Wow...Thanksgiving is over already?!?!

Where is this school year going? I cannot believe that Thanksgiving has come and gone, and now we have 3 crazy weeks until our winter break!

I really wanted to have an awesome teacher blog this year, but I guess that will have to wait until my 2 graduate courses are over in mid-December. I apologize for not having FUN and FRESH stuff to share! However, with that being said, because I started this blog, I have learned so much and found so many wonderful ideas from my fellow teacher bloggers! You all are the BEST!!!

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and that the upcoming holidays allow you to get some rest and relaxation!! I promise to spend some time updating my blog very soon!

TBA Book Club--The End Of Molasses Classes by Ron Clark

I am participating in a book club linky party. We are discussing The End of Molasses Classes by Ron Clark. Ok, I am posting on my iPhone, so I will keep this brief tonight. I will add more tomorrow. I just completed Principle 5: Listen. While the whole book has affected me and moved me and motivated me, the section about listening to our students really hit home. Sometimes I think we fail to stop and listen, or we fail to ask the right questions when we have troubled students. Maybe they are just waiting for us to talk to them, to help them. I feel like maybe I have had some "Kenneths" over the years, and I do not want to let any more to slip by without me reaching out to them. I am going to work on my listening skills and try to remember that sometimes, we have to take a risk and ask our students what is going on.

I'm BACK!

I am so horrible at keeping up with this blog! I apologize!  However, I do think my absence can be excused because here is a list of what I have been up to:

1. I am a member of our school's Continuous School Improvement Committee. We are building everything from scratch since we are a brand new school. It is interesting to say the least!
2. I am taking a course on designing computer-based instruction. It is a GREAT learning experience that is adding to what I learned during my studies in my MAEd in Instructional Technology program.
3. I am taking a course on Gaggle through my school system.
4. I went to the N.C. Elementary Educators conference last weekend. I got to see Ron Clark speak, and he is definitely a motivator! I went back into my classroom with a new outlook on how I want to teach my students. This was the second time I had the opportunity to hear him speak, and I think this time around it meant a lot more to me. The first time, I was a brand-new teacher and probably had no clue about the challenges I would face and how to handle them :)

Am I forgiven?? :)


I also saw "The Bag Ladies" at the conference. Oh my gosh, they have some of the greatest project ideas! I am trying to figure out where I want to use some of their ideas. I wish their website had some "freebie" ideas (I think that might encourage people to buy the books if they haven't seen them in person). They offered up some great ideas to make activities that we do in the classroom into FUN, hands-on activities. I know my students love to do "artsy" things, and these are easy enough for a crafty-challenged person like me to do and to teach! Check them out! The Bag Ladies

I created a tutorial for the Three Branches of the U.S. Government that I will share with you once I tweak it a bit. I only got an 88% :( so I need to fix some things before I make it public!

The First 3 Weeks

Oh wow, it has been a whirlwind the past 3 weeks! We finally got into our building on August 30th, and I feel like I have not stopped running since then. Our school is BEAUTIFUL! It has some flaws....closest adult restroom is in the office, classroom design not the best to allow easy flow of students, not a lot of space for a classroom full of 9-10 year olds, lack of furniture to allow for group work, etc. It is very obvious that teachers were not asked to serve as consultants to the architect. However, overall, it is a wonderful space and we will learn to make it all work for us as the years go by. Our Smartboards are expected to be installed this week. I am doing a HUGE happy dance for that. It has been tough living without any sort of projection technology for the first 3 weeks. We got 10 boxes of math manipulatives last week, so now I feel like I can be a proper math teacher. It is all falling into place! The students are happy, (most of) the teachers are happy, parents are happy. It will be a great year!

I am attempting to do "Math Workshop" in my class this year. I found some great ideas from a variety of teachers including these two things from TeachersPayTeachers.com:

Math Workshop Rotation Board
First Days of Math Workshop

I know I have not been providing many "fantastically fresh and fun" 4th grade ideas so far, but I will share things soon!!! Until then, thank you for following my blog!

Oh, and here are some pics of my classroom. We have not been given the go-ahead to put things on walls, so it is a bit bare. I have actually changed it up a bit since these pictures were taken.

Tomorrow is THE Day!

Wow, tomorrow is finally our first day of school!!! We spent last week attempting to set up classrooms in a construction zone. On Wednesday, we finally had furniture in the classrooms and Thursday we got our curriculum materials. We are still not at 100% and will live without a gym, school kitchen, or media center for quite some time. We do not have many supplies or manipulatives yet, but they will be unpacked and delivered to us soon. It is going to be quite an adventure, but I am so excited to finally meet my 23 4th graders!!! Here is a picture of my classroom as it looked on Thursday. It is MUCH better now, but still not exactly where I want it to be. Once we get the go-ahead to put things on the wall, I will post my FINISHED picture!

I apologize!

I have been horrible about posting actual ideas lately. I will admit that I have been trying to relax and enjoy the last few days of my summer break :) Today I plan to go through all of my documents from last school year, and hopefully I will find a few original things to share with you!

I know that many of you are back in school. I hope that your year has started off FANTASTICALLY!

We have a date!!!

I am so excited! I finally know when I will get to start with my wonderful 4th graders! We were scheduled to begin on September 1st, but they have pushed our start date to September 6th so that they have time to install all of the computers, furniture, etc. According to our principal, we should be able to get into our classrooms to start setting up on August 29th. Now I feel like I can finally start planning a bit! We will have a week with our school faculty to start working on school improvement plans, getting to know each other, and planning before we can even get into the building since we head back to work on August 22. This year will definitely be stressful, but also very exciting!

Also, we are hoping to do 2-person teams this year if our principal will allow it. We are looking at one teacher taking care of Reading/LA and Social Studies, and the other teaching Math and Science/Health. If we do this, I will be doing the Math & Science. I am a little nervous about this, since I have always just naturally felt stronger teaching Reading/LA (probably because I started my teaching career as a 7th grade Language Arts teacher). I am looking forward to possibly being able to focus on a few subjects vs. all of the subjects. Does anyone out there "departmentalize", and if so, do you have any words of wisdom???