January Currently

Happy New Year!! I hope you all had a fun and safe New Years Eve. I had a great time with my friends here in Jacksonville and am trying to squeeze in as much as possible in the next 5 days before I head back to Memphis. Time is going by too fast!

I saw this on a lot of blogs so I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon for January and try it out. Here's what I'm up to currently!

Most of this is pretty self-explanatory. It's warm and rainy here in Florida but I am NOT complaining because I know I'm going to be cold for 9 weeks straight between winter break and spring break. Wah. 

I need to pack up my room here in Florida because we are selling the house after my mom gets married in March (over my spring break) so I won't have another chance before then to go through everything. We've been here 20 years so I have quite the collection of junk. 

I got Les Mis for Christmas and still haven't watched it yet. What's wrong with me?

I think we all need to re-hydrate after last night. No comment. 

And one of my favorite traditions is our family white elephant gift exchange. My whole extended family wraps ridiculous and horrible gifts and we spend the whole afternoon drinking, eating, and laughing as we unwrap velvet dresses and jars of mustard. 

That's me currently, what are you doing on the first day of 2014??

Christmas Crafts

We are officially on winter break and it feels SO NICE to relax and sleep in! I wanted to share some of the fun activities we worked into the last week of school. We had a lot of testing the last two weeks of school, so after reviewing, and testing, we let the kids relax and have fun! Here are some of the crafts I did in my class:

One day we made these snowman I found on TPT (for free!) and put on Frosty the Snowman (which I found on YouTube). Granted, it's intended for K-2, but it kept them busy, was simple enough to do without a lot of instructions, and was something fun while watching a movie. Here's how some turned out!

Too cute, right?

Love the creative eyes

This student added eyes

The next day, we did another craft. This time we made Reindeer Food in little white paper bags. I found this freebie label on TPT as well and printed enough copies for every student to have one. They glued them onto the bags and then decorated the bags with colored pencils. Then I worked with one table at a time to scoop sunflower seeds, oatmeal, and glitter into their bags. My only regret is not having more "ingredients" in the reindeer food and not taking advantage of the learning opportunity to use fractions with measuring cups. Oh well! Still turned out cute. I told the kids to sprinkle it on their lawn on Christmas Eve so the reindeer can have a snack while Santa delivers presents!

Finally, the little treat I made for the kids this year was something I found on Pinterest. It was simple and cheap, which, as a first year teacher, is a must! Just bought a GIANT bag of Jolly Ranchers, little baggies, ribbons, and printed out the tags. I put about 5 jolly ranchers in each bag, tied them up with ribbon, added the tag and voila! Done.

So pretty! And so simple!

So those are a handful of crafts I used this season. I love that teaching gives me the chance to really enjoy holidays all day everyday! You better believe the Christmas Pandora station was playing everyday the three weeks between Thanksgiving break and winter break! Overall, I'm just so relieved to be halfway through my first year. Time for a break and some sunshine =]

How I did Elf on the Shelf

* UPDATE: I put the last 5 pictures of Elfie at the end of this post. *

Every once in awhile I get a little pang of sadness when I see all the fun and cute ideas there are for lower elementary. K-2 is all about read-alouds and writing on fun cut-outs, and singing songs with matching dances, and hugs and cuteness. I admit. I get jealous.

BUT THEN

I remember that K-2 is NOT all smiles and rainbows after spending about 5 minutes in one of my friend's kindergarten classes and I am suddenly grateful for children that give me attitude and mean-mug me, but will also not run around my room screaming (most of the time).

One of the things I really wanted to steal from K-2, though, was Elf on the Shelf. But would my "too cool for school" fourth graders be above this???

Well here's how I used him in my classroom:

1) I kept the activities basic:
The only thing I gave the students was this elf journal I found on TPT. I stapled some together and they got to draw a picture and write a couple sentences each morning about what Elfie did. We haven't done too much with the elf with all the other activities you see all over Pinterest because I don't want to overdo it. We play it cool in fourth grade.

Day 1: gets delivered along with one elf journal per student!

2) I had him delivered by someone else:
It's gotten to the point that if a teacher says something, it's lame, but if THE PRINCIPAL OR DEAN says something, oh baby. So I had my dean deliver our elf and journals (after keeping them in the freezer all morning) so that I could be skeptical along with the kids. I read the letter I found here and gave the kids journals (oohs and ahhhhs at how cold they were) and we all agreed that we would just see what happens with this so-called "magical" elf.

This was never seen by the kids bc the janitor cleaned it up.
Haha fourth grade teachers decided we couldn't eat all that candy again
to get wrappers so this one would have to wait to be revisited!

3) I'm amazed with the students:
Every morning when they come in, I tell them "I came in this morning and look where I found Elfie!" They quiz me about where he was when I left, did I lock the door, who has access to the room, etc. Haha but I always laugh with them and say things like "I can't believe that little guy got into my tickets!" and deny deny deny that I did anything!

Finally, here are some more pics of Elfie and how he's been doing in our classroom. The kids are so funny with their suspicions. They will look through the class window every time they walk by trying to catch him, while others thinks it's me and others have blamed our poor maintenance man. Others have told Mr. E (the 4th grade science teacher) that my room is haunted. Eeek!

Day 2: doing our morning work

Day 3: taking tickets the kids get for good behavior

Day 4: swinging/hanging out in one of our pom-poms 

Day 5: reading fairy tales in the reading corner

Day 6: working on a puzzle (one choice for indoor recess)

Day 7: doing homework (one student handed it to him when posed doing the puzzle
and said "who knows? maybe he will do it!" so Elfie also wrote a "PS: thanks <student name>!!" haha)

Day 8: holding hands with my scarecrow. BFFs!

There are 8 days from the last two weeks because he didn't come to us until Tuesday after Thanksgiving (Monday's are overwhelming and he got left in the freezer-oops), and we had a snow/ice day that Friday. But there are five more days before break so that gives us 13 days with Elfie!!

*Last week with Elfie:

Found Elfie on www.northpole.com when we came in! haha

Took a personal day to take my certification exam.
Elfie watched the kids for me

The day I was out, Elfie fell and some kids played with him.
A student called to tell me "It was a bad day for Elfie" so he was sick the next day.

Once Elfie felt better, he brought candy canes for everyone!
"A treat for you from the big guy. Almost Christmas! <3 Elfie"

Goodbye Elfie! Stole the poem from Jake that graduated with me
"Dear 4th grade, Today is the day I must say goodbye, I know it's sad but please don't cry,
for I will be back this time next year, to fill more lives with joy and cheer! Love always, Elfie"

The kids were surprisingly upset Elfie wouldn't be back in January. I love this age because they still allow themselves to believe in magic! So sweet!

Where Did the Last Four Months Go?

Oh hey guys. Haven't seen you since AUGUST. My bad. I've been slowly and painfully suffering from this thing called "being a first-year teacher". With two weeks until winter break, which also marks half of the school year, I FINALLY feel like I'm not running around like a chicken with my head cut off so here I am! I know the blogging community has practically ceased to exist without me, right? ;)

2/3 of the Fourth Grade team.
Feels like such a small school after last year (with a 7 teacher team)

I'm not even going to try and catch you up on how my first semester was, because many of you have heard my stories/tears/victories and I'm sure it will all be a blur in a year or so anyway. I will tell you that I am LOVING Memphis, LOVING my friends here, and LOVING our new schedule for departmentalization. Now I only teach math with one hour of remediation reading and a half hour homeroom. With a 90 minute math block and a set of laptops, I'm able to do a blended learning model class. Here's the schedule:

15 minutes: Do-Now and then check answers and go over homework
30 minutes: Half the class is on laptops doing iReady (a remediation program) while the other half spends 15 minutes at a game center and 15 minutes with me at a teacher center
30 minutes: Switch- students on laptops go to centers and vice-versa
15 minutes: Exit ticket, pass out homework, sign behavior logs, and pack up

With about 16 students in a class, I LOVE teaching 4 students at a time! And 4 students playing a game together is so manageable. Should've done this earlier.

No school yesterday, thanks to freezing rain for 48 hours

Not in Florida anymore...

The ice storm outside reminds me that it is in fact December. To stay festive this year, I have the christmas station playing CONSTANTLY in my room and we also have our Elf on the Shelf ("Elfie") getting into all sorts of trouble. Here is the little guy:

More on him another time! Happy Saturday!

A Typical Day in Institute

Hello again! Getting ready to start week 5 (out of 7) over here at Memphis Institute and I am STOKED to be past our half-way mark. The next three weeks should be downhill (work-wise, not attitude-wise) so these are all good things. I got the keys to my apartment Friday and was able to check it out and walk around imagining it all set up yesterday. It is absolutely gorgeous =]

Apartment 4 =]

My favorite room! No surprise there.
Excited to cook with a gas stove for the first time!

Stunning, right?

 So that's what I'm currently excited about. But alas, we still have work to do people! I wanted to give you a glimpse into my daily schedule because I think that most people have no idea what exactly Institute looks like (at least I didn't before coming). So here we go!

A Typical Day at Institute:

• 5:45- Wake up in my dorm room and get ready. Professional dress, OF COURSE, all day every day.
• 6:15- Head downstairs for breakfast. Scarf down food like my life depends on it because I'm normally very late (oops). This is also when we pack up our lunches.
• 6:30- Walk out to our bus. Try to not be rude to all the people smiling and telling us to have a good day on our way out. How are they so chipper so early?
• 6:40- Sleep all the way to school. No shame in this.
• 7:10- Sign in, set up the room for the day, have a quick meeting with the other 30 or so corps members at my school.
• 7:45- Welcome the kids to school and sit with them while they eat breakfast.
• 8:25- Community building time. All three of the teachers in my room do morning meeting and an activity with our whole class (of 8-10 kids).
• 9:00- Teacher number one teaches reading. The other two leave the room to observe other corps members or have a training session in our whole group space.
• 10:30- Teacher number two takes over for writing! The other two either prep for their lessons, observe other teachers, or have a training session.
• 11:40- Lunch time. Have you ever seen an 8-year-old try and peel an orange? Not an easy task. I have learned to pack extra napkins. 
• 12:20- Teacher number three takes over for math! This was me all last week. While I teach, my TLC (teacher leadership coach with TFA) observes me, as well as other teachers, staff members, corps members, people from other cities that want to start a charter school, literally ANYONE. 
• 1:45- All three teachers do some end-of-the-day reflection activities with the kids then send them home.
• 2:15- Head back to University of Memphis on the bus.
• 2:50- Walk straight off the bus and into a session on lesson plan writing or working with families or teacher evaluations or whatever else we need to learn.
• 4:30- Session number two starts!
• 6:00- Freedom. Time to eat in the downstairs dining hall again and talk to everyone about who had the craziest day.
• 7:00- Revise lesson plans, print out materials, prepare things for the next day, turn in lesson plans, relax? No, don't relax. Except on Tuesdays, when we watch the Bachelorette online. This is non-negotiable.
• 10:00- Go to bed. Finally. 

As you can see, it's a long day (6am-6pm of going non-stop), but compared to my internship where I had to teach 22 kids all day, teaching 10 kids for an hour and a half is a nice break. The sessions are helpful, just exhausting. They're basically college courses on education, but much more practical than theory, so that's good. You will never know everything about teaching, so I'm just taking it all in! This week is short: just 3 days and then Tampa! Woohoo!

Winding Down

Wow my internship year is officially coming to a close and I am moving to Memphis in four days. My last day at school was Friday and I'm going back tomorrow for the end-of-the-year party and to say goodbyes =[ This is by far the most attached I've ever been to a class before (I've been with them since the beginning of October!) and they were so sweet to me on my last day. They had their big play (The Frog Prince Continued) and then we had a surprise ice cream party (yum!) with lots of homemade cards and gifts from my teacher, the teacher next door, and the parents. I feel so loved! I gave each of my kids a personal note and a crazy straw with Kool-Aid that I saw on Pinterest.

So cute right? 

This weekend was chock full of family and friend time. We had a big BBQ with my dad's family on Saturday and then with my mom's on Sunday. I was basically out by the pool from Friday when I got home through last night. It was so fun spending time with everyone and hanging out with my friends. I am definitely going to miss everyone and I feel like I did 5 years ago when I left home for UF [sigh].

My crazy friends

So this is my ONE week of summer and boy is it a busy one. I'm packing up twice: one set of stuff/boxes for me to take in my car on Saturday and one set of stuff/boxes for my mom to drive up in July. I'll be staying the dorms at University of Memphis from when I drive up there this weekend until July 19 and then I'll be moving into my new place with Meghan! We signed a lease [hooray!] and my mom will drive up the weekend in July I move out of the dorms and into the apartment.

Oh hey, University of Memphis

I'm also working on my last online class (which ends in late June), getting everything set to move, trying to visit with EVERYONE, and, oh ya, relaxing during my week of summer.

The beach house a bunch of us rented two weekends ago.
Heaven.

That's a bit of an update with me. I'll be keeping my blog because I'm teaching fourth grade again next year, but it will no longer be an intern blog. It'll be a first year teacher blog!

Invasion of the Baby Chicks

Ladies and Gentlemen. It happened. We have been invaded. Our classroom was invaded by baby chicks this week!

So sweet and innocent! Don't trust them!!

You won't believe these little rascals. On Tuesday, they trashed our room, spreading notebooks, pens, and paper all over the place! They left little pieces of plastic, green grass behind and a note on the board: IOTBC. They also left tiny pieces of paper with IOTBC on them. Don't you worry, our kids were on the case! They spent the day trying to figure out what IOTBC stood for and collecting their clues.

Wednesday morning, we came into the classroom and saw the baby chicks' latest attack:

Sneaky little things 

They got me, too!

Yes. They tied yarn all around our desks and chairs! They even got me and my mentor teacher! As our kids pointed out, there must be a lot of them to get all that done. Our new clues were little chocolate eggs, more IOTBC slips of paper, a note on the board saying IOTBC, more green grass, and these little prints on some of the desks:

Hmmmm a new clue....

Our kids collected the clues, wrote them all down, and started hypothesizing suspects and what to do next. They thought IOTBC stood for It's Only The Beginning, Children (which, frankly, sounds terrifying). The kids figured whoever it was had to be small to get through our locked door. They thought maybe it was the Easter bunny (with the holiday just around the corner). Another guess was a leprechaun (with St. Patrick's day just this past weekend). The yarn made them think of spiders, and the wild card guess was poor Mr. O'Keefe, the teacher down the hall. According to the kids, he's been "suspicious" lately because he's been coming in our room with technology questions. Poor, unsuspecting Mr. O'Keefe. Our "clue club" put together some questions for our attackers and left them around the room:

My favorite is E. How scary is a creature that is all of the above??

Thursday morning, we saw our attackers faces! Baby chicks! Each student had a baby chick waiting for them, along with a nest of green grass, jelly beans, and a chocolate egg. IOTBC has been solved. One of the students even figured out it stood for Invasion of the Baby Chicks! What an adventure. We'll have to apologize to Mr. O'Keefe for the false accusation, even though some students are still slightly suspicious...

Baby chicks for the win!

After the big morning, we also had coconut cupcakes that I made for the class, a little spring surprise =]

Yum

Also, if you didn't hear on FB, I was offered a job with Achievement School District! You can check them out here. More details to come, but it looks like they want me in 4th grade so I am beyond excited to start preparing for my own 4th grade class next year! Snaps for fourth grade, you guys! To celebrate, my mentor teacher and the teacher next door got me a cake and a pretty notebook. I'm so lucky to have them and will be asking a million questions as I prepare for next year =]

Double yum

So pretty!

So we are officially on Spring Break! I'll be headed to Tampa tomorrow for a cohort wedding and am laying low until then. It feels so good to not have to be anywhere!! Hope you're having a great Friday =]