No Office Day

Summary of No Office Day

The title of this blog does not mean that I took the day off.  Today, I spent the entire day in classroom's.  It was a great day and very busy!  I have definitely lost my teachers voice, as I may need to invest in some throat lozenges.  Teachers either requested my assistance to help with a lesson or asked me to come up with something that they were currently covering in class.  Below is narrative of my day.  It was an awesome day, I am in classrooms quite a bit as but not like this.  

8:30AM

Reported to Mr. Lauinger's room to present a lesson to the juniors in US History.  Our topic was the 4th Amendment and more specifically what it means to schools.  We had a very good discussion regarding their rights to privacy and security in school.  We went over supreme court cases that gave examples of the current issues in schools dealing with right to privacy.  An example of a case we discussed was about a students confiscated phone and the fact that school officials are able to search phones if they they have reasonable suspicion.  There was some good discussion involving that topic.  We finished with discussing our current reality at VHS and if they thought there was a good balance between privacy and security in our school.  

9:15AM 

Reported to Mr. Norby's class next.  Mr. Norby had me explain how to use Google Forms to create surveys.  Their class is developing questions, mostly related to school and they wanted to know how to gather this data more effectively.  This is an example of one that a student had developed.  Students will be mailing these out to selected students and teachers to gather data.  It will be neat to see what they come up with!

10:00AM

Brittany working hard.

Reported to Ms. Sevigny's room to try my luck at making salsa.  Students had previously completed a pre-lab and were ready to make salsa.  Ms. Sevigny first explained what and how they were going to make the recipe.  It involved us boiling water and removing the peals off tomatoes and then cutting up all sorts of peppers. I showed my knife skills off to the students (not really).  I took a few pictures of what we did.  Thanks for the good salsa!

Marcus, Hunter, Nathan and Mason 

10:40AM 

After Ms. Sevigny's class, I went down to Mr. Peterson to take some students on in an Egyptian game.  Students are covering Egypt and they found a game that the ancient Egyptians played.  I took on Hunter and after a battle I was able to come out victorious!  Here is a link to the game that we played.  

11:00AM

Reported to Mr. Podoll's room to check out what they were doing.  Students were wiring basic plugins and lights.  They were also finding out how many amps and watts were in different electronic items.  I posted some pictures below about what they were working on.  

11:30AM

Reported to Mrs. Haga's Room.  Students were working with probability and Mrs. Haga used some effective ways to describe it.  We also included a short clip from Kahn's Academy describing probability.  If you haven't had a chance to check that site out, you should!  She followed it up with some activities with coins and dice.  Students experimented with shaking up 140 coins and to see the percentage that came up with heads and tails.  It was pretty close to 50%.  

12:55PM

After lunch, I was off to Mrs. Lemer's class.  Mrs. Lemer had some short Greek Mythology stories for me to read and discuss with students.  We discussed the stories of Narcissus, Echo and Arachne.  Narcissism takes the definition from Narcissus meaning vain or full of self.  It was an overall good discussion regarding negative traits of human beings.  Here is a picture that depicts Narcissus looking into the pool of water.  

1:15PM

I had to rush to get to the next class.  Mrs. Peterson's class setup Jeopardy, I took on two other 7th grade students and proceeded to get dominated.  I did not study cell structure as well as I should have.  I did get a few right however, in the end I had the lowest score at -$1,300.  Regardless it was a lot of fun. 

1:40PM 

Reported to Mrs. Braaten's class next.  The 7th grade keyboarding class.  Students were finishing up some keyboarding skill work.  As I came in, Mrs. Braaten shifted gears to go into the next activity.  We were going to put together a poem using letters A-Z.  I have posted the poem I came up with.  I shared this with them and they began work on their own.  I do not claim to be a poet.  

A Principal’s Job

(A)spiring to the be the best

(B)eleives in his teachers

(C)ares deeply about all students

(D)riven to make Velva School the best school in the state

(E)ver improving professionaly

(F)aith in students to make the right choices

(G)et involved!

(H)elping hand

(I)nvolved with school, students and staff

(J)ovial about education!

(K)ind

(L)oves leading a school and watching teachers and students grow

(M)otivated

(N)ever satisfied!

(O)pen to suggestions

(P)erplexed at times

(Q)aulified

(R)eadily available for students and staff

(S)tudents first and foremost

(T)eacher effectiveness is key to student learning

(U)nderstands the importance of working together, collaboration

(V)elva Aggies rule!

(W)hat does Mr. McNeff do?

(X)pectations are high!

(Y)outh are our future

(Z)ealous to work with young adults

2:45PM 

Finally, I reported to Mrs. Froshaug's room to do a critical thinking activity with her students.  We analyzed song lyrics and asked what it meant to them and then they had to create their own.  We attempted to get them to sing them too, but were unsuccessful.