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.

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!

High Five for Friday

Hello hello! It's Friday again and I thought what better way to celebrate than with another high five post? Here are the highlights from my week in picture form:

1) I got my butt into gear and started working out again. Watching HBO's "Girls" while on the elliptical definitely makes the time go by quicker ;)

2) This was my first week of planning and teaching full time. Oh my. Lets just say this was also the first week I started drinking coffee. Also, notice the fabulous mug.

3) Our kiddos got a visit from K9s for Warriors, a group in St. John's county that trains service dogs for veterans with PTSD. Check out the work they're doing here.

4) The 3 UF interns had our last seminar with our supervisor Thursday at Caps On The Water in St. Augustine. We ended up staying and chatting over sangria for over 3 hrs as the sun set over the intracoastal. Absolutely stunning. Can't believe our time together is almost over!

5) My uncle graduated with his masters degree in business today! The whole family was able to make it to UNF and watch him walk, even if it meant leaving school at lunchtime. So proud of him!

So that was my week. I'm looking forward to relaxing some this weekend before teaching full time again next week. Weekend, here I come!

And So It Begins

Boy did I have a case of the Monday's this morning. I had a fantastic bachelorette weekend with Lexi, our bride-to-be, and the other fabulous bridesmaids/MOH, where we slept in late, got our nails done, dressed up for dinner, laughed way too much, and saw Taylor Swift sing her heart out. It was hard coming back. Trust me.

SO MUCH RED
PS: Slutty brownies were a hit

Countdown clock says 6 weeks until I move to Memphis and 5 more weeks of my internship. Eeek! Today was my first day taking over the classroom and I taught all day, minus a half hour math lesson (I'm easing my way in). I would definitely say the hardest part was all the planning. The more you plan, the less you have to worry about later!

6 Weeks. Cue panic.

We're starting to learn a little bit about literature circles and the kids were SO EXCITED. They actually thanked me when I announced it. Lol I guess it's all in how you phrase it and saying "I thought I would reward you for working so hard by letting you do literature circles the last 6 weeks of school. But if you don't want to, we can go back to what we know." They jumped at it!

We're teaching jobs this week. Today was "Super Summarizer"

I'm going to try a jigsaw lesson tomorrow and cut out these cute little briefcases out of construction paper for the kids to write their "expert" facts on. I'll let you know how it goes!

Hoping this rain stops so we can get some outdoor recess time. Our kiddos are so tired of being cooped up inside and so. am. I. Here's hoping Tuesday is less gloomy than today was!

High Five for Friday

High five for Friday you guys! We made it through FCAT week, which is glorious! I wanted to try an idea I saw on this blog here. Here are 5 of my favorite pictures from this week. It pretty much captures what went down:

1) Sabre woke me up every morning last weekend because I was home alone and he was being a good guard dog. What a sweet boy =]

2) I started quilting my mom's Mother's Day quilt. No spoiler here- she picked out the fabric and has been watching me waiting for it to be finished! 

3) My mom ordered Toms that were too small so I get them! Granted, I had to buy her new ones online, but still, aren't they cute?!

4) I found out I'm going to teach the last FIVE weeks of my internship instead of the last FOUR. Cue frantic lesson planning!!! Ahhhhhh!!!

5) I made Slutty Brownies for the bachelorette party I'm headed to this weekend. That would be a layer of cookie dough, a layer of oreos, and then a layer of brownie. OH MY GOSH. Can you handle it?

So I'm taking my slutty brownies and my giant bottle of wine and headed to Tampa for mani/pedis, laying out by the pool, girl talk, and the Taylor Swift concert! Perfect cap to FCAT week =]

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

Patriot's Day

As all of you know, today is September 11th. For all of us "adults" (I use the term loosely) that date will never have the same meaning as it did before 2001, but for the 7 and 8 year olds in my class, it's just another day. They were still years from being born on that tragic day and they don't have "I remember where I was..." stories to tell. The issue for today was: How do we address the importance of the day without scaring the children or oversharing beyond what parents find appropriate. What was even more difficult was the fact that none of the other second grade teachers were doing anything special for the day and my mentor teacher was out of town to greet her son-in-law returning from Afghanistan! So after some searching, I found a nice idea that was simple, but to the point. We made cards for police officers and firefighters thanking them for their service!

The kids came in with this prompt on the board:
     Good Morning! Today is September 11th, Patriot's Day. Please make a card for a police officer or a firefighter thanking them for keeping us safe.

They could choose a piece of red, white, or blue construction paper and use their crayons. I also had a list of words on the board for spelling reasons and to give kids an idea of what to write:

• Thank you
• Brave
• Protecting
• People
• Courage
• Hero

Some of the cards were really sweet! Here's one to a police officer:

"America need's you officer's"

Notice she drew ALL 50 STARS on that American flag. Dedication right there.

"thank you for all the things you do to protect us"

You can tell she worked hard on getting it just right! Here's one for a firefighter:

"Thank you" with a crown? and some stars

"Dear firerfiter's. You are the best. Do you now about the fire by the animel shelter?" And then a place for an answer, of course. I had to warn her that she may not get an answer...

So now I have the issue of how to give these heartwarming cards to police officers and firefighters... I may give the police ones to my dad (a police officer in Jacksonville) to give to rookies, and then swing by a fire station to drop off the firefighter ones. Any better ideas??

So that's how we remembered the victims of 9/11: celebrating the heros of our nation. I wish I had more time to plan a lesson, because I'm thinking of so much more stuff I could have done. But that's a start! How did your school remember today?