A Little Update...

I had some big intentions to do a school update last week, and well, that obviously didn't happen. Sorry. It's just that life at school is pretty hectic right now. There's a lot to do and lots of after school things going on and the last thing I think to do is take pictures! I really am going to do an update. But, for now, I'm going to just share what's being going on around here. 

1. Thinking Maps

I recently introduced compare/contrast maps and y'all? These are their favorites! All throughout that week, they made them daily. And they did so good with them! We compared and contrasted books by the same author and I'll share more later but just know that I am firmly and comfortably in the Thinking Map camp and do not see a change to that anytime soon!! 

2. Yummiest Chocolate Ever!

Just do yourself a favor and go buy some. You won't be sorry. Trust me!

3. Family Dinner

Last Friday, we had a family dinner and it was much needed because I hadn't seen my grandpa or aunt and uncle in a long time! It was so fun to catch up and spend some time with them! 

4. Last Saturday

We kept Ryan Grace alllll day, it was raining alllllll day and college football was on allllllll day. So, yeah. It was pretty awesome.

5. Milkglass

I'm not sure that I've mentioned it here, but I collect milkglass. When my grandma was still alive, she gave me a few pieces. Then, in the last two years, I've bought a lot of pieces at flea markets and thrift stores. I have a $10 rule. I don't buy any piece that is more than $10 because for me, it's just fun to search, ya know? The last few months, my grandpa has been giving me the last pieces of my grandma's collection. So, needless to say, I'm ecstatic to have these pieces because they belonged to her! I think I'm about out of cabinet space, though! Might need a bigger hutch, ha! 

6. Text Features

This week, we learned about nonfiction text features. I made this chart an we used it all week as we read articles incorporating the features. Then, the kids made posters about a topic of their choice that included text features. They turned out great! I will blog a more detailed post soon!!

7. The Baby

Love her to pieces. Can't get enough. 

8. Someone needs a haircut...

I mean, she looks like she's missing an eyeball! Ha! 

Okay, I think that's about it. Probably about the most boring blog post I've ever written. I'm really hoping school sill settle down here shortly and I'll have more energy to blog. 

As always, thanks for reading!!!

Labor Day Weekend

Hello, friends.

I was on a blogging ROLL for a few weeks there and then real life just smacked me right between the eyes.

 Real hard.

 I'm sure you can relate.

There have been lots of things going on at school and my goal is to take some pictures this week and blog about those later. But, I can't promise. Ha. I'm sure you can relate to that, too!

So anyway, this weekend was a great one. Every Labor Day weekend of my life, we've headed to West Tennessee to my grandma's little bitty hometown for Tater Town Day. You see, this little town exports sweet potatoes. Lots and lots of them. So, this weekend is just a weekend filled with class reunions, a parade and a "festival." While it's certainly not a big deal to anyone who doesn't live there, it's always fun to spend the weekend with family! And, this year, we had my niece Ryan Grace to enjoy as well :)

I do have to give a disclaimer. The night before we left, I stayed up until 1:30 in the morning to watch Vanderbilt's football team get positively SPANKED so I was a weeeeeee bit tired, exhausted and sleepy all weekend. Also, I had to share a bed with my cousin and her three children were on the floor in the same room so NEEDLESS to say, I didn't sleep over the weekend, either.

How stinking cute is this baby, ya'll? I ordered her litte dress off Zulily a few weeks ago and her mommy and I were glad it came in time to get to wear this summer.

Every single time we go to my grandma's, she makes a cake. But, she makes the exact same cake every single time. And, we're honestly all just tired of it. So nobody really eats it except for my brother. He ate it. For breakfast. Ha!

Ryan Grace and her JuJu

This picture makes me laugh so hard. It rained all day on Saturday so my grandma wore her rain cap! Those are my cousin's kiddos and my other cousin Steven joining her on the cart. And, you should all know that no children were harmed while this picture was taken...

My dad standing under his pink umbrella, watching the "parade"

Baby K had a blue mouth from all the candy! She spent about half the parade in my arms and they are STILL sore. That girl is solid, people.

 The annual picture with Miss Mattie. Can't believe she's in fourth grade!

Mattie, Will and Carson are some sweet, sweet kiddos. And, look at all that candy!

LOVE this picture of my dad and hs first granddaughter.

 My favorite picture of the weekend. Love that sweet, sweet baby.

I love this girl, too. She's my cousin's daughter and she's such a funny little thing. She has the best belly laugh ever. It's a shame she's just so pale, though... ha!

When we got home, we watched the baby all afternoon so her parents could catch up on some sleep. And, well, as you can see, there's nothing better than rocking babies to sleep on a porch swing in the country. I got her to sleep, but Aunt Connie wanted to make sure she got some good snuggles, too. It was honestly so fun because it rained all day, but we just had the best time sitting on the porch and enjoying each other's company!

When RG woke up, she and K had some good baby talk.

At night, Matt and Abby decided to work out.

Cuteness. They love Matt so much!

This girl wanted to hold Ryan Grace the whole weekend. She was a good helper!

When I got home, I headed over to friend's house to have some good times with some very sweet girls.

 This is Nancy. She's the best. She retired last year and you may have seen a video about her on Buzzfeed, Facebook, Inside Edition or YouTube...

She is, without a doubt, the funniest human being I've met.

So, we laughed about a ton and had such a good time.

And then we took a selfie, as you do, to document the evening.

All in all, one of the best weekends ever. So thankful for a break from school and a chance to enjoy family and friends.



Week One = Done!

  Ohmyword.

 

You guys, I'm about 1,000% positive I have never been this exhausted in my whole life. They say that there's no tired like "first week of school as a teacher" tired. And, I don't know who they are but they are not kidding. I know that! Take a quick peek at what accidentally fell into my buggy at the Dollar General this afternoon...

 

Whoopsies!

 

So, all in all, I'd say it was a good week. If I had to label my class this year in one word, it would be...

 

colorful.

 

They are colorful. They are delightful and adorable and happy and smiley and energetic and eager and they have personalities that are thisssssssssssss big! We had some excellent moments this week where I thought they were the best class I've ever seen. And, well, in the interest of full disclosure, we had some other moments, too. You know, those moments where you just grit your teeth and think happy thoughts and try to ignore the desire to run from the room screaming. Just me? Ha.

 

But, really. They're dolls and I think I'll keep them.

 

We've done a LOT this week.

So, here's a list of things we've been working on...

 

1. Shout Outs

 

 

This year, I wanted to give my kiddos a chance to write down their Shout Outs. We just said them at Morning Meeting last year and while that worked okay, sometimes we had a tooooon and sometimes we had none and it was all very random. So, I got this cute little mailbox at JoAnn's and placed some index cards where the kids can get to them and have been encouraging them to encourage their friends. This has caught on like wildfire, ya'll! I'm sure it will taper off, but right now they're doing about 6 or 7 a day! And, I read every one of them out loud every afternoon because I love to see them complimenting each other. It warms my teacher heart, for reals.

 

Not like Zone 2, y'all. Zone 0. That's really quiet.

 

2. Writer's Workshop

 

I think I've mentioned this before, but one of my favorite things to teach is Writing. I used to HATE it because I just didn't even know where to start. But, I think my first grade days have really come in handy because, in a lot of ways, third graders are still working on many of the same things. And, I know how to break it down for them because I HAD to in first grade. Does that makes sense?

 

So, all that to say, I need to make a confession.

 

This year, we just jumped right in. We had those kids writing complete paragraphs with topic sentences and all that jazz the first day of school and guess what? I can't do it. I can't just jump right in. I can't have them writing incorrectly all year with no punctuation and incomplete sentences and all that jazz.

 

I just can't.

 

I'm going to start with basics. I always do and I don't care what the pacing guide says. I know what my kids need.

 

Once I changed up the plan a little, the kids have LOVED writing! We started with Quick Writes. We do this every year and it just helps them to build stamina with writing. We teach them to brainstorm a topic (using a thinking map, woot woot!) and then to choose one of those topics and write about it. I model it for them each day and then give them the opportunity to practice. We all sit together on the carpet during this time and I play music from our Writing Playlist (Jack Johnson, Norah Jones, music like that). It's just delightful, y'all.

It blew their minds to make heart-shaped brainstorming maps!

Today we brainstormed places they've been and places they want to go.

After they brainstorm, they circle one of their ideas and then they just write about it. I don't check it or make them correct it. It's just all about developing stamina and a joy of writing. After a week of this, then I start doing mini-lessons and encouraging them to incorporate our new skills into their writing.

 

I realize that the writing above contains literally no periods. Believe me, we'll work on it. Right now, I'm just pleased as punch that they're learning how to keep writing and not give up.

 

I have to say, they've written a ton! We've only done this two days, so hopefully taking the time up front to get them excited about writing and teaching the basics will pay off. And, the plan is to use flow maps (another thinking map!) to write well-developed paragraphs.

 

3. Problem Solving

 

Today, after our first math test (which they ROCKED! HALLELUJAH.) I showed my kids the strategy we're going to use this year to solve word problems. Ive seen variations of this all over Pinterest, so I take no credit. I think the idea came from panickedteacher.com. I just wanted a step-by-step process for them to follow so they know exactly what to do.

The things I liked most about this strategy were that they have to name the operation they used to solve and that they have to use the inverse operation to check. And, ya'll, I had no intention to talk about any inverse operations except for addition. But, my kiddos started naming them all and I decided to take advantage of it! Ha. So, I made a little mini-anchor chart to hang up that they can use to remind themselves what operation they need to use to check their answers.

 

(Also, the blank white sheets are for us to list key words for each operation.)

I gave the kids a copy of this to fill out while I made oour big one and I wanted them to have a copy to keep in their Math Notebooks to refer to.

 

Fingers crossed this will help my kids become expert problem solvers!

 

4. Reader's Toolbox

 

Have you ever had a brilliant idea that you're totally convinced will save the world and then you realize that someone thought of it long ago? Well, that's the case here. Ha. My friend Claire and I were talking on the way home from PD one day this summer about comprehension. She made the comment that the skills they learn are tools to help them read and we should just call them that. We both kind of looked at each other and started talking at the same time. "Oh my gosh, let's make a toolbox! And then we can give each skill a tool and then the kids can put them in the notebooks and use them!" We were pretty darn proud of ourselves, I have to say.

 

Then, we searched it on Pinterest and realized that, um, we're dorks. Ha. There are many, many, many variations of this all over blog-land. But, we still just kind of made our own variation and I'm loving it so far!

So, in their toolboxes, they have an envelope glued to the front. This is where they put the cut-outs (tools).

 

Then, for each skill, we have a page with a picture of the tool, a place where they write what it means and why good reader's do this skill and then a list of sentence starters. Then, throughout the week, we encouraged them to write about their visualizing using the starters.

I'm making a big anchor chart that I can add each skill/tool to. Then, when we have them all, I'll add this chart over at our Guided Reading area for us to refer to.

 

I'll be sure to share some more of this once we do a little more. A special shout out to Claire for making all this cute stuff, though! She's a computer whiz and whips this stuff up in no time! Thanks, Claire Bear :)

 

5. Filling Up the Classroom

 

The classroom is junking up right nicely :) Bulletin boards are a lot more fun when there's actually stuff on them. Here's what has changed around the room already...

Building stamina for daily five...

Love this newe space where I can hang their cute, cute work...

If one more kid asked me for water this week, I maybe would have cried. So, we had to use our Morning Meeting yesterday to make a list of times when water is allowed and when it's not. Hint: mostly it's not allowed ever...

Adding some names to our Super Improvers poster already...

We started our Exit Tickets, too...

 

6. Don't Judge...

 

If there's one thing that I just LOATHE as a teacher, it's tissues to clean dry-erase marker boards. Mostly, because I'm an OCD neat-freak and I hate having nasty, black tissues that break apart and leave trails all around my classroom. So, every year, I go to Dollar General and buy sponges for the kids to use to erase their marker boards.

 

Well, I went today and I couldn't find them. And, I reallyreallyreally didn't want to go anywhere else.

 

So, I bought shower gel sponges. Yes, yes I did.

 

They were 5 for a dollar and you can't beat that! They're colorful and smallish and they even have a string! Ha! I couldn't stop laughing. So random, but I don't see any reason why they shouldn't work. I'll keep you posted.

 

7. Ryan Grace

 

And, this has nothing to do with school, but look at my little niece, ya'll.

She's four months old today and I love her to pieces, for real.

 

 

I could eat her alive.

 

So, that's my week. I am now going to lay in my bed, eat some candy and mindlessly surf the internet until I fall asleep. And, in case you're wondering, I couldn't be happier about it.

 

Thanks for reading!