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Looking for birds to chase...

Looking for birds to chase
Looking for birds to chase,
originally uploaded by Hedgetoad.
Yesterday was Keavy's first experience at the beach. Prior to training school, all attempts had to be abandoned due to excessive "loosing my shit" behavior. The sheer number of birds available to be chased down drove Keavy into freenzy and I was terrified that either I would loose her or that she would unknowingly plunge into the surf and be sucked out to sea in the horrendous rip tides that make up the WA coast.

But, as I said, she did really well. We went to Pacific Beach, which is much less crowded, so there were fewer distractions.

She did pick up some seaweed (probably thinking it was some sort of toy), but she rapidly learned that this was not a good idea. Plus the water was a tad too salty for her liking - unlike small children, Keavy realized this after only one taste. She also showed no interest in the dead crabs. Maybe this fall we can head back sans leash...

I survived my AP training. It did get better as the week went on, but I know I'm going to be scrounging for some sort of syllabus for the rest of the summer. The one thing that we never got a clear answer on was how to sequence - which should come first? Close reading skills or writing skills? Especially for students who have basically never done this before and a teacher who's never really taught it before. I will say that teaching writing for this class will be a lot easier than doing WASL writing - at least AP writing is something I recognize from own writing experiences.

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