Rainy Day Fun

Happy summer all! I haven't been writing because I haven't really had anything to write about. I'm at this weird limbo of being between schools. On top of American History I will also be teaching Ancient World History. I haven't taught it in over six years but I'm excited to tackle it as the teacher I am today. Unfortunately, my new school doesn't open to teachers until next week and of course we are going on a final summer hurrah next week to Santa's Village. My new assistant principal did ask me to help with some interviews for a math teacher on Tuesday, so we did decide to postpone a day so I can take this opportunity to begin to become part of my new community. That means that next Tuesday will be the first day I actually get to see the school and my classroom. My AP did describe my classroom to me. On the positive side he said it was really big, great for projects and has tons of storage. On the interesting side.... It has stadium seating. Ha! I can't wait to see it so I can wrap my head around it.

Because of this limbo, I've been really taking my cues from the book Teach Like A Pirate by Dave Burgess. I just finished it a couple of weeks ago and it was really enjoyable and got me even more jazzed for my new job. Dave makes a big case for creating an atmosphere in the first days that invite children into your classroom and give them an insight into you. Today we had a major rainy day here in the northeast and I decided to try my hand at something I saw on Pinterest (and of course now I can't find it:) ). I decided to create a movie trailer for my teaching. I used the movie trailer function in iMovie and I used Keynote to create all the wording. I also used a cool intro and credit app that was totally gratuitous but fun.

Here's the link if youre viewing on a tablet: http://youtu.be/MENWhWhjVoc I loooove how it came out! It is too quick, but since I used the trailer mode in iMovie, I can't change that. What I will do, is watch it a second time and pause to discuss some of the elements of the video. I will admit, this took a couple of hours. Mostly, it was because I hadn't used the trailer mode, I kept googling to see if I could change things (like the length of clips) and I'm kind of a perfectionist. I basically did it once and then did it over because I learned how to do it better.

So, what do you like to do in the first days of school so the kiddos are revved up?

I'm linking this post on up to one of my favorite blogs, Technology Tailgate. Hop on over and see the technology goodness. Click on the picture!

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