Almost Ready for the First Day of School!

I am so excited to start my new position, in my new school district.  We have had such wonderful and inspiring PD this week.  Our open house was tonight and I met such wonderful students and parents.  For the first time in years I walked into a classroom that had been handed down to me and it was not full of clutter.  So often there is so much to sort through.  I think almost every teacher I know has a difficult time throwing things away, but when a school is moved into a brand new building and people are forced to get rid of anything they have not used in a year you get a clutter free classroom.  Despite my best attempts it was difficult to achieve this in my previous classrooms.  I would always sort through things, but it was hard to party with things.

I remember reading an article that stated there were groups of similar students who were taught by the same teacher, in one case they were in a classroom that had minimal decoration and only relevant information posted. In the other classroom the room was decorated to the T, with no bit of wall space uncovered.  The kids in the classroom that was streamlined and clutter free did the best.  They made more use of the posted information.  That same information was in the other room, but it was suspected students had a harder time determining what was important and being able to located the information the needed.  

So without further ado, here is my clutter free room....

Awesome right!  The board on the left is going to have great work posted on it, samples of their thinking and anchor charts.  to the right I split the board in 2, on the left will be math talk, and on the right information on our science unit.  I plan on putting our learning map on the back central white board, and there is a smart board and another white board up front.  The white board up front will have the lesson essential question and will be a work space for sharing ideas.  I am in love.  

Big Changes! School Starts Monday, New Students in a Week!

Last year my family moved.  It wasn't too terribly far, but far enough that my ten minute commute became a 45 or more minute commute.  Not the end of the world, but also not something I was enjoying.  Changes needed to be made.  I started looking in and around my new area and got a job offer for a job 20 minutes away.  Saving me 50-60 minutes a day (often times more because coming home always took longer).  Getting back about 5 hours with my family each week is huge to us.  This year I will be in a new school, in a new district, and a new grade.  I am going from pre-k to 5th grade math and science!  That exclamation point is excitement.

I will miss my little pre-k students, my hard working assistant, and the staff I loved.   But I am so excited to begin this new chapter in my life as a 5th grade intermediate school teacher.

Flowers

We are learning about plants in our class.  We have read about plants, sang songs about plants, painted a plant, and labeled plants.  While learning about plants we painted plants using pattern blocks.  The kids got a kick out of it, and they practiced their shapes while painting a flower.  We also labeled a flower as a class.  The wrote the sounds they heard when we read.  It was a whole lot of fun.  We also have planted beans and next week when they start to grow we are going to read and retell Jack and the Beanstalk.  Below are some photos from projects we have done.

Caterpillars and Butterflies

During our Unit on growing and changing we did a lot of research on caterpillars and butterflies.  We read several nonfiction texts as well as The Very Hungry Caterpillar and The Seed of the Milkweed.  Our big project was completed in several steps.  We started by talking about symmetry and made symmetrical painting.  Then the next day we made caterpillars.  After that we cut out the butterfly wings and added the caterpillar to make the body of the butterfly.  We also made milkweed plants, which is what Monarch butterflies and caterpillars eat.  Below is the display we created.

The Love of My life

This little girl is the love of my life, my favorite student, my constant joy.  Meet Kendall, my brilliant daughter.  She has made me a better teacher and a better person.  Last year she began school as a pre-k student, and this year she is in full day kindergarten.  It has been such a joy to watch her grow and learn. 

A great iPad app

Have you heard of nearpod?  It is a great app for iPad.  You create an account and make these quizzes, assessments, activities with slides and then you send them out, the kids submit their answer back to you and at the end you have a report sent to you.  They are fantastic.  With my little guys we mainly use the draw it slides and students write the answer with their finger, or circle the answer with their finger, then they hit the send and yes button and on my screen I can see who has answered.  I love it, the kids love it, and I get great data from it.  Here is a photo of one of my students using nearpod in a recent activity we did.  Students had to count the number of windows on each house and circle the number of windows.  I made the pictures using power point and then saved the slides as pictures.  It was quick and easy and we all had a good time. 

iPad teaching app I LOVE

Today we used an app called Chatter kids on our iPads.  It allows students to take a photo of something, draw a line to make a mouth on it, record their voice and then it animates the picture to look like it is talking.  We have been learning about how weather affects us and so my students took pictures of different types of clothing and explained what type of weather you would wear that piece of clothing in.  They loved it, giggles, smiles and cheers all around.  They were so excited to share what they knew!  I will try to post on of their chatter kids videos another time.

Snow Days and Christmas in February

I live in an area that gets very little snow each year, but always some.  We got 6 inches and the temps have been very low so it was light fluffy snow.  It is flat, open, and windy as well.  Clearing the roads has been next to impossible so we have not had school all week.  But does that mean I have not gone in, of course not.  Especially after getting an e-mail from my principal  titles Christmas in February.  We went to full day pre-k this year, which meant adding pre-k classrooms to our school, which was funded by a grant.  Well a huge chunk of our order came and my classroom was full of boxes.  I braved the bad roads and cold temperatures to go through everything.  While it is amazing to have all of these resources in my room it is a lot of go through!  I am glad we had these snow days because I have worked on it now for about 6-8 hours and it is still a mess.  I am going in again tomorrow, it must get done tomorrow, because I think we will be back to school on Monday.  Below is the carnage from my trip today.

How is it February Already?

This year is flying by and I have done so many fun new things this year.  It has been a very hectic but rewarding year.  This year we went form half day pre-k with a morning and afternoon to full day pre-k.  It has been a lot of work, but wow has it been worth it.  I already have students who are writing sentences!  They are amazing me at every turn.  One of my favorite projects this year was making self portraits.  My students each made a self portrait and then we wrote I am _____. on them.  They loved it.  I took a long time to complete, but it was so worth it.  We first made the portraits and then one or two kids a day would write I am _____. on their portrait.  They are really spectacular.  Her are some examples.

 

Something else I have discovered is gonoodle.  Gonoodle is a website that you can use for brain breaks.  It works best if you have a smart board or projector of some sort.  I like that it is customizable.  For mine I added a bunch of Laurie Berkner Band clips from youtube that my kids love.  I do not have to search for the link and my kids love watching our character grow as we gain more points.  It is a must have for every primary classroom.

Update

I have been so busy lately at work and home that this blog has been neglected.  I am sorry.  We moved near the beginning of the school year, pre-k went from 1/2 day to whole day, my daughter started a new school.  It caused some issues that have been eating up my free time and leaving me so exhausted that I have not been able to update this blog.  We have done so many cool things and my kids are really taking off.  Some time this week I am going to take pictures of this really cool project we did in my class.  It took a long time to complete step 1 and step 2 is taking even longer, but it is worth it.  Check back soon to see what I am talk about.