Survival

I survived the first week of school.  It was excellent. It was also very loooooong.  It started with a half day on Tuesday and then full days the rest of the week.  By Wednesday afternoon I was done with getting to know you activities and "about our classroom" information.  Done.  I want the meat and potatoes to begin!  Give me something to TEACH.  My class is a bit squirrelly, so we need to get down to business.

I've already started handing bits and pieces of instruction time over to our student teacher.  Miss M is great in the classroom and I'm thrilled to have her until October.  That being said, it is so weird to have her teaching something and me just sit there, especially at the beginning of the year.  I feel like the laziest teacher ever while I sit around checking pretests and she's teaching my class or picking them up from specials.

Ok.  It's Saturday morning; coffee in hand.  First things first.  Pictures of my classroom before the students got in there and touched things.  Here you go.

Walking into our classroom.

Back of the room- computer area.

In l.o.v.e. with these frames- this is how I display birthdays all year. 

Science material organization. 

Reading Rockstars sticker charts.

Super Writing!  6+1 Traits

This is what I fondly refer to as "the bean".  

Behind the bean is where I organized all those brand new math manipulatives!  

You know what I just realized?  I didn't take a picture of front of the classroom.  You know...where I do my whole group instruction.  The rug area.  The SMARTboard.  My reading area.  My desk.  I'll have to get those put back together and presentable for a later viewing.  Whoopsies!  Another post will be coming...

So let me tell you how the first week of school went.  Not the part with the kids, because that was uneventful overall.  Just the rest of my job.

Our wireless internet is down, so I have no internet on my brand new laptop.  

They installed a new printer in my room in the middle of class on the first day of school.  

Our network is down, so I can't print anyways.  

With the network down, I also can't get to any of my files on the network, which is....all of my files.  

My printer at home ran one copy and told me it was out of red ink so it won't print anything at all.  

You know what I did this summer?  I scanned in all of my papers and made digital copies and recycled the paper ones.  Soooo that's awesome.  I'm not complaining...it's just very...inconvenient.

My SMARTboard isn't working correctly.  It's all squiggly so I can't write on it.  

The student computers in the back of the room won't log on with any of our passwords.

I've already had a meeting with the counselor and vice principal. 

The new principal came to just hang out in my room twice in the four days we were in school.  Twice.  Is that a good sign?  Bad sign?  Not a sign?

It is my understanding that none of these things will be fixed for next week, so I am heading to Office Max to pick up some ink for my home printer ASAP!  Back to School night is Wednesday and I have nothing put together yet (panic).

We also had a bat.  A. Bat.  Luckily I never saw it, but I heard it was flying around over the weekend when I was there.  Then the kindergarten teacher found it in her sink the day before school started.  She almost picked it up before she knew what it was!  EWWWWW.  Here she wiping her room down with bleach:

Better her than me.  She doesn't feel the same way.


Finally the first day of school came.  Here are a few of my lovely teacher friends after our first day was over.  That's me in the middle with what appears to be an electric colored skirt.

My mom used to always make cookies for us on the first day of school.  I had no energy to do that after our half day of school, and my mom doesn't live in town so she didn't have them ready for me.  I decided  to throw together a batch of cookies for our end of the week on Friday.

I would say these are arguably the best cookies ever.  They are Chocolate & White Chip and Toffee cookies and they are the only cookies I can successfully make consistently.  

You can get the recipe from Our Best Bites {here}.  Omgoodness I love their recipes.  

Happy Weekend, Teacher World!  

I'm off to get my act together before a full week of excitement! 

Love Languages

So far, we've only had meetings at school.  Students start Tuesday {crunch time}.  Our new administration is really working on team building and with twelve new staff members it is pretty helpful.  Our first day back we did a school version of the "Amazing Race".  It was....amazing.  I got a little competitive.  Luckily I wore decent running shoes and not sassy sandals or heels like I normally would.  I was one of the answers- my name was put on a plaque over the summer for winning teacher of the year last year.  *blushing*  Ultimately our team came in third place.  Sorry, no pictures...they really need to give me a heads up if we are going to do something picture worthy!

A few days later we had a presentation on one of my favorite things.  Last year, we learned all about the 5 Love Languages.  I remember it distinctly because the presenter came over and gave me a hug in front of everyone to demonstrate the Physical Touch Love Language, and I am NOT a touchy-feely person!  Everyone got a big kick out of it.  This year we re-visited the Love Language conversation.  If you haven't heard about it, you should check it out.  You can look for the {book} or check out the {website}.

The concept is that every person gives and receives love differently.  In order to reach people and make them feel special, accepted, successful, etc. we need to tap into their love language.  Often times, we feel misunderstood or misunderstand others because we don't understand what they need from us.  This fits perfectly in the classroom.  Students have love languages- they show they care differently and they need us to build them up using their language.  It's like Blooms Taxonomy for feelings.

Here are the 5 Love Languages:

Words of Affirmation

Acts of Service

Receiving Gifts

Quality Time

Physical Touch

Some kids need a high five or hug.  You know those; they're easy to find.  The kids that crawl into your lap or want to hold your hand or rub their hands up and down your sweater sleeves because its so sooooft {shudder}.  Others need you to tell them they did a great job.  Some need you to come over and stand near them to feel successful.  Others love that little note you left on their desk or feed off of the mints you hand out before a big test.  As teachers, we try to hit all of these love languages all the time in order to reach every student.  Because, you know, that is part of our job that they trained us for in college.  Kind of.  Not at all.

Your receiving love language can be different than your giving love language.  Here's mine:

Receiving:  Quality Time

Giving: Acts of Service

I would argue that these are the hardest two to measure, and therefore I am often misunderstood.  I scored a zero in Physical Touch.  A zero.  I would love to hang out with you, but please don't put your arm around me.  I made my family take it to see if we fit where I thought we would.  We did.  My sister and I are complete opposites.  It makes so much sense now...

You can take the quiz {here}.

You can hand out a {printable quiz for children}

or a {printable teen version}.

I do find that it changes the way I approach some students in the classroom, and also makes me more aware of how to reach every student.  I also think it's excellent information for parents at conferences.


And finally.....I know, I know.... You already know this sale is going on!  So jump over to TpT and get whatever it is your little heart desires so that you can start copying, laminating, and cutting!  {My store} is on sale along with many, many more!

            

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My mind is going a mile a minute

Feeling a bit scatterbrained these days, so here's a hodge-podge of information for you.  This is long; I have a lot to say.  I broke it down with two headings and a couple pictures for your viewing pleasure.  Clearly blogging hasn't been on my mind lately.

My Life as a Teacher Right Now
This is my favorite time of year.  That time right before school starts when I get to climb into my classroom and live there for one glorious week without students.  I staple, hole punch, laminate/cut/repeat, put things together, curriculum design and redesign, look at student pictures in the yearbook, chat up everyone at school, and just generally love my job to pieces.  And on Tuesday, my second favorite time will begin when the kids arrive!

My poor student teacher is following me around.  She seems wonderful, so I'm very excited about working together and sharing my craft with her.  I do feel a little odd when I have to spend quality time with my computer and she is just watching me.  Sharing files was so different when I student taught, and that was just 8 years ago.  Time flies.

This time of year is when I basically turn my life upside down.

It's this time of year when my sleep is particularly horrible.  I sleep like a baby.  Literally.  As in, I wake up every few hours and want to scream.  My brain is on information overload.  And idea overload.  And to-do-list overload.  I've taken to drinking wine.  No judging.

It's this time of year when my eating habits become particularly strange.  I'm super busy and not hungry so I don't eat, and then I realize I haven't eaten a real meal for about four days and I'm starving so I eat a gigantor meal and feel gross.  Please tell me everyone does this. 

It's this time of year that I have a list on every pad of paper I own, but can not, for the life of me, find the one that I'm looking for.  I cannot tell you how many times I've said to myself "I should blog about that tonight!", and gotten home and had no idea what I should blog about.  I'm a mess.

*sigh*  I love it so much.

I'm not ready to reveal my final learning space for my students, so you will just have to wait.  I'm just not ready to offer it up to the internet and say it is done.  What if there is a pencil or something out of place?  How embarrassing.



In the News
Here's a quick news update.  I should find a fancy name for it.  Ideas are welcomed.  All of them include my commentary below.  What I say about it is not a reflection of the article, just FYI.  It's just my reasoning behind posting it here.  Some of these are school news and some are...not so much.  But somehow I related them to school so here you go.

As Back-To-School Shopping Begins, Consumers May Turn Frugal 

This is a short article that basically this says, dude, we're really cheap right now so we're shopping on the tax free holidays.  Or we're saving money for bigger and better things which does not include that Lisa Frank folder.  What's that?  They don't sell those anymore?  But to be fair, retail stores, nobody wants to spend $2 on a folder - ever - when we know it cost you $.001 to make it. 

The $4 Million Teacher

Um, what?

The Smell of Chocolate Boosts Book Sales

I just thought this was interesting.  If I make my classroom smell like chocolate, will my students start reading more?  I would like to see that study, please.  Also, don't just put a chocolate plug-in in the wall.  Nobody wants a chocolate tease.  There should be actual chocolate present at time of purchase.

Autism's Unexpected Link to Cancer Gene

Autism absolutely fascinates me and I love reading about it and teaching kiddos who have it.  This article focuses on a study that shows a link between some people with autism and a mutated brain tumor or cancer gene.  The part of this article that caught my attention the most: "But researchers say the findings are intriguing, given that there are no animals that naturally get autism, no way of analyzing what might cause autism in developing brains and no cure."   Soooo why do only humans get it?  I wish we had answers to everything.

School Standards’ Debut Is Rocky, and Critics Pounce

Oh, Common Core.  You're always in the news.  

Dread of August: The Kids' Teacher Assignments

Schools are trying to limit how much input parents have on which teacher their child gets for the next school year.  Does your school have this problem?  

Seeking Better Teachers, City Evaluates Local Colleges That Train Them

Ohhhh I love to see this.  We should start a conversation on this.  Do you think your college prepared you well for what you do as a teacher and educator?  

Philadelphia Borrows So Its Schools Open on Time

Philadelphia Public Schools borrowed $50 million just to open schools on time with minimum staffing. Oh my.

I have so much more to say, but I think I should be done for today.  Until later, when I remember to blog again, 

 Happy teaching!

She's new here

I got to meet my student teacher today, we'll call her Miss M for all blogging purposes.  She came in to meet me, check out the school, and help out in the classroom.  I felt bad giving her somewhat "dull" tasks, but those were the things that have to be done before school starts!  We sorted Base Ten blocks, put up bulletin board letters, moved textbooks and workbooks around, and walked around chatting with other teachers.  Have I mentioned how much I talk to the people I work with?  It's a lot.  Maybe excessive.  I don't know how I get my job done on some days.

I saw that {The Polished Teacher} had a link up for our own student teaching memories.  I loved my student teaching and had great experiences in both schools and grade levels.  I'm so glad my university forced me to do a second intermediate level grade student teaching- I fought it like crazy, but they told me I had to!  I probably wouldn't be teaching 4th grade right now if they didn't.  Here's the peak and pit of my semester experience:

Ask too many questions.  How else will you learn?  You only get to be brand new at this one time.  Take advantage of it!  Take part in everything that you can, otherwise when you start teaching you will be like "who knew this was part of the job?".  

I made an information binder for Miss M just to introduce myself and our class.  The students haven't started back yet, but I have a rough idea what the class will be like.  This way I could be sure she had  important information (emergency procedures, phone numbers, faculty members, etc) right off the bat.  Here's what it looked like:

It had a welcome letter and all kinds of "fun stuff" inside:  About the Cooperating Teacher, About our School, Emergency info, About our Class, Daily Schedule, Class List/checklist, Log sheets for websites and ideas, and pages to create her lesson plans.

After the first day of school, we will sit down together and plan out her 10 weeks with me.  I call this The Grand Plan.  This way I know what I will be teaching, and she will have a heads up on which weeks she is teaching and when she is taking things over and handing them back to me.  

I have it all {here} if you're interested in checking it out.

(or click on the picture below) 

 

Back in the Office

I just returned from lovely Seattle this past week.  Here's proof that I was there:

That's a (the?) troll under a bridge in Fremont.  Not to be confused with a gnome or gargoyle.

Real quick; here's my currently:

I don't want to miss out on the party!

You have probably linked up already, but if not, head on over to Farley's for the link up! 

So now I'm back in the office.  Here is my corner office with a view (of a cement courtyard). 

So that's what I'm working with.  Not too shabby, right?  This is my favorite time of year.  That time right before everyone starts coming back when I get to break into my classroom and start pulling everything out of the closets again.  Then I make a huge mess and put it all back together into a functional learning space.

Every year I rearrange and change things up.  I don't want to get stuck in a rut and keep my classroom the same year after year.  I also have so many things that I want to change each year that it just makes sense for me to switch it up.

Obviously it's a wonderful work in progress.

After I returned from my amazing trip, I knew I had to buckle down and get busy.  At the end of last year, our incoming principal told us to make a list of any/all math manipulatives we could possibly dream of using in our classrooms.  Since our 4th grade had basically nothing, this was an easy task.  I drew up a spreadsheet for our wishlist and went on an online shopping spree.  One of the other 4th grade teachers helped me put together a list and we submitted it.  When I returned from my vacation, I was welcomed by a table FULL of math materials and this lovely letter...

Our new principal SOMEONE knows me pretty well!   It was like Christmas up in here!  We got straight to work sorting through our loot.  

Here's a list of the exciting materials we ordered (and received!!)  from {EAI}:

Cuisenaire Connecting Rods

Exploragons (these things are AWESOME!!)

Rulers

Protractors

Pattern Blocks

Geoboards

Tangrams

Pentominoes

Dice, dice, dice!

Calculators

3D foldable shapes

SmartPals (yay!)

Base 10 blocks

Are there any math materials you can't live without?