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!

Playing Catch-Up

Hey everybody, I'm sorry I've been MIA the last 3 weeks! We had spring break and I went to Tampa for Roxanne's wedding (check out her blog here) and then to New Orleans to visit Casey, my bestie from high school. It was such a great spring break and EXACTLY what the doctor ordered.

Beautiful wedding!

Teacher friends =]

Casey and I in New Orleans

Being tourists

We ate our way through the city- naturally.

Then we had Monday, April 1st as an inservice day and I was only at school Tuesday and Wednesday before I got hit with a stomach bug and had to stay home two more days. I really wanted to be careful though, because I did NOT want to give my kids any germs right before FCAT. 

This week we just reviewed everything we needed to, covered up all of our bulletin boards, signs, and books (basically everything but the brick wall) with giant sheets of paper (no cheating here!), and rearranged the room for our big test next week. 

We are so looking forward to getting past this test! I feel confident in my kids and I know they'll do great! We also have a respectable pile of snack food piling up that families have brought in for the afternoons of the FCAT. I think with all this hard work, our kiddos definitely deserve some Cheez-its and Disney movies ;)

In internship news, I had my FINAL observation on Wednesday! That makes 11, in case you were wondering. To give you a comparison, the other interns at my school (from UNF) do 4. Let that sink in. The only thing I have left is an informal observation by my supervisor and a principal observation. I'm going to do both of these during the month of May when I'm teaching full-time. At least I'll be prepared for the 6 observations I need per year in Tennessee! Bring it on.

Multiplication Workshop Lesson

Hi everyone! I wanted to share my lastest supervisor observation because the kids LOVED it and I was super excited about that =] If I haven't told you before, we have 3 or 4 supervisor observations and 3 mentor observations per semester. It's a lot, but it definitely is making me step up my game!

So I was doing a lesson on multiplication and really wanted to do more of a workshop/inquiry-based type of lesson. I found this blog post about using anchor charts and was *iNsPiReD* to try something we did in a math class I took on-campus at UF.

I started the lesson by giving the students a multiplication word problem and telling them to solve it in their math journal two different ways. Then we talked about some of their strategies, developing their vocabulary. They had the traditional algorithm, partial products, and repeated addition. We also added arrays and the inverse operation. Then I put them in mixed-ability groups of 3 and gave each group a sheet of chart paper, markers, and a word problem. They wrote as many ways to solve it as they could think of and explained their thinking.

We taped them to the walls around the room and each group had a set of post-its. They rotated around and decided as a group one compliment per chart and any questions they had for other charts. Eventually they got back to theirs and got to read what everyone said! Then we went around as a class and everyone got a chance to answer questions on their charts. Here are some of their questions/comments. I was SO impressed!

 The kids were engaged the whole time and really developed their vocabulary! I think it stretched their brains to think of multiplication deeper instead of just an algorithm. One more observation down, four to go!

Thanksgiving Break and Final Observations

Can you believe it's already December?! It's still about 70 degrees outside, so it doesn't QUITE feel like December yet, but still, my calendar says it's December so it must be so.

We only went to school for two days the week of Thanksgiving and it was really nice having a little break. We had tons of family come over and we ate more food than I thought possible! But that's ok, because I ran my first 6K that morning! I was super proud of the fact that I didn't have to stop to walk, even if my time was a little slow.

Before and after pics with my mom (who runs much faster than I do)

Back at school, I had my final observation and taught a lesson on identifying the theme in a story. I was very happy with how it went- after a morning pep talk, the kids were absolute angels (thanks kiddos!) and it all went according to plan (which happens, um, never).

I wanted to share a resource that I used at the beginning of my lesson on theme. It's called Wing Clips and it's an online database of short movie clips that are all categorized and all clean for school! I showed one clip and modeled how to identify the theme of the clip, then I showed another clip and had the students identify the theme and three supporting details that helped them find the theme. So fun! You could use these to teach mood, theme, topic, anything!

Such a great resource. Check it out!!

This upcoming week is going to be very exciting. I have my interview with Teach For America on Wednesday and it's going to be all day. I've been preparing for that and making sure I have everything ready! Then I'm going to Atlanta on Friday after school for the weekend to visit with a friend. Who knows? Maybe I'll be living THERE next year!

Prefix and Suffix Flipbooks

Hey everyone! How crazy has the last week been for you? It's been really crazy for us! We had a short week (only 4 days) and SO MANY OBSERVATIONS. My mentor teacher had an observation on Tuesday and one on Thursday and then she observed me on Friday. We also had a Thanksgiving feast with our kids on Friday with vegetable soup in the crockpot, cornbread, fresh fruit and berries, and cookies. So yummy!

One lesson I did this week was about affixes- prefixes and suffixes. This is important for fourth grade to learn new words they come across in their reading. We used flipbooks to teach the affixes. Have you ever seen these?

One side of the flipbook

Reverse side of the same flipbook

These are actually two flipbooks stapled back to back. This is how you make them:
1) Get some colorful paper- we had three pieces of paper per student (all different colors).
2) Cut each piece of paper in half lengthwise.

So much paper involved

3) Fold the pieces of paper different lengths, like the picture below. We kept one as a model while folding and folded the rest to match it.

Pictures are really needed to explain this part!

4) Stack the pieces of paper, one inside another, like a Russian doll, and then staple across the top.

Booyah

5) Staple two books back to back so you can do prefixes on one side and suffixes on the other.

Once the books were made, each student wrote a prefix (or suffix) on each flap with the definition under the flap above. We did all of these together. Then they went to different spots around the room to read their independent books. As they read, they had to find one example of each in the book and write that, along with two examples they could think of, under the affix. They had a total of three examples per affix and then we went over everyone's and talked about what examples we found.

Sometimes we fit two on one flap.

The examples for mis- and non- are on the yellow.
The examples for un- are on the other side of the orange.

I love these flip books! They're great resources for the kids to keep and a lot of fun to make. I just used the list of affixes from the standard for Florida, but you can do whichever ones you need. I would recommend making them for the kids ahead of time and then having them fill them out. Also, I wrote sideways, but it would probably be easier to write normally. Live and learn, right?

This week we only have two days of school! Two days of school and five days off? Can we do this every week???

Mission to Space

We had quite an exciting day yesterday- we went to space! I had to teach a lesson for my mentor teacher and my UF supervisor to observe, so I decided to teach math. We're working on geometry and drawing shapes from different perspectives and I wanted to try something creative, so my mentor teacher and I came up with an activity for the kids where they went on a mission to space!! Bear with me, this is a long post, but worth it!

Here's how we did it: I reviewed how to draw perspectives and how to imagine a solid shape when looking at a net, then the kids partnered up and were given a brown paper bag and a ziploc bag of cube legos.

Doesn't that clip art look intense and awesome??

Inside each bag, they had rolled-up instructions and 10 numbered clues. These were their instructions:

• You are on a mission to space with your shoulder partner! You need to find the planet Perspectiva because it has a special resource called Shapino. The United States needs this resource to replace gasoline and they want you to get it!
• You'll need the clues found in your "Mission Pack" to help you complete your mission and avoid danger. 
• You will complete all calculations in the "Mission Log" (your math journal) when answering each of the clues. Be sure to write down the clue number and work in order, beginning with clue #1. 
• After each clue, you will eat an energy capsule (an M&M), which you will find in your Mission Pack. Use the tools in your bag, along with the cubes to complete your mission. Good luck Space Cadet!

Rolled up instructions and then a stack of numbered clues

After repeating some important instructions (next time I would write these on the board), they got working and had an absolute blast! Using the clues, I had them identify their spaceship, land on a planet, identify another spaceship, find their resource, calculate how much to bring back, and then fly home. They had to turn in their data to mission control (me!) and if it was complete, they were paid (with a mini milky way) haha. I like to think I'm funny ;)  They also had a checklist to assess themselves with, giving themselves 1 point for drawings, 1 point for calculations, 2 points for written responses, and 1 point for working cooperatively. I used this as the rubric for scores out of 5. Here's an example of one of the clues, just to give you an idea.

The biggest thing for this lesson was for them to draw a certain perspective of a solid shape,
 like from the top, front, or side.

Let me tell you, the kids love love LOVED this activity! Their favorite parts were the M&M energy capsules (duh), getting cubes to build the shapes with, and all the different clues. The first clue was to make a shape out of a cube net to create a walkie talkie. I have to share this picture because these boys were using them the whole time! And hey, the more engaged the students are, the fewer behavior management issues you'll have (obviously).

It says Walkie Talkie and has a keypad and an "answer" button! haha

 You could do something like this with any subject or topic! Just make a mission somewhere with individual clues, even incorporate other subjects, like science. My fourth graders LOVED it, which meant my supervisor and mentor teacher LOVED it, which is great news for me!! We'll definitely be doing more missions in the future!!