Three Yays and Three Boos

This year has been a bit rough. I love my kiddos (90% of the time) but it has been a rough transition for them me us to move to third grade. I am spending some serious time thinking about next year. Guess why. Because my naughty little buddies are moving to fourth with me! I bounce back and forth between excitement about being back in fourth grade and terror at bringing my best buds with me. They are a lot of work and I have found patience that I didn't know I had.

Amber from Adventures of a Third Grade Teacher is hosting a great linky party. She's asking us to reflect a little on this year and blog about three things that were yay and three things that were boo. 

Here's my overall reflection: 
Some days I left work and thought, "YAY! I'm kickin' butt!" as I skipped to my car at 5:30, and some days I left work and thought, "Today kicked my butt! BOO!" and I crawled home, hanging my head dejectedly. 
These are some of the great things from my butt-kickin' days:
1. Guided Reading.I kicked guided reading's butt this year. I was more consistent than I ever have been. I had kids reading at a kinder and first grade level and they've made lots of progress. We still have a lot of work to do, but we got a good start. You can see how I organize guided reading here.

2. Math StationsI don't usually use stations. I generally work with a group of struggling students who needs a lot of support to work through content, and letting them loose too early causes real problems. They needed a lot of direct instruction. However, this year, I set up a variety of math stations to use in a specific way and I'm really happy with the way they turned out. I used them as a review after the content had been introduced and practiced until I thought kids were ready to help each other. They rotated through several stations in teams no larger than three (four = mayhem) and I stationed myself at the most difficult station and worked with students through the content. When I had special ed. support, I stationed that teacher at another station, and students had a nice teacher-student ratio.This is a post I wrote about math stations for fractions:Fraction Frenzy

3. IntegrationI have a real problem when it comes to teaching all the standards in my grade. There are, like, eight thousand social studies standards and is hard to squeeze them all in to any real level of mastery. Why waste my time with fly-by instruction? So I integrate to give kids the multiple exposures they need. I blogged about one of these muy integrated units here: Erupting with Science, and Earth Day Every Day! In science, we were working with fast changes to the Earth's surface (earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunami, etc.), and I integrated it with expository writing, reading nonfiction articles about volcanoes, characteristics of poetry, and map skills. 

And now for the boos. 
Boo # 1.Boystown. I need to do a WAY better job of this next year. I started out the year okay, but I didn't follow through on teaching all of the social skills, and boy, do my naughty babies need them. This summer I'm going to put together a proactive plan for rolling them out with time built into my schedule (I don't know when! There isn't really any extra time!) to introduce the skills and practice them. I also need to schedule time with the counselor to meet with some of my naughties on an individual basis consistently. Key word: consistent.
Boo # 2. This may seem a little redundant, but I need to be great about consistent positive consequences. I'm pretty decent about class-wide consequences that are positive (we earn time to work with our little buddies in other grades) but individual positive consequences are what my naughties need and what I need to be more consistent about. I started out with a sticker reward system, but I flaked out partway through the year. I've been pinning and hunting for great behavior ideas for individual stuff, because I tried the green-yellow-red thing and I'm not crazy about it.
And since I have a bee thing, everything will be bees and hives. Cause I'm a stickler for a theme.

I'm interested in filling buckets. 

Behavior Bingo. Maybe my naughties will like it.

Boo # 3.Collaborating. I love my grade level. I've taught with some of them for years - nine, to be exact, and we work very well together! We share, we talk, and we help each other out. We were even fruit for Halloween.

I was a pineapple! My hunny called us Fruit of the Loom rejects. Aww. He's mean.

But being fruit for Halloween doesn't help you plan! LOL. We do share a lot, but I think we need a dedicated time to plan. It was difficult - all of us are on different campus teams, and we're called to work with them, work with parents, work with kids, but next year I really want to establish a specific, consistent time to meet to plan and share so we can really do some different, creative ways to meet our kids' needs.



So now it's your turn. Think about your Yays and Boos, and go link up at Adventures of a Third Grade Teacher!Pin It

Earth Day Every Day

I feel like I pet a porcupine.

My fingers are full of stickers. I was pulling weeds from the front yard, and they had already gone to seed. And how do they protect their seeds? Stickers. Yowza.

Anyway, as I complain about the healthy weeds growing in my front yard, I would like to share with you our Earth Day writing.

WHAT?! Earth Day! That was a month ago!

Well, that's why my title is "Earth Day Every Day." Sheesh.

Anyway, we started our pieces in response to our school-wide April Picture Prompt back at the beginning of April, but we didn't get ours done until the week after Earth Day. For more information on our school-wide picture prompt and other initiatives, click here.
And then I had two kids who were absent
and I didn't want to take the picture with their writing missing!
So anyway, everything is on the wall now, and we're ready to share what we did.
This is the wall:

This is the article on the wall:

It's a Scholastic News about recycling shoes, which apparently is a thing now.

These are some of their writing pieces. 

I'll share our persuasive writing format as a template below.

These are some of the pieces the kids wrote in response to our monthly picture. The picture was a little girl (or maybe a boy from far away) who was walking in a green, green environment full of grass and trees. 

The kids wrote about persuading someone to do something good for the environment. They had to identify the action that people do now that is a problem, a couple of reasons that it was a problem, and what they wanted people to do about it.

Then, because it was the day after state testing and Ms. Beltran was depressed, they made these! They're from the Lesson Plan Diva and the kids thought they were so cool.
Grab it for free.

             

To grab the template for the persuasive writing plan, click here to get it from Google Docs.

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Teacher Appreciation Week

I am prefacing this (belatedly, so I guess I am epiloguing this...in a time machine) with my link-up! I'm linking up with 3-6 Free Resources for Show Me Sunday (if you haven't been there, please, go to there, to quote Liz Lemon) and writing about Teacher Appreciation Week!

We received an email from our principal last week. This is a summary:




We know it's Teacher Appreciation Week. We would like to appreciate you this week, but everyone is too busy. Instead, we will appreciate you in three weeks. We'll have a luncheon. Find a parent to watch your kids while you eat.
Obviously, it was far more upbeat and punctuated with a whole lot of ! ! ! But I still think it's funny. We're too busy to appreciate you now, so we'll do it later. LOL This is my school exactly. 
Don't get me wrong. I really really do appreciate that we're going to be appreciated at all, and a luncheon is nice. Especially because they usually have the office staff put together door prizes and stuff :). At Christmas I won a jar of nuts, but I traded it for a cute Christmas-y thing. 
I know my kids appreciate me, but I had a few actually give me stuff this week. Don't lie. You know it's nice. I usually don't get gifts. Fourth graders don't give gifts as much as third graders, I guess. Of course, most of these came from teacher kids. Kids of teacher parents. 
This is how my kids appreciated me this week (even though my boss was too busy lol):
One sweetie pants gave me this:

A star necklace "Because you're a star teacher".  Awww.

A giant coffee cup! with owls! It holds, like, eight cups of coffee. Just enough to get me through the morning.

These cookies were Mrs. Fields! I had to teach Saturday School this weekend. We did fractions with the cookies. And what did we learn? The more people you share with, the smaller each piece. A valuable lesson. I ate about four cookies. I finally had to share them with my brothers, because they were dangerously delicious.

One little guy gave me this:

It's full of glue, glue sticks, pencils and Kleenex! His mom made it. She wrapped it all up in a cool way and put yellow ribbon around it with little bee stickers glued on. So thoughtful.

And perched on the very top was this precious little guy! At first I thought it was a changepurse, but it's a cute little nail kit!
Do my kids know me or what?
So to give back a little, we made these for Mother's Day:

I hot glued popsicle sticks together to make little picture frames. Then I busted out my Dollar Store puzzles and the kids went to town. A few found buttons and other doo-dahs in my craft box and glued those on as well. 

They turned out pretty adorable. I took a picture of each kid and glued it in - bada bing. Happy Mother's Day.

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Few Words, Many Pictures

I'm a woman of few words today.
I know those of you who read my blog frequently me are doubting it, (I rarely have few words) but it's true. Lots is going on at school, but today, I'd like to keep it simple. Pictures.

This week we had a birthday and the birthday girl brought cake pops. Oh, my God. The most amazing cake pop I'ver ever had. And it was e-normous.

I'm trying to eat carefully, but I've had, like, four birthdays this week. Birthdays = cupcakes = I have to eat them.

Bought a new lamp :) It's a tripod, in honor of my photographer hunnybun.

This is what my mom wants for Mother's Day. Paula Dean's measuring cups. She saw them on TV.

I (being a good daughter) searched for them online. They cost over a hundred dollars. I don't think she knew that when she asked for them.

Guess who's not getting Paula Dean's measuring cups.

Guess who's gotta figure out something else for Mother's Day.

This is the giant median (really it's like a walking path/park) near my home. I like to walk my Lucy there. This is the pretty view the other evening on our walk.

One time I saw a guy walking a monkey there! 

A MONKEY! 

I think he's an army guy.

We have a base here.

This is the present I bought from me and my hunny for my future mama-in-law for Mother's Day. I also bought some flowers and I'm going to plant them up for her this weekend.

I'm gonna hang around blogville and check out what you awesome peeps are doing for Mother's Day. I think we're going to do puzzle piece picture frames with a magnet on the back.

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Sales & a BIG giveaway: Shop, Shop, Shop!

Just a reminder about the super sales & giveaways happening this weekend because Teachers Appreciate Other Teachers. I'm having a super sale at TPT:

They're having a muysuperwow sale, too, so can you imagine the dinero you'll save? 

2. I am also having a muysuperwow sale at Teacher's Notebook and they're having a Teacher Appreciation Sweepstakes! You should definitely check it out to win $100 worth of free Teacher's Notebook stuff!

3. AND, this stuff is for free!!

3-6 Free Resources is having an awesome Madyday giveaway! Check it out and win - not just a little, but a TON of terrific free stuff.

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Zoo Day! *Freebie & Giveaway

Today we went to the zoo.


Matt Damon wasn't there. I feel misled.
Or maybe he was. I wouldn't have noticed. Herding the animals I brought with me was WAY more work than watching the animals that were already there. I have a compulsive need to count my students every forty-five seconds when we're out on a field trip. I am terrified of losing one. Absolutely terrified. So I spent most of my time with my arm in the air, counting, and squinting against the sunlight. I did manage to take this pictures of the first animal we saw. After that, it was downhill. The kids were awesome, but I'm a paranoid nutter.

Our zoo used to be extremely depressing. The enclosures were tiny and sad. And the animals just kind of sat there and looked at you, like, "Well. Hello. Isn't this place horrible?"
I'm not super crazy about zoos. They bug me. I wouldn't appreciate being taken from my real house in my real neighborhood and put in a fake house in a fake neighborhood with walls around it. I do appreciate that some of the animals have been rescued from deadly situations, so I just try to think about that. So we went.
Our zoo has been completely updated. It's much nicer now. The elephants don't just stand there and sway anymore. They look alert. The zebras have room to wander a bit. It was fun.
Our babies had never been on a field trip. In the third grade, and never been on a field trip! When they were in kinder, there was a campus emergency and we were displaced from our school building for the whole year. The last two years, there was no money. So this year we were determined to take them somewhere.
There were a couple of high points. One was the elephant show. It was pretty cool. And the kids were so engaged in watching it, we (teachers) were actually able to eat lunch. The kids had already eaten.
But this was the best part (according to the kids)As we approached the lion enclosure, I saw an elderly couple sitting on the bench, watching the male lion. My students (and other students) crowded against the plexiglass, drooling over the lion. Suddenly, they started screaming. I (did I mention I'm paranoid?) assumed that a child was being smushed to death against the plexiglass by the other students, so I shoved toward the front of the mob. Guess what I saw?
An enormous lion, one leg straight in the air, licking himself. himself. As in the parts you don't lick in public. Or hopefully, in private, either.
I don't want to tell you how any different times I reworded that sentence. I tried all sorts of euphemisms before I settled on 'himself.' I think you get me.
Needless to say, the elderly couple got up and hobbled away in disgust. Not of the lion - of our kids who were freaking out about the lion. I chewed them out. But between you and me, it was a bit disconcerting. I mean, it's one thing when it's your dog or cat, but these...uh...family jewels were like 18 times the domestic size. Yowza. 
Grab the little book we used for free at TPT! Print it double-sided, and it's an eight-page minibook to keep kids engaged and focused at the zoo! Great kickoff for a life science unit.

Also, these are things you want to know.
1. I am having a muy superwow sale this weekend at TPT. 

They're having a muysuperwow sale, too, so can you imagine the dinero you'll save? 

2. I am also having a muysuperwow sale at Teacher's Notebook and they're having a Teacher Appreciation Sweepstakes! You should definitely check it out to win $100 worth of free Teacher's Notebook stuff!

3. AND, this stuff is for free!!

3-6 Free Resources is having an awesome Madyday giveaway! Check it out and win - not just a little, but a TON of terrific free stuff.

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