/took notes for quite some time.  Then they started putting together the information.  They really enjoyed it.  I did too!  I learned new things about presidents.

Next we did an "All About Me" foldable.  I already posted about it, but I took a picture of a student's work.  I can't get any of the pics to stay upright!  lol  They are determined to hang upside down like bats.  Oh well, at least this one stayed upright.  Weird.  I still love technology, warts and all!

Vocabulary Workshop

Last Thursday I went to a workshop where the speaker was Kate Kinsella.  It was all about our ELL population and how to expand their academic vocabulary...which, in truth, ALL of our students can benefit from this instruction.  I worked with my teaching partner on Friday to create a list of words that will help our students with our first unit next year, and we decided to use the 12 powerful words for testing.  Trace, formulate, describe, analyze, infer, evaluate, support, explain, summarize, compare, contrast, predict.  We are creating sentence frames so the students can practice using them.

We'll give the word, break it into syllables, provide synonyms and/or antonyms if any, give the definition, and give two examples on how to use it.  Then we'll provide a sentence frame for the students to use.  First, they will write it down, then share with a partner.  Then they'll share with the class.  While the students are sharing whole-class, they'll have an opportunity to jot down other answers that they like.  Then they'll turn to a partner and (verbally) share the new way using the sentence frame.  Students get multiple opportunities to practice using the word with a lot of support.

After that, the students will get a second frame that will help set them up for writing.  In the first (oral) frame, the students are given the word and they have to decide how to use it.  The second sentence frame forces them to use it and provides some context to complete the sentence.  It sets them up to use it in a paragraph.  We've decided to do our first writing as a compare and contrast.

We're not allowed to share the templates, but I did recreate one because I could not open the .docx which was slightly frustrating.  Good thing I'm comfortable with the computer and recreating things!

And may I just say that coming up with sentence frames is a difficult task with some words!  I'm excited to teach vocabulary even though it will be a lot of work for the first year.  After this, we'll have all of our words.