End of the Year

At the end of the year, our assistant principal and behavior specialist came in to do some fun activities with my kids. It was such a positive 40 minutes!

They danced to a song (Follow the Leader by...ooo, can't remember!)

They played a balloon game where they had to keep a balloon up without letting go of their hands.

They did more dance moves??? (By the way, we did chicken fat friday every Friday the second half of the year. They always talked about it!)

I also discovered a newfound love for Pete the Cat. They read them this story and talked about things being alllllll good! They kids sang the song. And, of course, I thought it was even cuter when they changed the song to "I love my TEACHER, I LOVE my teacher!"

End of the year photos

It's so funny how the class that gave you me so much DRAMA is one of the classes I'll miss the most. They really were sweet and I saw some HUGE improvements.

We did normal, silly, and TOUGH!

Recycling project

Some of the results of our annual recycling project. The kids pick their groups (and they work so much better together, imagine that!)

This group made a model of me, complete with coconut bra! No, I have NEVER worn that to work!

This is a racecar :)

Field Day!

I love field day! Our PE teachers do an amazing job planning the activities and teaching the kids ahead of time how to play them!

The looks on these girls' faces are priceless!

Cooperative Teams/Lego Fractions

One thing my students struggled with ALL year was working together...we still didn't quite have it down by the time we did this project, but I think the kids that could handle it did great, and so that made it worth it! Each team was given a set of legos (random) in four colors. They had 15 minutes to create a structure. They could make their own pieces and connect them (they HAD to be connected by the end of the time), or they could just build one big one together (harder than it sounds with these little guys...hehe). 

After the 15 minutes was up, they switched tables. They had to deconstruct the structure, sort out the colors, and create fractions using the four colors. They got extra "points" for putting the fractions in order from smallest to largest and using the <, >, or = symbols. 

I was inspired to do this by a news piece I saw where a middle school teacher used Legos with her sixth grade language arts class to talk about plot, conflict, etc. 

Angry Birds Writing

I found this project on Pinterest and knew we HAD to do it! HUGE thanks to the teacher that put this together. The kids loved it, loved the writing component, and REALLY loved building their birds! We even had another class come over to see our angry birds and ask questions about them :) 

I even did this project with my 4th-grade summer schoolers...who also loved it! If Angry Birds is still cool next year, we will for sure do it again!

Tangrams

I love doing this lesson with my third graders. The generous teacher in the classroom before me left a laminated set of 30 tangrams, and so I did some research and was led to Grandfather Tang. It's a great story where the two main animal characters change into different creatures as the story progresses. As I read it out loud, the kids manipulate their tangrams to match the creature. For some of them, it's hard at first, but they get better!

Graham Cracker States

We do a lot of "fun" stuff after state testing...at my school it seems like we put so much pressure on the kids to test well, and so it's nice to take it a little bit easier afterwards. Anyway, to end our postcard project, the kids made graham cracker states and marked the capitals with Smarties and water with blue frosting. Some of their states were open to a little interpretation :)

They LOVED it though. It was so cute. I would do this again!

I SO want to be back!

I really, really love updating my personal blog. I like being able to look back at our lives and see what changes we have been through and the things Todd and I have done together.

I have found that I have some personal limitations with this blog, and I'm learning to be okay with that. I really do want to keep a record of my teaching. I really want it to be positive. With that being said, I will probably never:

• own a TpT or Teacher's Notebook store
• host a giveaway
• join a million linky parties and comment on every one (there are some link parties that I think are really awesome and I DO follow those!)
• create incredibly darling unit and post them online

In the blog world, I have felt some pressure to "keep up" with all of the amazing things other teachers are doing. However, that stopped me from even posting. I had a really difficult class this year, and when I came home I just wanted to be home and not think about work. I loved my job, but I needed to leave work at work.

I'm hoping I can strike a new balance. Like I said above, recognize my limitations and not feel guilty about it. Post when I can about things that are working!

So, hopefully I can be back on this blog. I have some exciting things coming up in regards to my job and I want to document it!

Cupcake Club

I had made some extra cupcakes over the weekend, and so on Monday when I showed up after having a sub on a Friday, I held a cupcake club. I had received some really nice notes about some of my students from the sub, so they got to join me for cupcake club at the end of the day. I totally feel for substitutes, having been one myself, but I'm grateful for them so I can have a day off every once in a while!

Maybe If I Vent...

...I'll feel better. My four boys were just rotten today. We ran the gamut from "Your momma" comments to kneeing someone in the crotch, to shoving in the classroom, to shouting matches over who tripped who. It was totally miserable. I have 21 other angels in my class. According to several different teachers, they have heard it from administration that I have the "toughest class in the school." Maybe someday that will feel like a compliment, but today it was awful. I just wanted to yank those boys off their seats and haul them to the office. 30 minutes after a talking to, two of the boys were at it again. I have to watch a few of them like hawks at recess to make sure they don't kill each other. They have little to no parent support. I have been told that Kagan will solve it, that Love and Logic will solve it, that community service will solve it, that phone calls home will fix it. Well, it's January, and none of those things have worked so far. I have one student that throws a fit every time he doesn't get what he wants, which is about 10 times a day...and I don't think that's an exaggeration. Sometimes I literally think he is going to drive me insane if he asks me one more time if he can go visit the SPED teacher or the school counselor...knowing that he won't have to do his work. It's a cycle, 5 minutes of class, 1 minute standing around to wait and ask me if he can leave, me saying no, 5 minutes of a tantrum, 10 minutes of scheduled time out of the classroom, he comes back, wants something, I say no, more tantrums and stomping, rinse and repeat.

Sorry to be so "woe is me." Tomorrow is a new day, but I almost had to take a timeout today. Things were going so well before Christmas, and then a few of them came back little monsters. I don't want people to feel sorry for me, I guess I just want this mess to be over, and to have my little angels back.

Pinterest in Action!

So since I had some time over break to think about fun classroom things to do, I implemented two things I saw on Pinterest this week that I want to do weekly.

The first was Homeworkopoly, and Ladybug Teacher Files has a great download for it here. I told the kids about it on Wednesday, and they got to roll for the first time on Friday. They were SO excited :) The great thing is that three kids landed on Chance cards, and two had to answer math review questions...the rest just landed on regular spaces. I had more kids turn in homework this week (although we are STILL battling NAMES on papers!) and so that was great.

We also did "Chicken Fat Friday." If you link here, you'll end up on a teaching blog. I kinda found this idea by accident. I was following through another idea on the same pinterest post, but found this because her video of the kids was just so cute. I found the Robert Preston song on Youtube, and played it yesterday afternoon. The kids were hilarious, and since I did it with them, I was sweating by the time it was over! I think it will be especially great for those Friday afternoons when we don't have PE that day and the younguns are restless!