Shayla+Billian

====My name is Shayla Billian and I am currently a senior at Clemson University. I am majoring in early childhood education, with a minor in psychology. I am originally from Boston, Massachusetts, and I would love to move back north at some point after college. This semester, I am completing my practicum in Mrs. Guill's first grade class at Ravenel Elementary School in Seneca, SC. The students are great and I am loving first grade! Outside of school, I love to run, bake, and work at Wingin' It, a restaurant in downtown Clemson! After graduation, I aspire to get my doctorate in educational psychology, and possibly a masters in reading. I absolutely love working with children! At some point, I would love to travel out west and teach either a first or second grade class. ====

=Shayla Billian's PLN = **It's Not all Flowers and Sausages** This blog is written by a public school teacher, Mimi. On her blog, she writes about different events that happen in the classroom and various activities she completes with her children. She talks about the different feelings as a teacher--frustration, joy, pride, exhaustion--and I think almost all teachers can connect with her. She shares many ideas she uses in the classroom and many tips and tricks for new teachers, which will be very beneficial when I start teaching.

**Mrs. Cassidy's Classroom Blog** Mrs. Cassidy's Classroom Blog was noted by Scholastic as one of the top 20 elementary school blogs. The blog is written by a Canadian first-grade teacher, Kathy Cassidy. She invites readers into her classroom to interact with students and her dynamic lessons. She shares many fun ideas and lessons, while also sharing videos and photographs of her students and their progress. I love all of the lessons she shares and I think some of them will be very beneficial and useful in my classroom.

**Teacher Net Gazette** The Teachers.Net Gazette features exciting education news, insightful commentary, clever teaching tips, engaging lesson plans, pedagogy, classroom crafts, recipes, inspiration, humor and a huge collection of free printable for the classroom. It is published electronically monthly. I love this website because it is so well-rounded; it contains everything a teacher could need!

Through building my PLN, my eyes have definitely been opened to the great resources that are out there for teachers. I have realized that teacher blogs are one of the greatest places to find information because these teachers are actually completing the lessons and then reflecting and sharing their ideas and thoughts. Creating a PLN has also helped me learn that I will definitely need a collection of resources, besides Google, when I begin my teacher career!

=Blabberize =

Poem: Homework! Oh, Homework! By Jack Perlutsky Image: http://www.studentsoftheworld.info/sites/people/monkey.php

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 This activity would correlate with many ELA Standards and the Guiding Principles. It falls in line with the standards because it would require children to read poems to find one they like, and then ultimately read their poem out loud to be recorded. The teacher could also have students write a journal entry as to why the student chose the poem he/she selected, which would cover some ELA writing standards. This assignment would also cover a majority of the Guiding Principles, specifically Guiding Principles 1, 3, 4, 5 and 8. Because this assignment involves reading, oral language, and the use of technology, it covers more Guiding Principles than just a simple activity, such a selecting a poem and reading it. This also gives students the opportunity to be creative and to be themselves, through the poems and the pictures they choose.