I found some really great stuff and I just wanna.....

Share!!!  
One night I decided to look up the best schools in the country and see what we need to do to be more like them.  The top schools have a focus.  The #1 school was a STEM based school.  So.... I searched what needs to be done to make our school efficient in this manner.  This website was a great resource.  It was a blog called .  I love the title don't you?  
It led me to some lessons at a PBS website which gave some great ideas, everything was there that I needed to implement into our day!
I also ran across some interesting information about technology in the classroom, pairing it with the creative writing.
I just want our kiddos to be able to compete in the upcoming industry of whatever they want to be!

Thinking Maps

I was visiting a school website that has a great resource for curriculum maps, for all grade levels and subjects.  We decided at our 3rd grade level meeting that it was a good place to start.  The school website is Higley Unified School District.  Now we would love to see their assessments and resources but they have those available only to username and password "knowers".  However, they did have a link to a web page about Thinking Maps.  This was what I saw when I went to their site:

Thinking Maps are eight specific visual patterns

Visualizing our thinking allows us to have a concrete image of our abstract thoughts. Visual representations enhance the brain's natural ability to detect and construct meaningful patterns. Thinking Maps reduce anxiety by providing familiar visual patterns for thinking and working with complex ideas and situations.

Research: "Although thinking is innate and spontaneous, skillful thinking must be cultivated." -Art Costa, The Thought-Filled Curriculum

It is definitely worth looking into.... I loved their visuals and how they explained the data. Thinking Maps