Bartholomew Bats!


Our school is located in Round Rock, Texas which is near Austin. Austin and Round Rock both have huge populations of Mexican Free Tailed Bats that live under our bridges. A colony of bats lives beneath the Ann Richards/Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin and in Round Rock, another colony resides under the Interstate 35 bridge over McNeil Road. Each evening from March to about October, the bats fly out from beneath the bridge and search for insects to eat. The emergence of the bats is a wonder to watch. We are also thankful that all these millions of bats eat the bugs by our homes.

Our class mascot is the Bat to honor the mammals that live so close to us and help us. (also because Bat and Bartholomew both start with the letter B!) The bats in Central Texas live together in a group and help take care of the young. Then they migrate together as a team. Our class will also live together in our classroom, work together as a team, and help each other out. We are the Bartholomew Bats!





Monday, June 21, 2010

Great ideas for practicing grammar in motivating and authentic ways

I love teaching writing to my fourth graders but I don't love teaching grammar. Practicing with DOLs or correcting mistakes in sentences doesn't seem to transfer to the students' actual writing. A friend of mine (Thanks, Kari Maurer!) told me about Jeff Anderson and his book, Everyday Editing. This book discusses a better way to teach grammar by looking at what is correct in a sentence instead of fixing mistakes. He extends that idea into sentences written by the students. I am ordering his book to learn more for the fall but will be reading his website: http://www.writeguy.net/ until the book comes in the mail and using the blog: http://www.greatsentences.blogspot.com/ to find useful sentences for my class to use to practice. This blog hasn't been updated in a long time but I think that it will be a great resource for me and my team in the fall. Let me know what you think.
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1 comment:

Dino Blog said...

Hi Pam! I really like your bat theme. Thanks so much for sharing this information and it looks like the blog could be a great resource. This year the 5th grade teachers at my school discussed grammar. They saw a need for addressing it in their students' writing, but were searching for an authentic way to do so.
Linda Porter

June 30, 2010 at 12:02 AM

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