Welcome to my new blog! I’ve decided to change my blog over from Blogger to WordPress. After researching more about blogging I have come to the conclusion that WordPress will be better for me in the long run. Here is a quick and easy article on how to change your blog from Blogger to WordPress, if you’re interested.
This is my first post on the new site, as well as my first (sort of) non-teaching related post. Well….it’s still sort of teaching related. But it makes a good segue way. In my district, we have an elective called ‘Creative Explorations’ that every teacher is required to teach. It is a class that is basically open to us as teachers to ‘do what we would do if we had more time’. Its purpose is to allow students to delve deeper into a concept or a lesson and allow teachers to do those sort of fun, creative, time consuming projects that we would like to do if we had more time in the curriculum. When I found out about this class, I was dumbfounded over what I should do with students. I had to come up with an idea fast…with little prep time (I think I found out about this class about two days before I was going to be teaching it). Other teachers were doing seemingly amazing and complex technology integrated projects. The advice from my mentor was “The thing with CE is that you need to make it something you and the kids enjoy…or you’re going to end up dreading it everyday”. Hmmmm….
The more I thought about her advice, the more I started to think about what I loved to do and how I could incorporate it into the classroom. A thought that immediately came to mind was cooking. I don’t have an FACS classroom so I knew that I wouldn’t actually be able to cook. I figured there was still a way to integrate my love of cooking into this class. So what I decided to do (and what I’ve done) is have a creative menu and restaurant design course. We basically have a group of students for rotations 10-12 35 min periods. So in 10-12 classes students come up with a restaurant concept, find specific, recipe based meals that they will have on the menu, design the menu, create descriptions for their menu using given vocabulary and then make a menu on Microsoft Publisher. After they’ve done all this they pick a recipe to share with the rest of the class and bring in. This project isn’t necessarily English-related, but it can be considered interdisciplinary- they have to price our their menu, write descriptions using vocabulary, be persuasive when writing descriptions, and be tech savvy while using Publisher. The kids love the project and better yet- I do not dread Creative Explorations. The time flies because I am able let my love for cooking and food shine through my teaching.
This week ends this rotation of students and they are *supposed* to be bringing in food tomorrow. I say that because last time most of the kids forgot- lol. So I decided to make a little something of my own….which brings us into the non-teaching part of this post. I have been finding different low-fat baking substitutes on Pinterest and decided I would try one out and have my students be guinea pigs……..
This is the easiest cake recipe in the world! And it’s way better for your than the traditional eggs/oil combo. The result is fluffy and cake-y- obviously not as thick and rich as the traditional but still yummy!
All you need:
- Everything you need!
One Box Yellow Cake Mix
One cup unsweetened Applesauce
One cup water
Mix cake mix with water and applesauce until combined. Pour into your pan of choice, and follow the baking instructions for the pan on the back of the box.
Cake in the oven! Yum!
Then make your frosting:
Frosting
One container fat free whipped topping (like cool-whip)
One box sugar-free fat-free chocolate pudding
One cup fat free milk
Whisk together pudding and milk until it starts to set. Then fold in the whipped topping.
After cake has cooled, frost with topping and enjoy! Hope my students enjoy this tomorrow.
On an end note, turning what I love into what I do is what I accomplished in my CE class, and what I’m trying to accomplish with this blog. I know that it may take a long time to get it to be what I want it to be. But that’s ok. Time spent doing this is time better spent than turning on the TV or wasting away on Facebook. Thanks for reading and hope you’ll stay for the ride!
Pencils and Pancakes 
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