What a great week!

This week was only a 3 day week with kids. Today and tomorrow are professional development days. Wednesday morning was definitely a highlight in my teaching career as we were able to use our iLearn room for a presentation/video conference with a Doctoral student from Duke University. Two of our Grade 3 classes were in the room as she was projected onto one screen, with her PowerPoint presentation projected on the other screen. Microphones were set up around the room so our students could interact with her and share their knowledge. What an amazing opportunity to learn from her and be part of this experience!

Our Unit of Inquiry is Sharing the Planet - We are studying various ecosystems and she is an ecologist in the Florida scrub ecosystem. That's an ecosystem I never knew existed until yesterday!

So cool to interact with someone in the states. There's a motion censored camera in the room that moves the computer camera to the source of sound. That way when the mic was used, the camera would move to the student speaking so she could see them. Amazing. 

Today and tomorrow are professional development days for staff. I am lucky enough to attend a conference on connecting the Common Core standards to the 6 Traits of writing and our Units of Inquiry. I'm probably boring a lot of you, but this stuff is amazing! What a great week professionally. :)

As for Luke, he got to go on his first field trip Tuesday to see The Cat & The Hat at a local theater. It's the same one he and I went to a few weeks back, but he didn't care one bit. He was SO excited and had such a great time. He cried last night because he wouldn't be going to school the rest of the week. Man that kid loves his teacher and school. Lucky us.

For everyone in the states, enjoy FALL for us because we're missing it like crazy! The cool, crisp mornings, pumpkin spice lattes from Starbucks (for your information, we won't get those over here until December), scarves, football and crock-pot meals. Oh the joys of fall...

So far in "our fall" we've gotten a great lightening storm, windy/rainy messes, humid weather and lots of pool time. Different, but doable.