Marnie-

I teach 3rd grade at North Shore Country Day School - an independent school in Winnetka, IL. I have been back in meetings and doing classroom set-up. We have intake conferences and half-days this next week. The conferences are an opportunity for the parents and teachers to have some early face time, and for parents to express hopes and concerns for the year. It's very valuable.

I am looking forward to seeing my kiddos on Wednesday, although I know many of them from the hallways last year. We only have one class in each Lower School grade so everyone knows everyone. I will have 6 kids who are new to the school in my class.

As far as tech goes, see my blog (http://amykenyon.edublogs.org) to find out what I've been up to lately. Basically, I am somewhat new to blogging so I have not yet set-up a classroom page - although it is a future goal.

Let's keep in touch!

Amy :)

Hi Marnie,
Sounds like you've had a good start to the new school year. In Australia we are two thirds the way through our school year with our next break of two weeks in four more weeks - can't you see I'm counting down! After that we have nine weeks till the end of the year. We have our long vacation in December - January for 6 weeks.
I have started my class blog now and the kids are enthusiastic about publishing their writing and having a chance to share it with their families.
I decided to use classblogmeister a it seemed easier to use and had security that was acceptable to my principal as far as privacy etc goes . You can see the main page at:
http://classblogmeister.com/blog.php?blogger_id=98041
but the kids pages are password protected.
Let me know if I can be of any help - but remember I'm new at this too!!

Hi Marnie. I was wondering if you have any high school contacts who would be interested in participating in a nationwide SAT Vocab Video Contest @ MIT university. You can view contest details at BrainyFlix.com Please let me know. Thanks!