Mr Hammerlund

On Friday I took my class downtown to the Apple Store where they learned how to use iMovie. This was a great chance for my students to get out of the classroom, and hear a different voice from my own. We went downtown and walked to the Apple Store. We arrived before they had opened to the public and the staff was waiting at the door to welcome the students as V.I.P.s. I headed to the back of the store -- expecting to find a room there where the students could go and be out of the limelight of the now gazing customers. I was wrong. The staff had roped off a section in the middle of the store for us to use. I will stop the story here and ask: Have you ever tried to talk to a kid with an iPad in front of him/her? Now imagine kids in the middle of the actual Apple Store and asked to listen. No, it didn't work. Not only were they distracted by the gadgets all around, but there were customers and music was playing the whole time as well. But, then the instructor to...

The writing process is messy. It can be unpredictable and can lead to a path that was previously unseen. I like that about writing. I want my students to also like that about writing. Writing is also hard to teach. The Unknown Path Four Square I have my class use an adaption of the Four Square Writing Method when prewriting. I have not been trained in this though. Last year when I started teaching grades 1 and 2 for the first time, I need to revise the way I taught writing, and this was one way I found. I liked it because of its simplicity. Four Square Writing Method uploaded to Wikipedia.org by  Thespian , available  under a  Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license . Last year, I thought it worked really well. This year, I have seen my students have more difficulty organizing their writing. There were students who were disconnecting thoughts. They would start talking about one thing, drift to another, then suddenly go back to the fir...