Etch 'n Sketch Reflections

That's how I would describe it. It was a short week, and it has been a nice week (overall). Monday brought about a day of reflection. At the elementary school, we were given some time to visit other classrooms in order to help one another on design and organization in our classrooms. It was a nice opportunity (which is sometimes difficult to really do during the otherwise busy school day) to really look closely at my colleagues' classroom and reflect on how I can make changes within my own classroom. If you have been following my blog since its inception, you will know that I have a rather different classroom arrangement than what is typical. It was nice to share my input with other teachers on the benefits that I am seeing from my classroom setup and also reflect on what I would do differently. I had an additional conversation with another teacher today about how I don't know if I would ever see myself going back to the previous setup I had. By no means do I consider it ...

It's Thursday, but the school week is already over for us in Sheboygan Falls. We have off tomorrow, which is nice, as I am traveling to Minnesota to celebrate the long life of my grandfather and bid him farewell. I will be good to spend some time with family that I haven't seen in awhile and put aside some of the busy times that have been happening at school. But they can't be put aside for very long because there is always a lot to do. I would say my brain was a jumble of this and that over the course of this week, which checklists running through my head constantly. My colleagues in 3rd grade and I had a curriculum day on Monday to work with one of the high school teachers and delve into some of the science standards that we felt like needed to be beefed up. I really appreciate having these days because it gives us an opportunity to really focus in on one particular topic and dig into it. Being out of the classroom, of course, makes for extra work to get ready for a sub,...

We have had quite the exciting week with some breaks from our usual routines! Yesterday my class and another had an exciting field trip that the students were really looking forward to--dog sledding! Our class went to the Siberian Outpost in Johnsburg, WI. We have been going on this field trip for the past several years, and it is consistently a favorite of the students. During social studies the students learn about life in the 1800s and westward expansion, and to go along with their learning, the students are reading the book Stone Fox. On the field trip, the students get to have some fun time petting the dogs and watching them get hooked up to the sled. Then comes the highlight of the trip with rides on the dogsled! Following the dogsled ride, the students get some hot chocolate and cookies, and then they get to learn about some of the in ins and outs of dog sledding. They also learn a bit about the origin and history of the Iditarod. It is a memorable field trip for the students an...

Within the last few months, I've tried to greatly reduce the amount of mindless time-killing that I had been doing on my phone (Candy Crush was my main culprit, and I was obsessed with it). So I quit Candy Crush cold-turkey, and I haven't looked back. I'll be honest, though, I'm not sure how much of the time-killing has been reduced, mainly because it was pretty much redirected to Facebook and Twitter. And while some of it is still mindless, I have had some benefits from the time killing. Because spending a little more time on Twitter helped me to occasionally come across some educational articles. One such article was posted on edutopia. It is about emotional regulation for kids with ADHD, and it caught my eye because, like many classrooms, this is a need some of my students. It really struck a chord with me, because I immediately thought of 3 of my students with serious challenges to their emotional regulation. These students struggle with short tempers, poor interp...