Teaching Mrs. Ryan

  How many of you have tried digital break-outs, or any kind of break-out for that matter in your classroom?  If you haven't I promise you are missing out on a fun way to engage your students in their content while making those brains work on some serious critical thinking skills!     After spending $$ on my favorite website ( TeachersPayTeachers of course) on digital breakouts I decided I really needed to learn how to do this myself.  Especially when I couldn't find the exact item I'm wanting.  Let's face it... it's hard living in a Common Core World when I work in a TEKS environment!  Common Core and Texas Essential Knowlege and Skills (TEKS) are pretty different and most of what I tend to find is catered to Common Core.  Time for me to "BREAKOUT!"     I would like to tell you that I spent a large amount of time researching and putting together my first break-out but let me be honest with you... I didn't have that time ...

I had to write a separate post about Arcademic Skill Builders because I am just in awe of this FREE online tool.  Currently I have a position in a school doing classroom reduction and intervention services in Math for 3rd and 4th graders.  After asking my fellow teaching classmates about great internet tools for Math, I was turned on to Arcademic Skill Builders (ASB).  Let me cut to the chase and tell you what is so great: 1)  FREE 2) Lots of FUN games for 5th grade and younger 3) Teachers can sign up for a FREE account and load their students into their class. 4) Multiple classes?  That's okay, you can break your students into groups. 5) You can assign certain games for your students to play. 6) Your students can play with each other on their own computer, or anonymously with other students who are online. 7) Your students can create private  games where they play against the computer or only the people they give the password to. 8) Teachers can...

We are getting really close to graduation!  I can really say I couldn't be more excited.  I need a break!  Currently we are in the spring semester.  We walk the stage at the beginning of May, but officially graduate at the end of May once our huge research proposal is submitted.  I know this is going to be horrible to say, but the Research class is killing me.  It mentally wears me out and I'm having a hard time making heads or tails of it, but I think its because I'm more of a doer than a sit and read about it.  Things tend to make more sense when I have practical application.  I know that time is coming soon so hopefully then I'll be able to connect all the dots. The most interesting thing that I'm learning right now has to do with accurate assessments.  This is really interesting because while many educators feel they know how to do accurate assessment, going through this class makes you realize there are lots of things to learn about im...

I hate to call what we are doing a semester since it is only a month long, but WOW the workload is a semester's worth.  This month I am taking an educational psychology course along with an elementary literacy course that focuses on assessments as well as teaching.  Both are very interesting so I can say at least while I'm being overwhelmed with a lot of work, it isn't boring work!  The biggest difference I'm seeing with this month's workload versus last month's work load is the amount of papers I have to write.  There are an ENORMOUS amount of papers.  One of my paper's that I must write this first week focuses on Piaget;s theories of cognitive development.  I've found a little YouTube video that discusses what they are so you can get an idea of what I'm learning about at this stage in the program. I missed the first psychology in class lecture due to my daughter having to go to the hospital, and now I am feeling like I'm flying blind on my...