Summer School's in Session

As my title suggests, we're back in school! Honestly though, after spending a year in a big, crazy, school, this feels more like camp. There aren't many kids (about one class per grade) and we do an hour of community building, almost 3 hours of instruction, lunch, then almost 2 hours of instruction. It's a lot for the little ones, but it's only 4 weeks and you know they're bored after hanging outside in the heat for a couple of days of summer break!

Preach

So this week we are just observing other teachers, getting together our vision of our classroom and a classroom management plan, and having courses at the school about a variety of things. Monday, we officially start teaching with pre-made lesson plans. We're using these for a week and a half or so before we start writing our owns. They also give us a unit overview so our lessons aren't completely random!

After 11 days at Institute, I'm feeling tired, but not overwhelmed...yet. I had a heck of a day though. Our dorm fire alarm went off at 5:45, which coincides exactly when I was going to get up and get ready. I sat outside in our pajamas for a bit, but they pushed back our bus departure time, so that was good! Then after being at school for 7 hours, we had 3 hours of class. In the last hour, the power went out and we had to go to a different dining hall for dinner. Mixed blessing because the walk was further but the food was great ;)

Me this morning, BEFORE the fire alarm

NOW I'm trying to figure out this whole "finish my masters degree and actually graduate and get certified" thing. I have a little over a week left of my online class and then I. AM. DONE. FOREVER. (or at least until I get the notion that I want a PhD hah!) It's just a pain trying to navigate how to apply for a Florida license and then transfer it to Tennessee by the time I start on August 5. Time is creeping up on me! Well, wish me luck for Monday. That's when my collaborative group of 3 starts teaching a small group of first graders and we hit the ground running. But first: the weekend. Hooray!

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!

Confession Time

Wanna hear my sad and pathetic confession? I had zero idea what teachers did during planning week. If I was forced to guess, I would offer up a weak "um... plan?" and then shrug and hand over my elementary ed diploma in shame. But fear not. I have learned what planning week entails. BOY HAVE I. All of you teachers out there are emphatically nodding your head and now I understand why. Announcement: planning week is not just decorating bulletin boards and sorting manipulatives (though that definitely happened). We just went through four solid days of hardcore meetings. Everything from faculty meetings, to meetings about common core (the new nationwide standards), to meetings about VAM, RTI/MTSS, FAIR, DRA, and CCSS. Y'all, remember when I said educators like acronyms? I wasn't kidding! But in all honesty, I found the meetings really interesting and was so proud of my widdle program at UF because I felt totally prepared to handle everything they threw our way. I was like "Oh! I know what that is! Oh! I know what that is, too!" It was so exciting!

In between all the meetings, we had some time to set up the classroom and would you just look how cute our bulletin board in the hallway looks?! (Recognize the saying? It's one of the 7 habits!) It's so fun seeing all the second grade rooms in our hall. Our hall bulletin boards are the best, though. We have turned our children into bees, frogs, owls, monsters, and safari animals. Just another Thursday in the life of a teacher ;)

You can also see we have a little owl from the board across the hall!

Teacher milestone! My first time introducing myself to the parents! In the past, I was in and out of the class so often we didn't bother introducing ourselves to parents, but this year, I got to add an addendum to my teacher's note and write a little hello. I feel like I shouldn't be this excited..... but I am! haha

Can you see my sweet little paragraph at the bottom? I felt like a celebrity signing 20 of these

Other than that, everything's been busy, but exciting. A lot of the teachers on my team are new or fairly new, so we're all asking questions and I feel a little less of an outsider. I can't wait to meet the kids tomorrow at registration and then start school Monday!

My Ultimate Teacher Binder

One thing I discovered last semester during my pre-internship was that I like having one big binder that I can put everything in, instead of individual notebooks or binders for each subject/class. I used and abused my binder last semester so bad that I knew I wanted a bigger one this year and I wanted it organized and not thrown together last minute (not that I did that last time ;) ) So after bunches and bunches of blog hopping and pinterest perusing, here is my little beauty!

The first thing I did was make a binder cover for my 2 inch binder. I found these adorable workshop binder covers and added my school logo and mascot to make it my own!

The cover of my binder

The inside page with a To-Do list behind it

The inside page with the quote is from The Curriculum Corner that had an amazing post with tons of free printables, including covers like the one above. 

Ok so I guess the real purpose of the binder is for information and not just cute stuff (whatever), so I divided up my sections into: Important Information, Lesson Plans, Student Data, Course Information, Meeting Notes, Standards and Assessments, and Miscellaneous. 

Those owls! Too much, right?! I used the templates I found here for the cover pages for each section. You can edit them in PowerPoint and use them for anything! New favorite resource. The font is called Good Dog and you can get it here.
For the important information section, I put the district schedule, a class schedule, our school's last accountability report, and anything else I'll need quickly!

Anything to make lesson plans more fun, right?

It's just begging for plans to be filled in

For my lesson plan section, I have a calendar template for each month I found at KindergartenWorks and you can write in the general idea of what you'll be focusing on each week/day. You can see her examples on her blog. This is also where I'll put finished written lesson plans and other guidelines for the curriculum.

For meeting notes, I printed out some copies of these meeting notes so I won't have to waste a notebook writing little notes here and there. It will also keep my excessive note taking to a minimum. Half page and you get cut off. Sorry. No more notes for you. Here are the rest of my section titles. I also put my internship manual in the back and my little personal planner in the front.

My Internship manual in the back of the binder.

The best part of something like this is that I can add and take stuff out throughout the year, which is great because I have a feeling some unexpected things will happen, just call it a hunch ;) Do you keep a binder? Or individual notebooks? Am I missing anything?? Hope all your pre-planning preparation is going well!!

So Very Pinteresting

Happy Monday everyone! If you're on summer break and anything like me, you have no idea what day it is without looking at a calendar, so here's your reminder. It's Monday! I have two more weeks until some inservice teacher training with all the teachers at the school, three weeks until planning with my mentor teacher, and four weeks until the first day of school! Eeeek!

I wanted to share what I've been doing the last couple of weeks. I decided to take the free time to finally do some things I've been pinning on Pinterest. Check it out!

1) Color coding your keys

Ok, so I only have one house key, but there's no rule saying you can't have one colorful key! I even added a little glitter because who doesn't like glitter?

Cute, right?!

2) A DIY work-out shirt

This was more of what-do-I-do-with-this-huge-shirt solution than a I-need-another-work-out-shirt solution. I had a couple of big shirts and this made them cute and wearable! You could use them as work-out shirts or as comfy tanks to wear to the beach or just lounging around. I used my rotary cutter to make the lines even cleaner. 

Being home alone all day leads to a lot of mirror shots

3) Easy cheesy crackers

Oh my goodness- new favorite. I made these in my Kitchenaid mixer with just three ingredients! I used white flour because I'm too lazy to make a trip to buy whole wheat, and I used the pepper-jack cheese I had instead of cheddar for the same reason. The second time I made these, I rolled out the dough and cut out cute little stars! I thought it was easier than slicing a log of dough and they looked great. Also, cooking them longer actually made them taste like Goldfish. Amazing. 

First batch- stars are SO much cooler though ;)

4) A full apron

With all this baking, I definitely needed an apron. But if I had a nickel for every time I said "I'm not paying real money for that. I could make that" well, I would be very rich. So I went up to Walmart and paid a whopping $3 for some fabric and put together this masterpiece. Men just come running when you put an apron on. It makes you irresistible. Trust me. But in all seriousness, I'm thinking this would make a great gift for people!

Smokin' hot. Amiright?

5) Rotel cups

Last but certainly not least are these little bites of heaven. Oh. my. goodness. The best thing to compare these to are chips and queso because of the crispiness of the cups and the cheesy, rotel-y, bacon-y, creamy filling. Seriously, you cannot eat just one, five, fifteen. These are great for parties because they're cheap and make a ton! I didn't take a picture because, well, we may have inhaled them before I could get a picture. Judge free zone, here. So here's a picture from the original source. 

I'm getting hungry just looking at these

So that's what I've been up to. Check out the original pins by clicking on each title and try them yourself! What have you been doing to keep you busy this summer??

 

New Beginnings

Hello and welcome to my blog! I'm so excited to get this going and start a blog following this new phase in my life. To tell you a little bit more about me, I just graduated from the University of Florida (go gators!) with a degree in elementary education and am now working on my masters degree in elementary education. UF just changed up the graduate program so that it consists of a yearlong internship with online classes and can be done in any county in Florida. So I moved home two weeks ago to save some money and intern in my home county of St. Johns! I'll be in an inclusive second grade classroom and am really looking forward to it!

edugator: get it? get it?

Now that I'm home, I'm enjoying my month-long vacation by reading all day, trying new pinterest recipes, experimenting with crafts I've been too scared to try (quilting, anyone?), and laying out by the pool with my sweet, sweet Sadie dog. Try not to be TOO jealous over there, I still have one online class and, boy, watching the bachelorette can be really stressful.

Meet Sadie- my 3 year old chihuahua-pug mix. Isn't she just the cutest?!

I wanted to write a blog to share what being a preservice teacher is like and because I wish I had a blog to read when I was an underclassman education major trying to figure out what this journey would look like! I also really love reading other teacher blogs and wanted to join that community hardcore. So here I am! Love meeeeeee please ;)