Week Five

My Plan for the week

My plan for this week is to simply survive it! I am finishing up things in my classroom on Monday, Teacher opening day on Tuesday, and kids come on Wednesday for the first day of school! I am definitely not ready for summer to be over! I plan on going to bed very early because I know I will be exhausted. I also plan to stay organized so I won’t become overwhelmed with schoolwork and homework. I need weekends for resting so I hope to get my homework completed throughout the week, working a little every day so I don’t end up doing everything on Sunday evening – the day I need lots of rest for the work week!

What I did / Where I went

I spent lots of time at school this week. Monday and Tuesday my school went to Kagan training. It was a great learning experience and provided many new ideas to use this school year. Kagan strategies allow a lot of movement and collaborative work so it wasn’t boring! I actually had fun at the training! (Never thought I’d say that!) I spent all day I Wednesday unpacking the many boxes that filled my room. After many hours, it is beginning to look like a classroom again! Thursday was TPGS training along with parent meet and greet. Since I worked so hard all week, I gave my self a free day Friday and visited home one last time before school begins. I enjoyed my weekend hanging with friends and watching UK basketball! It is a wonderful treat seeing the Cats play in August!

What I learned

After reading Nuts & Bolts, I learned that you have to buy websites like a piece of land before you can build anything on it. There are fees to pay to keep the area on the web your own. I had previously heard about people buying website names for tons of money, but I didn’t really know the logistics that went into owning or leasing a space on the web. I also learned from the Design article that websites should to be simple. I have a tendency to want to make my site glam and razzle dazzle! Less is better and much more appealing to the audience. 

What I decided for my website
After reading the dos and don’ts of website design and the best practices checklist, I knew my desire to bling up my site was to be terminated. I finished my parent page and added pictures to my picture page. I added captions so that the reader will know a little about each picture. On my parent page I made it very simple. Instead of listing all of the supplies I created a link to the list document. I added a link to the calendar instead of listing those dates and I finally added a link to the Infinite Campus Parent Portal.