Upcoming Events

Hello Parents!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!  I hope you all are enjoying this fun season.  It is such a busy time of year, so I thought I would remind you of a few events we have going on in our classroom and around the school.  Check out the list below and let me know if you have any questions at all!

Thank you and Merry Christmas!
Jaime Guthrie
3rd Grade Teacher

Friday, December 14th--HES travels to CrossRoads Baptist Church to watch a performance of the Christmas Musical!  We have 5 students from our classroom in this program, so we are very excited to support them! 

Friday, December 14th (7:00 p.m.)--Students put on a night performance of the Christmas Musical for parents, family, and friends!  Tickets will be available for purchase at the door!

Monday, December 17th--CAMP WILDCAT!  Don't forget to wear your Camp Wildcat t-shirt or other camoflauge clothing!  This will be a fun day of extra activities!

Wednesday, December 19th--Students perform the Christmas Musical at a local nursing home for residents

Friday, December 21st--Class Christmas Party at 10:00 a.m.!   Parents are welcome to attend.  Students may check out after the party with no penalty.  Thanks in advance to all the parents who are supporting this party by sending goodies!

Christmas Holidays--December 22nd through January 3rd

Report Cards will come home sometime before January 11th

Final Project: Supporting Faculty and Students in Developing Personal Learning Networks

Assignment:  Reflect on how your personal learning network has changed and grown during the course of this workshop. Discuss your plans for how you plan to continue to grow your learning network and how you hope to contribute to the professional learning of your administrative colleagues.

My Personal Learning Network has developed so much throughout the course of this workshop.  From the beginning of this course, I was really unfamiliar with the term "PLN", but I knew it was  one I needed to understand and begin using in my educational practice.  I really didn't realize I even HAD a PLN until I began the assigned reading.  Now I understand that my PLN stretches to so many sources, from my colleagues and peers with whom I teach and serve on a daily basis, to former colleagues with whom I consult occasionally.  It now includes my Google Reader subscriptions and my favorite educators on Twitter, as well as the educators I have met through this course!  

My plan for the continual growth of my PLN includes staying up-to-date on the most influential educators in social networking.  I plan to follow the several blogs I added to my Google Reader account to stay current on the latest issues affecting educators, students, and other stakeholders.  I also plan to investigate other blogs, as I have time, in hopes to find contributors that specialize in my field of elementary education.  I hope to become a more active participant in these blogs, adding my experiences and insight through comments.  

Along those same lines, I want to become an ACTIVE blogger for my students, parents, and colleagues.  I hope to be a blogger that is added to someone else's PLN so as to connect to many more people, thus building my PLN even more.

In addition, I would like to really invest in the phenomenon that is Twitter.  I already feel much more educated on this tool, and I can't believe I'm finally participating!  I honestly never thought to use Twitter as part of my PLN until this course.  I've decided to use my Twitter account solely for the purposes of education and building my network.  I'm already very interested in the educators and administrators I am currently following, and I look forward to following more people who specialize in my same area.  

I hope that my participation and enthusiasm for building my own PLN will result in the professional learning of my own school administrator.  Considering I am not serving in an administrative role yet, I hope to be an influence as a classroom teacher.  I plan to begin the new school year by using many of the Web 2.0 tools I have been introduced to, and I hope this use is noticed by my administrator and adopted by her. My implementation of a classroom blog that features frequent podcasts will be a great way to share my ideas with my principal while exposing her to how it can be used in our school as a whole.  I would hope that this exposure would inspire her to create her own blog, as well as encourage other faculty members to do the same.  In addition, I hope to be able to facilitate professional development that focuses on Web 2.0 tools and Professional Learning Networks.  i already know that my principal has a plan for creating PLN's within our school building this year, so I hope to be a helpful contributor to this endeavor.  

I've learned so much throughout this course, and I hope I can share my knowledge with the faculty and administrators with whom I serve.  Thank you so much for reading!  

Parents Welcome!

One of the main goals of this blog is to be able to connect parents to our school community in a more effective and efficient way.  Keeping parents informed of what's going on the classroom as well as the entire school is of utmost importance to me.  If you are a former or current classroom parent of mine, please use this blog as a way to stay connected to your child's education!  Below you will notice the link to Hayden Elementary School's Web site.  Please take a few moments to visit the site and have a look around.  There are so many valuable resources listed there.  You'll find your child's School Supply List for the fall, as well as a list of all the faculty members that your child will be introduced to this year.    What a great way to get a head start of the school year by familiarizing yourself with our school and what we're all about.  You'll also find great resources for learning about the strategies we use in teaching AMSTI Math, which have proven so valuable to former parents.  So, take a minute to do some investigating!  You'll be glad you did!

Hayden Elementary School

Welcome!

Welcome to my new blog!  I am excited about entering the Blogging world as it relates to education.  I have maintained a personal blog in the past, but it's literally been years since I posted to that blog.  Welcoming twins into the world will completely change the way you use your time, and it definitely has for me! Needless to say, I've not had much time to blog in the past 16 months.  I am looking forward to using Blogger to share my thoughts and ideas with my students, parents, school community, and possibly the world!

This fall, I hope to be able to introduce to my students and their parents some ideas I have learned in becoming familiar with Google Calendar and Google Docs.  I'm really excited about the uses I have discovered for these tools in my classroom.  I love to communicate with parents, and these tools should add a whole new level of convenience for how I keep parents in the classroom and school loop.  My plan is to share a school calendar and a classroom calendar through Google Calendar.  I also hope to share important classroom documents through Google Docs.  My head is spinning at all the ways I can transform my current classroom practices and routines using these tools!