The quarantine must be making us all act a little funny because today when I asked Cameron if he would puhhh-lease be an actor for this here read aloud he said "yes!" WHAT?! I thought for sure he would say no! This just goes to show you that the power of social distancing might be making us all a little desperate for anything new or out of our daily routines. I hope you enjoy this hilariously silly installment. I can tell you that a lot of laughs were made today while making this thing happen. Enjoy! P.S. SO many of you have played online games and added to the Flipgrid videos. Coolio! Remember that I have to "approve" your Flipgrid video so it might take a little bit before you see your video go "live." Also--a few people asked this over email: you'll use your student ID# to get access to that Flipgrid! Maybe next week we should do video reenactments of our favorite movie scenes. Cameron better WATCH OUT! 

I'm basically just updating this site so YOU know that I am indeed thinking of you and will post an update on our book tomorrow. Today was our first "math class" and I was seriously SO excited to see your faces, I can't even tell you. The quarantine has been hard on my little extroverted personality and I miss your personalities more than anything. Getting to "see" you was a real high point for me! Cameron even said "Oh look! You have your life force back again!" after our class sessions ended. THAT is how happy I was to see you. Anyhow...I am working on the next installment of this read-aloud, but since I will be a day late, I thought I'd post just to say "hi" and let you know that I am thinking about you! Have a happy Tuesday night, whatever you may be doing!

Hello, clase*! (*espanol for class) I am so happy to see that some of you are continuing to poke on here. It does make me happy. This is the perfect book for a read-aloud during a lockdown. It's short & sweet & suspenseful. I just love this book! I am looking forward to getting started with some teaching this week, although most of this week will just be review. STILL, I look forward to seeing some of you on tomorrow's math Zoom meet-up (one session is at 9:00 and the other is at 12:00---no pressure to attend unless you CAN and WANT to! Seriously...don't stress out about anything math right now.) Miss you!!!!

Hello, guys! I am happy to see some people popping on here. It is one of my favorite "chores" of the day getting our little homeroom read aloud done. Today was. a day filled with more zoom conferences trying to get materials ready and organized. I am really happy with how the 5th grade stuff came out, considering the time pinch. I am excited about meeting with some of you (no pressure!) via Zoom next week on Tuesday. We'll offer one session for math in the morning and the same session will be repeated in the afternoon. For this week, it is mostly just for us to get a chance to "see" each other and feel connected as a group. We won't learn any new math stuff this week, which is good. We are all "swirling & twirling" right now and deserve to have NO math pressure. That said, this is also a golden time to get caught up on things that you feel like you normally don't have time for (ie, math fact practice!) Summer before last I spent a chunk of the summer in Oaxaca, Mexico to practice my Spanish. My sweet teacher reached out via email to say her school had closed so she wanted to know if I'd like to take an online class with her. We had our first "chat" tonight and it was so fun and also great to see her. It's in little moments like this that I try to be grateful for ANY small blessing that comes out of this weird time. I do miss you guys like crazy! Hopefully, I'll see some of you on the Tuesday Math Zoom. Your parents have all the details. (P.S. I decided just to film the crazy rain storm that was coming down while I was trying to make this video. I decided my reading is better when I'm not worried about being vain! haha!)

I have been on the computer like a maniac this week hosting little technology for teachers who are working to get their electronic classrooms ready for students. It is actually really fun to interact with different teachers but I do feel like I have been on the computer non-stop, which is not good my hyper body! I can't wait to hear about what you have been doing and just see how you are! Mrs. Wirht will send out the parent update tomorrow afternoon which will give you some good info about some class options for next week. Tuesday will be the day of the week reserved for Math zoom meetings (again, we'll send details out tomorrow) but pencil me in for Tuesday on Zoom! Hopefully we can connect there. I'll offer a morning and afternoon session so the schedule is a little more flexible. I know for many of us, this is a weird and major schedule change. Some of us (I'm pointing to myself here) don't handle change as SMOOOOTHLY as other people (I'm now pointing to Cameron! haha!) so please know that the priority is to take care of yourself first and then let me entertain you with math stuff a'plenty! "Talk" soon -Ms. Salome

I was online today like a legit fool--on zoom meetings day in and day out! Partially, this is my own fault because (you guys know this already) I find 'making stuff' for the computer to be a hobby so I am hoping to help some other teachers who are not quite as comfortable with the computer unroll their lessons to students. Hey...speaking of unrolling lessons: I believe that next week we can start 'unrolling' some new stuff your way. Don't get worried or stressed about that: hopefully, if nothing else, it gives you a lot of variety so you can pick activities that will both entertain AND educate. Right now, I truly feel like my brain is starting to shrink a little bit and I look forward to getting more in a routine. This evening, I got the email about school being cancelled in person until May 4th. I just can't believe it! (Even though I know that I should have seen that coming...) I guess I just continue to be romantic about our class meeting together in person again. Listen--if school gets canceled for the year you must each promise me a reunion gathering when group events are safe again. I miss you, big time. Hope you are enjoying these LOOONNNGGGG days.

It is grocery store time and I did my. best persistent protestor act to talk Cameron into getting Home Slice instead of groceries. I plan to survive off of turkey sandwich alone today! WHAT? You've never had a turkey sandwich from Home Slice? You are missing out, friend. Think of how much better Home Slice pizza is than regular pizza. Now IMAGINE what they could do to the turkey sandwich?  I've also have been drinking copious amounts of "Cup of Calm" tea. Does it work? No. But, have you really ever seen me calm? Very doubtful. Therefore, the tea might work on others just fine. Speaking of seeing me, I felt like this video background of Cameron's wiggling toes would actually be more entertaining than my face today so, there's that little spoiler for you! Hope you are getting outside--even in the rain--and soaking up some of the slowness of these days. p.s. We have a team meeting on Wednesday to talk up setting up some more zoom meetings. Will keep you posted!

Hello, wonderful class-people. Oh, how I miss you! Seriously! I'm going bananas. I hope that you are getting outside and enjoying the time "off" and all that time with your family. I know it might make you feel a little crazy sometimes, but when we all look back on this it will be an insane story to tell! So...try to make some good memories while you are at it, if you can muster it!

You will be able to tell by this day's read-aloud how stir-crazy I am. This is certainly not the most professional video I've ever created but it did keep my little monkey brain entertained, so that's a win. I tried to take an online yoga class but the zoom kept freezing up. It is hard enough for me to relax when the class was working but when the teacher-guy froze up for the third time I just yelled " Forget IT!!!" and then was happy you weren't there to watch me set a bad example in the areas of patience and flexibility. haha! I'm working on it though, I pinky swear. 

We are meeting as a team with Mr. Drummond this week and one of our agenda items is talk about when/how to schedule another zoom meeting so look forward to more info coming soon! Miss you, little beasts!

So...almost everybody on the Google form said "YES!" to continuing our read-aloud. I'm thrilled to have a little chore that resembles our normal class, too! I miss you! Here is part 1. I will send out another Salome Check-In form next week and see what you think. If all goes well and you like this format, I'll continue it here!