How I'm Surviving My First Year

Tomorrow is the first day back after the break! It was supposed to be today, but the temperature was "dangerously low" (somewhere in the teens) so they canceled school.

Woo! This is our second snow day and I still haven't seen snow.... so confusing but hey, I'll take the birthday present ;) Speaking of birthdays, I had a GREAT birthday yesterday! I was able to celebrate with my family and friends back home over the weekend and then yesterday we had district PD at my school before going out to sushi with some of my favorite Memphis girls and then watching FSU win the national championship. (This makes my family very happy, so I'm happy.)

When reflecting on the first half of my first year of teaching, I think my biggest lesson has been to take care of myself. It's easy to let teaching (or any first job) just dominate your life. This is how I've survived so far:

1) Books
I LOVE to read and save at least 10 minutes to read before going to bed. Same goes for Saturday mornings. Reading in bed when I don't have to get up early is the. best. thing. ever. Here's what I've been reading lately:

About to start this one!

Read the trilogy and really enjoyed it.
Pretty exciting and a creative concept about a future society

Saw this on a list of books for girls to read in their 20s.
Jennifer Close nailed it.

 2) Birchbox
I told myself I'd start doing this once I got a paycheck! For $10 a  month you get a box of about 5 samples of high-end beauty products. I convinced my roommate, Meghan, and my sister to get them too. Now every month we get a little surprise! It's way  more fun than it sounds ;)

Meghan posing with her first birchbox

3) Bubble baths
I love love love sinking into a hot bubble bath, especially now that's it's FREEZING outside, with one of the books I mentioned above! Meghan's learned that when she comes home and I'm in the bath, it was a rough day...

Minus the dog (missing Sadie)

4) Beale Street
Or just going out in general! All week I look forward to going out with my friends, whether its downtown, midtown, or someone's living room. I've met some of the best people through TFA and they are a strong part of what get me through the day!

Don't mind me posing

5) The Bachelor
Or just horrible television in general. I've never pretended I had good taste in television and as the years go on I see just how far down the rabbit hole I've gone. Oh well. Bring on the dramatic reality shows, ridiculous teen dramas, and absurd people "trying to find love". I'll watch them all.

I also do the brackets for The Bachelor.
Yes. I realize that's not very normal.

So that's a little bit about what I've learned about myself during the first half of the year. Here's to 5 more months of being a first year teacher!

Gator Classroom

People. I've been in the classroom for two days now and it has been a WHIRLWIND. It's like everything I learned rushed out of my head when those kids lined up at my door Monday morning. Talk about panic.

BUT

the good news is this week we are on the short day schedule (7:30-2) and we have an hour long enrichment block where the kids go to Watoto (which I mentioned in this post). I am definitely feeling overwhelmed, but I have a lot of support through TFA, my 4th grade team, my school, UF teaching friends, and my roommate! I also have to remind myself that Rome wasn't built in a day and I can't be perfect day 1.

I do want to introduce my classroom in all it's Florida glory. Mind you, it's a work in progress. I still need some rugs, some student work, and to put up my Florida posters and gear, but hey, it's better than the last post! Enjoy =]

Front door, word wall, and class library 

Close up of the word wall with writing posters above.
Eventually I want a table to use for writing underneath it.

My reading corner, before the cozy rug that's coming!

Yes, that is a dollar store blow up alligator

Best part of my room! Still need to add my little individual gators!

The front of the room

Good work bulletin board, calendar, and chart paper 

My school-wide rules and areas for the daily objective and standard

Teacher area and Gator of the Week

My little corner =] Especially love my class picture from last year. Miss them!

Love love love these pom-poms! Made of tissue paper and inspired by this

My SMARTboard. A little bland... maybe some Gator curtains??

My storage area and "take a break" chair. Needs a rug and some color....

Desks in pods of 4 (hey Kagan!)

Swampy name tags

For my front door

Behavior punch cards as my classroom incentive.
Different colors for different periods (three 4th grade classes)

Rewards for punch cards (taken from here)

Also taught them the "It's great to be a Florida Gator" chant and have attempted "Na na na na na GO GATORS!" but it was a bit of a struggle. I'll keep you updated. We were also misidentified as Florida State today. NOT OK.

First Peek in my Classroom

Woah. It has been a busy two weeks! We had district induction with the ASD and learned more about Common Core and how this year is going to run. It has been insane as we go 8-4 everyday in sessions, meetings, and planning with other teachers. It's been so great to get to plan with some other 4th grade teachers though! I'm not sure if I said this on here yet, but I will be teaching 4th grade ELA, math, and social studies. We have three 4th grade teachers and each of us teach ELA and social studies to our homeroom, then we switch and teach all three classes either math, science, or technology. So I'll be teaching three hours of math, two hours of ELA, and one hour of social studies each day. I'll post more about my schedule another day!

Today was the first day of our planning week with our individual schools, which meant going over procedures with our teams and then getting into our rooms for a couple hours. Ready to see S202?? They were taken on my phone and are a little rough, but it's my first peek! These are the before pics, for sure.

When you first walk in the room.
The board on the far wall is my SMARTboard! Yay!

I made the back left corner my "teacher area"
because that was where the big cabinets were. 

Check out those lockers! No cubbies for these fourth graders ;)

My "teacher area"... for now

So today I moved the students' desks into pods of four (Kagan shout-out) and moved the kidney table over to my "teacher area". I wanted an area for guided reading, but also a "home base" that I could keep papers, folders, binders, etc. We were given a generous gift certificate to an education store in Memphis and boy am I ready to shop! I need to figure out some organization, for sure, and am ALL OVER Pinterest right now.

Each room has a college name to encourage the kids to reach for college and OF COURSE I picked UF. I went ahead and decided to make Gators and the swamp my entire theme. Get ready for some orange and blue bulletin boards, friends! If anyone has some Gator gear burning a hole in their pockets, email me ;)

Excited to spend a weekend "relaxing"!

Teacher Binder Revisited

Happy Thursday! We had Monday and Tuesday off this week and, ya know, I think EVERY week should start on a Wednesday- just a thought ;) This week I wanted to focus on organizing so get ready for an overload of pictures:

One of my most popular post is this one on my "ultimate teacher binder". Unfortunately, once I started my internship, I accumulated a LOT more papers and soon, my cute little binder ripped :( Instead of buying a new one, I decided over winter break to break up my one big binder into five small ones! You ready for this??

My first binder has three sections: Important Info, Weekly/Monthly Lesson Plans, and Example Lesson Plans. This is where I keep all our schedules, school maps, phone numbers, etc. I created my own weekly lesson planner, then, I used the monthly lesson calendar I found at KindergartenWorks for a big picture. I also keep all my observed lesson plans in this binder. This way, if I need to plan, I only need to bring home one binder!

You may also notice I changed the cover- different school, different binder cover!

My weekly template

Monthly planner. I go back and highlight everything at the end of the week.
Everything gets color coded!

The next binder I made is Student Info, Course Info, and Meeting Notes. This is where I keep all my records on the kids (testing, scores, growth charts), all my course info for grad school, and the meeting note template found on the Ladybug Teacher Files blog. I bring this one to meetings and conferences instead of having to bring all of my stuff.

Pretty self-explanatory

The next binder I made is my Standards and Assessments binder. Here, I have the Read Naturally assessments for 4th grade, the spelling lists for the year, the 4th Grade FCAT Specifications for language arts and math (it's all here if you want to print it out), and the 4th Grade Common Core checklist (we bought it here). This is also mainly a reference binder, so I can leave it at school if I don't need it. Score!

This is what we bought on TPT

This is an "I Can" checklist for all the standards

Finally, I have a binder of lesson plans that my mentor teacher gives me. Basically, every time we have an extra copy of something, I put it in that binder. Never hurts to have some extra stuff stored up! Especially because my mentor teacher is fabulously innovative so these are not your run-of-the-mill worksheets, but fabulous units and lessons!

Every subject has a tab!

Ok, so that's it! Hopefully all this info helps if you're trying to get organized. The pictures are also kinda fun if you just like looking at other people's organization ;) And where do I put all these binders?? In my new teacher cart I got for Christmas! Thanks daddy :) Remember, if you're curious about how I made the covers of these binders, you can see on my original post for the links.

Everyone come see how professional I look! hehe

Back in the Classroom

People. I'm back in the classroom. I'm waking up at 6 again. Woohoo! Believe it or not, it's actually really nice to be back in an energetic classroom full of life and positivity and watch kids try and succeed.

To recap the week, I went to my new school Tuesday afternoon to meet with my supervisor, mentor teacher, and principal and I just loved getting to talk about new ideas and how they are applying them to the school. They have a big focus on research and being a reflective teacher. I went home with a stack of books and the challenge to start reading!

Starting with Love & Logic! More on that soon...

I started Wednesday and spent the last three days watching my fantastic mentor teacher, getting to know my sweet kids, and chatting with my friendly coworkers (including another intern next door!) Some of the highlights this week include:

• Watching the kids write their own reader's theater for the Greek story of Demeter and Persephone and then act it out
• Doing the Cupid Shuffle to "get the wiggles out"
• Being asked every Gator question imaginable: Do you know any Gator athletes? Have you met Albert and Alberta? Are you going to the LSU game? 
• Receiving homemade "welcome to the classroom" cards 
• Answering questions about math during recess because they were so curious about it

How super sweet is this?

To sum it up: I'm in love. Also, bookmark this new page. Cus' now we're snapping for fourth grade!! Keep up people! Time's flying!