Christmas Parties and Pinterest Surprise

Christmas vacation is FINALLY here!! Everyone has been looking forward to this for a little while since we have not had as many breaks as in years past since the state changed our school calendar requirements. We had our class parties on Thursday which made for a little bit of a crazy day; however, it was all worth it. My kids had such a great time and were so excited about how the party turned out.

My room mother got everyone their own holiday bowl to take home after they were able to create their own ice cream sundae's!! Whoot whoot! She had every topping that a kid might dream of. After we at our ice cream, we drew numbers to see what gifts we would get. I had never seen my students so excited about being able to play and be children at school. Many of them talked about how it was the best party they ever had. That made me feel wonderful. My students surprised me with a gift card to get some things for my backpacking trip to Spain.

Many of them started their vacation after that, but there were a couple of people that come to school today to finish out the week. We spent the day watching movies and playing games. One of my students came just to give me a gift after they saw something on my Pinterest board! What?!?!?! I was floored!!!

They put it one an old cabinet door with string to hang it. This went in my classroom fast!

I do have to say that even though there are hard days mixed with the good, I wouldn't trade this class for ANYTHING! They really are lovely children that make me smile. It was a great way to start my vacation where I am going to just read my books.

What did you do for your Christmas parties?? What do you plan over the Christmas break?? 

Gingerbread Mania and Surprises

First of all, my heart goes out to those at Sandy Hook Elementary!

Wow, it's been a while since I have posted anything here! Now that I am done with my classes for the semester, I think that it's time to share what I have been doing in my classroom. First thing is that I have the most wonderful 3rd grade team!! They secretly went around the school to campaign for me for "The Teacher of the Year". My principal gave me the papers saying that I won the award without saying a word. I asked him if it was a joke then tried to give him the papers back, ha ha. He said that it wasn't a joke. I was floored!! My team told me what they did and I just about cried. They are the sweetest bunch of ladies that I have ever had the opportunity to work with!!

My principal has finally decided to allow my team to use REAL BOOKS for reading instruction instead of our awful basal!! Yay!!! We started with  The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson. It's been a long time since I have seen children enjoy reading class. It warmed my heart to see my students having such lively discussions about what was happening and actually paying attention to instruction. We still had reading tests and assignments, but they were more meaningful to my students. The kiddos were able to make real life connections to the characters and what was happening during the Christmas pageant.

The first thing that I did was have my students look at the copy right date in the front of the book. We began comparing the cost of living in 1972 to today. We also talked about what was going on in the world and the types of things that were popular at that time. They LOVED it!!

As we read each chapter, I had my students name each chapter to help them start thinking about main ideas. Some of the names were: "Meet the bad Herdmans", "Herdmans Go to Church", and "The Evil is Stealing the Show". If I forgot to let them name the chapter, they were quick to remind me.

There was a lot of character comparisons being made along the book. Also we analyzed how some of the characters changed throughout the book. That was neat to see them pick up on those things even before we started talking about it.

Every Friday was our "FUNctional Friday". This was where we took a piece of functional text and looked at the components. The last piece that we did was directions to making a gingerbread house. Yes, we actually made the houses using graham crackers. It was SO much fun. I think that this will be what the kids remember the most. Doesn't the "Teacher of the Year" have to come up with awesome activities??? I think so!!! Ha ha ha!!
Here are some pictures from our wonderful day.....

It's Been a Wild Ride

Oh it's been so long since I have been able to write! I haven't forgotten about my precious baby, aka-this blog. There has been SO much going to on with getting settled with a new school year and math program, trying to get my foot underway with new graduate classes, and try to take care of my family. It's been a wild past few months! Hopefully, I will be able to get back into the swing of blogging soon.

I don't have any pictures for you all this time. There's been NO time to take any. I haven't even taken any of my kiddos!! Now that's busy. I can tell you that I am working on a writing and reading unit surrounding The Hundred Dresses. They are reading the book and having book discussions about each chapter. This leads to them journaling about their discussion and personal feelings about the questions. It has been going to pretty good so far. There has been some deep discussions happening. We are taking some of the author's craft to connect it our personal narratives.

In the story one of the man characters tells a memory of when the bullying of another little girl started. This little sequence is a GREAT way to show how someone tells a personal narrative. So, as we are writing, I am referring them to how Eleanor Estes (the author) wrote this sequence to help them shape their narrative. We haven't gotten very far. Hopefully this will work out well.

I hope that I won't have to wait so long to make a new post and make sure that I get you all some pictures and links to accompany the next posts.

First Week of School is Over!

Before I get started on the events of the week, here is what my classroom looks like finished!

This week has been an interesting week meeting and getting to know my students. They're just doing things that just CRACK ME UP! This class is wonderful too. There are things that they do which shows that they have lots of room to grow throughout the year, but I know that they are a group that will do it in a spectacular fashion!

Since I know that kiddos are nervous their first day of school and have lots of questions, I gave them an opportunity to ask me anything they wanted to know. Well, the results were pretty funny. My favorite was "how do you do hair to do dat?" My hair is curly so I guess they don't know that it can be that way naturally.

Also, I read The First Day Jitters and had various activities that were related to the book which included a "4 square". The first square was about being nervous before school then progressed into how they felt after finishing their first day. There is the website that my team used to find activities for this book.

http://www.mrsvandyke.com/backtoschool.htm 

The school's counselor has the whole school going through 7 Habits of Happy Kids this year as a part of our school-wide discipline plan. The first week is "Be Proactive". I am hoping that this helps my students think about their behavior. Have any of you guys ever gone through this book with your kids??

I do have to say--I have never been so tired in all my life! After work I have to come home and get crackin' with grad school stuff until my eyeballs are going to fall out! This teacher can not wait until she gets used to going to work AND doing grad school again.

Meeting the Students...First Day Jitters

I've been teaching for 6 years and I still get just as nervous as I did my first year when it's time to meet my new students. I think of a thousand things that I need to get done the night before then when those things are finished, I come up with a thousand more things to do.

This was my first official week back to work, but without the kids. On Monday, they walk through the door (aaaahhhhhhh!!). I've put the finishing touches on my room, but I still don't feel ready. I'm sure that I will have dreams of what the first day is like. When things into to full swing the dream escalate to me teaching in my sleep. There are many nights I wake up trying to find out why my bed is in my classroom when I'm supposed to be finding my kids. The nice thing is at least I get to dream with correct faces since Thursday was "Meet and Greet" night.

The girls and I right before "Meet and Greet" (I'm in the black dress and NOT pregnant)

The kids were supposed to bring their school supplies while getting a chance to me, their teacher. I can't tell you the number of times that I was asked about the instructional goals for the school year or the first 6 weeks of school. This has NEVER happened to me before!! Also, there we some very comical encounters with students and parents. There were some parents threatening their children with "beatings" if they acted up. One of my students was TWIRLING in my room like a dancer...wow.

For the first week of school we will:

• Read the First Day Jitters then make a book about being nervous for the first day of school. 
• Make a time capsule where the students will write about their interests and their goals for the school year. At the end of the year they will open it up to see how they have changed and see if they meet their goals. 
• Start an E.B. White author study since we are going to Children's Theatre
• Complete "get to know you" surveys then making Venn diagrams with a partner, comparing how they are similar and different.

What are some things that you are going to do the first week/few days of school?

Our principal had a "trick" up his sleeve for the teacher's first week back. Today we did a team building activity...and it WAS an ACTIVITY. Everyone had to download a code scanner onto their phones first of all. He placed games coded with pictures around the school, and each team had to work together in order to complete the games. In order to go to the next game, we had to scan a bar code telling us where to go. Since it was a contest, there were about 60 teachers RUNNING (full speed with sweat and all) all over the school (3 stories high) for about an hour. It was the most fun I have had on a teacher work day!! Each game was a challenge if you didn't work with your team, and the competitiveness of finding each game around the school was exciting. Of course he through in a little "hiccups" to confuse us. What a great way to start the year ;)

Did you all do anything special on those "lovely" teacher workdays??

School is Starting...Ready or Not!

Well, I only have 3 more days of "freedom" before I am required to go back to work! I'm ready to get back in the routine of working again. I miss teaching my little rug rats! This week has been FILLED with work detail in order to be on top of my game this year (one of which was making a few chalkboards for my room). It's hard not being stressed when you know that your year is going to be jammed packed with stressful things

• Having a new group of kids to get to know
• Teaching a new math curriculum that has LOTS of parts to get together
• Observation year (this only requires TONS of paper work to go with it and hoping that my kids don't "cut up" too much when the principal is in my room)
• Final year of grad school which includes a practicum that will be done in my room
• Having to make sure that I have everything translated into Spanish this year since I will have a few families that don't speak English (first year doing this, so I'm sure that I will become a pro by the time the year is over with)

This weekend will be filled with just a few last minute things to get done so I can at least take my stress level down to about a 5 instead of a 9.

• First 9 weeks of math planning
• Newsletters for the first 2 weeks
• Full lesson plans for the first 2 weeks
• Trips to the store to get a flash drive (mine died at the end of the year) and storage containers
• Pick up one of my grad school books
• Plan some meals to be cooked in the crock pot

Ready or not school will be starting for the teachers on Monday then comes the kiddos on the following Monday! On yeah, I almost forgot that "Meet the Teacher" night is next week too!! Oh my!!! The school dreams have already started and I am sure that they will get even worse as "The Day" approaches. 

I will TRY TRY to remember to talk pictures of my room now that it's finally d-o-n-e. 

Making Progress and To Do List Linky Party

These past 2 weeks have been crazy busy with getting my classroom ready. Those little kiddos will be back August 20th!! AAAAHHHH!! There is still SO much to do before I am ready!

The first order of business was to get my classroom library in my computer system and reorganized. I did not know how big of a task that was going to be with over 700 books. It's finally D-O-N-E, done! I wanted to make sure that the books were separate by genres and have a good check-out system. Now that everything is online, I think it will be much easier to keep track of those books.

There were just SO many books to organize! Ha ha.

Here it is finished. Well, almost. I still have to put down the rug and clean it, but the hardest part is finished.

I was able to get most of my classroom put back together without any problems. Of course, I still have some work to do to make it perfect.

This is view from my desk. Luckily my desk doesn't take up much room since it's like a small personal student desk for a bedroom. I am still wanting to fix the cabinets that have the focus walls. Hhhmmm, that's going to take some thinking.

This is from my door. 

This is from the front of the classroom. You see that huge bulletin board? I found this simple phrase to put up since I am NOT creative or crafty.

These are my new station baskets. One set for the morning RTI time, another for reading, and the last set is for math workshop. Yay! I'm just proud that it's colorful and fun ;)

Before I left school for the day, I sat down and made my to-do list, and joined the "To Do List Linky Party" by The Fabulous 4th Grade Froggies. Man is it long!! I am hoping to get most/all of these things done this week so I can make another one to tackle. 

On another note, I am wondering if the people at Target, Walmart, and the various Dollar Trees are starting to recognize me. I am finding that I am making SEVERAL trips each week to all of these stores. I just don't want to miss out on the great deals for all of the nifty/cheap school supplies. Each time I go there is always something new that I am able to use. I am going to have to start telling my friends that I am not able to out for lunch because I am broke from all of this shopping that I have been doing lately! What is sad that none of it has been for me!! 

This coming year is going to fabulous though...I just know it. I might be a little rocky since HALF (not lying!!) of my grade level will be starting their maternity leave at the beginning of this year. Another one is just coming back from maternity leave, ha ha (you don't want to drink the water at my school :p)!!

http://www.fabulous4thgradefroggies.com/2012/07/to-do-or-not-to-do-so-many-things-on-my.html