These are real robins that hatched in our tree this summer...the timing was perfect...our last day of summer school. Our students had a camping party...all during summer school we read stories, used vocabulary words, and made an "All About" book about camping...We went on a bird watch, a hike, set up a tent (review from our studies on how to pitch a tent) and had a picnic with s'mores. The students even made humming bird food to put outside by their tent. It was a wonderful way to celebrate all the new things the student learned!! The best summer school ever!

In their "How To Book"

The students had...

How to make a sandwich

How to make a S'more

How to pitch a tent

How to use a map

Things you need to take with you camping

How to make a birdhouse...which they did one afternoon

Different camping modes...trailer, tent, motor home, cabin.

On July 8th 2009 another interpreter and I went to work at the Deaf Camp! We volunteered to work in the crafts that day and had a great time with all the kids!! We had a fun day and will return next year for the whole week if they need us!! The Lion's Club give money for the kids that need assistance to go to camp!! What great works they do!

Well it is "back in the saddle again". I worked during summer school as an interpreter and enjoyed the more intense work we did with our Deaf and Hard of Hearing students.. the summer was a success. Then came a new year and a new job offer...with much thought and discussion I decided to accept a job that would help me grow. I started work at the middle school level as an interpreter. I have started a sign club with both the seventh and the eighth grade...they are enjoying it very much and are full of questions each time we meet.

I started my new job on the 18th of Aug. and enjoy preparing for the students that need my assistance. I have also been able to job shadow another Educational Interpreter and been a sub at the High school level...I am calling this my growing year and hope it gears me up of the E.I.P.A. testing coming up in the near future.

2009 Indiana Deaf Educators and Educational Interpreters Conference. Working hard to add to our CEU's to keep our EIC Certification...I am going on my 3rd year of holding my EIC.

FIELD DAY!! Need I say more? My job today was to assist the students with directions!! What a fun day!

The Poetry Gallery was a success! Many students and parents attended the gallery. This was a wonderful way of sharing the students hard work and ending the school year with a sense of achievement!

Getting ready for our Poetry Gallery! The students from other classes will visit and later in the afternoon the parents will visit. We used some of our music genre to help with some of our poetry...this was an amazing project and the students grew so much academically! We used the rap theme to come up with "graffiti" and the students wrote their rap poems on the backdrop.

The Sign Club had a group of six students(who represented the 90 student in the club) go before the School Board and share what they had learned in the Club this year. All the Sign Club students were given a Certificate for their dedication to learning and how to communicate with others in a new language!! What a very rewarding year...I have even had student sign to me since school has been out...they see me at summer school and sign..."How are you?" and I sign back..."I am great, or happy or fine" That is the best reward of all!!! I will miss my Sign Club student over the summer. The plan is to continue Sign Club next year with the same group and maybe expand to another grade level, if there is interest. I can't wait!!!

Our last day of Sign Club, we celebrated with a program. The students chose the group they wanted to be in and then made their scenery and costumes. The students in each group came up with their own play. Each group then preformed their play using the signs that they learned in the last 5 months. What a great way to end this years Sign Club...the students loved the freedom and responsibility of this assignment. In the pictures above your can see the students preform some of the plays. We then went outside to eat pop cycles to celebrate our hard work!

The Sign Club was invited to share their sign knowledge with the School Board the following week.

Wow!! The year has come to an end. BITTERSWEET, it is always hard to say good bye and still so exciting for the students and their accomplishments. Here Coby is visiting the students on one of the last days of school...this was a reward for the classes hard work. The students loved their visit with Coby, Mrs. Elgi's dog.

This is our last week of Sign Club. The students are already asking for the Club to continue next year...SO...for sure!! I am very excited about working more with the students! Starting in January, we learned many things. How to finger spell with our abc's, we learned the Pledge, we learned family signs, animal sings, greeting and good-byes. The students hard work paid off and they were invited by the School Board to share their knowledge at the next meeting. On May 26th a small group of students representing the 90 students will give a small presentation. They are such great students!! Here you see some of the student creating a background for the skits that they will preform on our last day of sign club...they are so excited about using their signs and putting on a small skit. It will be so fun to see what they come up with...the assignment was easy...they are an animal and the rest is up the them. What a wonderful journey this year has been!

As the school year comes to an end, Mrs. Egli's class is still hard at work. This last unit of language...Writers Workshop is the most creative of all. The are enjoying the information they are learning about the 4 music genre's, Jazz, Classical, Country and Rap. They have listened and read lyrics, made text to text connections, text to self connections and even visualized a picture that classical music created for them. This week the students even wrote and preformed their very own lyrics in a Rap song. The student/students that I work with may find it hard...but not this time! They loved the music, some can hear and others feel the beat...above you can see a sample of a Rap song that the student wrote and was also preformed with my help...I was the voice and the student was the beat. What a great time we all had with this!!

In the month of April...Mrs. Egli's class adopted some caterpillars in hopes that they would go through metamorphosis and change into butterflies. Above you can see the wonderful ways the caterpillars changed and turned. Here is our beautiful butterfly...What a great and fun learning time...it happened so fast. WOW. We have set our Butterfly free. Fly far, live long and remember Mrs. Egli's second grade class!

On Monday April 20, 2009 our students visited the Honeywell Center and watched the Junie B. Jones program. I was a great day and the the program was wonderful. To prepare the DHH students, I first visited the Honeywell website and read about the program. (The stories the program was going to feature) Then I shared info. with his DHH teacher. We then checked out the books. being preformed and read over them. We used pictures to help students understand what was going to happen in the program. This was very sucessful and the students knew what to expect and enjoyed the program. Watching Junie B. come to life was very educational and a great way to encourage reading. This particular Junie B. program had an educational twist by encouraging students to keep a Journal. Our DHH students started to keep their journals before watching the program, and then seeing it come to life on stage really helped the students relate to their journal keeping. Our DHH students will continue to keep their journals until the end of the year! They are really enjoy keeping a Journal.