Great Resources!!

Welcome to Maps4Kids.com! - a fun and free educational site. NEW for 2008-2009! Maps4Kids en Español. Also, we continue to add content like Seven Wonders and Outline Maps.

Many pages are now GoogleMaps enabled to add another dimension to Maps4Kids.
Our mission is to help children gain a greater understanding of the world through maps, geographic information and geography games.

Maps4Kids.com has maps and data on all of the 50 states, as well as for over 200 countries around the world. There are map puzzles and links to quizzes to help kids learn where states and countries are, and what their capitals are.

Are your students struggling with the metric system? Our Calculator page will help them find the answer ! - and our Weather page will let them link to weather forecasts for their zip code or city.

Our latest addition is a Top 10 List page loaded with useful geo-facts, and don't miss our popular GeoNews page, which is updated daily with interesting geographic news from around the globe.
If you find this website useful, please inform your students and link to us from your classroom home page.

Regards,
Tony Kehlhoferhttp://www.maps4kids.com

PBwiki Program for Educators

Offers $25 Million in Web 2.0 Tools
PBwiki, the leading provider of business and educational wiki's, has announced that they are offering educators who sign up as part of the 2008 PBwiki Program for Educators a free premium wiki (regular price: $250/year). This program is also open to homeschool parents as well.

Setting up a PBwiki is as easy as making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich! You can learn more about all the ways you can use a wiki in your classroom to enhance and support student learning over on the PBWiki Education page, or the PBwiki Educator Community. PBwiki's are 100% ad-free and totally private.

Educators can also use PBwiki Plugins to add multimedia content with a few clicks, including spreadsheets, calendars, chat rooms, videos, maps, photo slideshows, and more. If you have other embeddable widgets (like Google Gadgets), you can also insert them in your PBwiki.
To claim your free wiki, simply sign up using the following URL where you will be automatically be guided through the process of creating your free premium educational wiki:
http://pbwiki.com/?special=87937&refwiki=wawiki

Once you create your wiki, you will also be eligible to participate in PBwiki's Back-To-School Challenge, which will offer teachers like you a chance to win free school supplies and other prizes by sharing lesson plans, blogging, and offering tips on creating a collaborative classroom or library.

WASL Scores!! 87.7%

WASL Scores are out!!!

The unofficial WASL scores have been released for the 2007-08 school year.
Once again Cedar Wood science is among the highest in the state. This year the score is 87.7% passing. Congratulations scientists of Cedar Wood. All of the students deserve kudos!!!!

The Parties, Recognitions, Tears & Gratitude

It was all a bit overwhelming and it seemed to never end, all of the parties, recognition and the gratitude from past and present students and parents. How wonderful to be told you have made a difference in the lives of others. All of that said none of it would have been possible without the support of fantastic principals. Jim McNally was the first to have a profound impact on my teaching and then Dr. David Jones in my last year of teaching. I feel so very fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with both of these men before I left the profession. Then there are the quality colleagues that I have had the opportunity to work side by side with.

So much of the school climate is directly related to the administrator but that is a topic for another posting.

On June 16th a speech was requested by the audience for which believe it or not I was not fond of doing. So instead of a speech I made what I hope to be a fun tribute to those I have worked with over the years.

At all times find joy and laughter in your days.

One last email to my class!!

Good Evening Everyone,
I must begin by saying there are no adequate words to explain my feelings. Each and every single one of you has a special place in my heart and a special memory I will carry with me.

This entire week has been filled with nonstop events.
Our field trip Monday took us to the EMP for science fiction and music. After school was a staff event for both Mrs. McKissik and I that was unbelievable with the help of Jeanni Thomas.

Tuesday we had Field Day, filled with games, fun and then on to square dancing and the Awards Assembly- where many of our classmates were recognized for their accomplishments.

Wednesday was the 5th Grade Celebration- a time to reflect and be proud of the growth that has taken place over the years at Cedar Wood.

Thursday brought tears, surprises and special memories for a life time. Thank you most of all for the kind letters. I will cherish them forever. The Memory Book is wonderful. Jim and I both will enjoy the Passport Card and will use it often -each time thinking and thanking the class of 07-08. I love the Bead Book and will get into the projects during the cold Alaskan winter. Not to forget the special meals made by Jeanni- what a treat especially for someone who does not cook!!!!!! You are an amazing person.

Each and every single child in this classroom holds a special spot in my heart. I wish you all the very best in life. Hold on to the moments they are what makes a life. Enjoy the challenges that life throws at you for that is what makes you strong and stop long enough to realize when you are happy.

Boys and girls many of you wrote "please don't forget me"- I promise I won't. Keep in touch with me through our blog. I look forward to hearing about your accomplishments in life. Continue to make me proud. Thank you for being wonderful people.

All of my love, hugs and of course Slugs!!

Fran Hartman
Cedar Wood ~ 5th Grade
425.385.7734
http://blogs.everettsd.org/fhartman/
http://allthingsfrommyhart.blogspot.com/

Setting sail in Sept. ~ follow our adventures@ http://capestjames.blogspot.com/

Looking at Retirement

Cedar Wood’s Fran Hartman was described by Principal David Jones as a “core educator who has worked for five different superintendents “and been an inspiration to every one of them.” Her science students have the top WASL scores in the state because of her creativity, flexibility, energy, innovation and student-centered attitude. She teaches children not only how to answer questions but to explain where those answers came from and is “absolutely brilliant” in the way she pulls in resources.

Fran thanked many in the audience for inspiring her. “Carol, YOU were the principal who opened the door to my teaching imagination by telling me that students needed a ‘hook’ for learning. That simple suggestion of adding music to my punctuation lessons was the beginning for me. Jim McNally, it was you who supported my work with NASA, and I know you went home worried some days. Dr. Jones, little did I know that you would challenge, support, encourage and help me to keep learning alive, even more so in this last year. Thank you.”

Teacher, adventurer sails off into the sunset

Published: Friday, May 16, 2008

Teacher, adventurer sails off into the sunset

By Sarah KoenigEnterprise reporter
Teacher Fran Hartman had just wrapped up a lesson on global warming for her fifth-graders at Cedar Wood Elementary, and as students filed out, one paused to run an idea by her."Could they make a giant vacuum to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere?" a boy asked.Hartman paused for a second."Do you think 100 years ago someone sat in a classroom and said: 'Do you think someday people will be able to fly?'" she replied.The "anything is possible" answer seems to sum up Hartman's approach to life.

For a start, she lives on a boat. A decade ago, she took two years off teaching to sail around the world. Until recently, she drove a Harley motorcycle. Her lessons, which stem from slugs and bubble gum to a giant space shuttle replica that made headlines, are similarly "out of the box."And when she retires in June, she plans to sail to Alaska to "winter" there.Hartman now lives on a sailboat at Shilshole Bay in Seattle. But in 1997, the boat was also her home for two years. That's when she sailed around the world with her husband, an experienced sailor.

Hartman hasn't read "The Perfect Storm," the sailing disaster account by Sebastian Junger."I don't read any of those things about sailing," she said. Nevertheless, the first night on the water, she was terrified. She and her husband took turns driving the boat for four hours at a time."When morning came it was like, 'I'm still alive!'" she said. "Then I realized it was no big deal."She was also seasick on every leg of the trip.

But the voyage brought them to amazing places, including French Polynesia, Fiji, the Kokos Keeling atoll, where the water is an intense turquoise, and one island that was like walking into National Geographic, Hartman said."They're still naked!" she exclaimed, referring to the children there. "They fished, grew their own food."As if the trip weren't adventure enough, Hartman has been riding a Harley Davidson motorcycle for five years. On a sunny day, she'll commute to Mill Creek on it, and has motored to biker gatherings as far away as Sturgis, S.D.

But while riding in September of 2006, she hit a setback.Hartman was hit by a three-quarter ton truck and was bed ridden for four months in intense pain."I could not function," she said. "My husband was flipping me like a pancake."She's still recovering from the accident and has low-level pain. In February, she had surgery for a broken bone in her hand from the accident that doctors hadn't found.

She learned something from it, she said."In an instant life can be over, and you never, ever know when that's going to be," Hartman said. "I'd tell anyone with good health to do what you want to do now – don't wait for more money, don't wait for retirement. If it's important to you, do it."

She also recommends telling family and friends you love them every day.

Hartman's expansive approach to life is reflected in her 30 years of teaching.

Once a year from 1993 to 1997, Hartman and parent volunteers converted her classroom into a replica of the mid-deck of a space shuttle. The replica took up the whole room.For 24 hours, students wearing astronaut T-shirts did experiments about space and communicated with "mission control," located in the library. They programmed lessons about space for computers, which were less commonly used then. Parents wired the place so students could communicate with each other with white phones. Student "reporters" covered the event minute by minute, asking questions and writing articles. "It was huge," Hartman said. "Parents were here, senators, congressmen."Students had a live video conference with NASA (the real NASA), and the news channel CNN came out to cover it.As a result of the press coverage, Hartman got to have dinner with Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong.

But that's only one of Hartman's teaching stories. Students also did a unit on Mars that included giving a "Mars Rover License" to Brian Cooper, the scientist who was controlling the Mars Rover robot at the time, in 1997. Cooper came to the school and did a test demonstration. The license the students made for him was signed by the governor and other politicians. It hung in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C., for a year. Then Hartman got Al Gore to sign it.

On a closer-to-the-ground note, Hartman has also done lessons where students try to lure slugs to the school with slug habitat, and discover the properties of chewing gum by chewing it, weighing it and doing other experiments. Hartman's most recent science lesson is on global warming. For that project, a nursery donated a tree for every student to take home and plant.

Hartman said her philosophy of teaching can be summed up in a quote from John Gardner, the U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare from 1965-1968."Much education today is monumentally ineffective," it reads. "All too often we are giving young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants."

Hartman plans to keep teaching even after retirement.Her and her husband will set sail this summer, headed north, and spend the winter in Alaska, where Hartman hopes to teach at a school. The length of the trip is "indefinite," she said. From Alaska, Hartman and her husband will head south."Maybe Chile, maybe Antarctica," she said.

© 2008 The Enterprise Newspapers, Lynnwood, WA