Etch 'n Sketch Reflections

To think that this time last week I was fully stuffed from Thanksgiving and practicing some thankfulness, I would have to say that this week has flown by (and it was a pretty good week, too)! I can''t say that some of the drama between the kids has decreased following the long week, but we worked our way though it. We have some pretty heavy lifting coming up in the next week with a new writing project starting up, so I am hopeful the students will be successful. We are beginning a writing unit on informational writing, and the students are going to be writing animal books on an animal of their choosing. Informational writing is always a bit daunting because the students are excited at the beginning and then quickly become frustrated during the research phase when they struggle with finding facts about their animals. The students always seem to think that the facts that they need will just pop up on the page and say, "Look right here, these are all the facts that you shou...

'Tis the season to be thankful (although it really should be the season to be thankful throughout the year)! So I thought I'd take this time today to reflect on my thankfulness. I am thankful for my family, who put up with the times when I take over the kitchen table to do school work and are understanding of what my job entails. As challenging as it can be, I am incredibly thankful for my job and the colleagues I get to call my friends. I have a great 3rd grade team and am so thankful for the constant help they provide me! I also receive some tremendous help that I am so grateful to have from very dedicated people who support the special needs of my classroom. I am also thankful for the support I receive from the parents of my students. I appreciate the bond I have made with many of them in order to help the kids. I am thankful for my administrators, who push me to be the best that I can be. And I am thankful for my kids--we've been working through the adventure that is my...

Well, I'd have to say that this was a pretty good week (not that I want to jinx anything going into tomorrow :-) I didn't really have any days where I wanted to pull my hair out (like last week...), we made some nice growth with behaviors, and we started using our Chromebooks at a new level, which I have been looking forward to! This week the students earned their first class reward with their ClassDojo points. Once we got started, I decided to set class goals of every 250 points. As a class, we came up with some rewards that the students would like to earn. I wrote down the ideas (the reasonable ones, that is) on small cards. Once the students met their goal, we picked 2 cards at random, and then the students voted on which one they wanted. For their first reward, the students got to bring in stuffed animals to sit with them throughout the day. We did, of course, need to set some expectations about the stuffed animals so that they wouldn't be too much of a distraction, a...

I will begin by stating that I am fully aware of the fact that I work with children and that many children have difficulties with grasping the concept of sharing and accepting that they can't always have what they want. Nevertheless, I am experiencing a situation with a student this year that takes selfishness to a whole new level, and it seems as the word "No" was not used very often with her during those oh-so-precious years of development. Don't get me wrong, I have seen this girl be very caring towards fellow classmates as they have expressed moments of sadness, but I would also be foolish to not identify the fact that she has been the cause of many moments of sadness on an almost daily basis. This is a point of frustration for me, and so I'm reaching out for some help. Advice is very welcome (but to save some trouble, I should mention that her parents and I keep in contact when issues arise). What thoughts do you have on breaking a cycle of lying ("It...

Late October and early November brings about that time of the year when the school is jam-packed with families awaiting to hear how their children are doing in school. This evening was my first evening of parent-teacher conferences, and it was a nice opportunity to meet with the parents to discuss what things are going well and what things we need to work on. For many of the conferences, this was our first real opportunity to have a meaningful discussion about current progress (there are, obviously, instances that have required additional communication with parents prior to tonight :-) I would say the hardest thing about conferences is keeping them to the 15 minute time periods that they are scheduled for. On top of reviewing how things are going in class, we also need to discuss the district assessments that we have completed. Including these along with any questions or concerns parents may have about work that was in the students portfolios, and that 15 minutes is done in a flash. ...