Stories in a New York Minute

A elementary classroom needs to have 1500 books in it to be considered a well stocked library.
Caroline Musselwhite

I don't remember exactly where Caroline got this information, but in looking around I don't know of many classrooms that have 1500 books. One way to increase the number of books in a classroom is by writing them yourself. Caroline recommends taking a topic and writing 4 quick stories - a noun story, verb story, adjective story, & preposition story. The books should be supported by photos or illustrations. Books can then be used to support a theme or topic of the month. Here's a link to the original information posted by Caroline Musselwhite:


Stories in a New York Minute

Gmail

In my previous post I suggested Gmail as a way to keep organized, and find information that we may think lost.  I know that ever since I started using Gmail, I've been able to pull up old addresses, search for specific e-mails, and such on a frequent basis.  While using other e-mail clients (like Outlook and such), I probably would have deleted it and lost the information.


So why Gmail?  Firstly, it's free!!  You can go to Gmail to sign up.  Once sign up you can begin to set up your system.


You can set up a couple of different things - Labels - you can set it up so that when you receive an e-mail it will label it.  This means that you will always be able to find e-mails from a specific group.  To set this up in gmail, select an email message (click the check box next to it), click on the more actions pull down menu, and select new label, and type in a new label.  To automatically add this label to all e-mails from the same group or person you need to set up a filter.  Click on the setting link in the top right hand corner, then click filters (in the middle of the page), click the "create new filter" link on the bottom of the page.  Put a keyword in one the fields - an address in the from box, or a keyword in the subject box.  Click next, then select apply label from the list and select the label you want use.  Then when you get an e-mail from that person or with that word it will be labeled.


Another great reason to use Gmail is the ability to archive and save e-mails.  Gmail give you so much space that there is no reason to delete e-mails (other than spam).  You select an e-mail then select archive.  Once you have archived a message you will be able to search for it.  So you will never lose it.


Last, no spam, gmail is constantly updated so spam is practically non-existent.  I get maybe 1 message every 6 months that I have to manually delete.  The rest are filtered out before I get there!  It's awesome.  So that's Gmail.  It's a great way to keep information.




-  Patrick