Etch 'n Sketch Reflections

Probably just about every teacher has muttered those words at some point (I know I am most certainly guilty of it). And those words lead to cabinets, drawers, shelves, closets, nooks, crannies, and anywhere else that space is available to be filled up with random junk. But I can say that, as of last Friday, the only time my cabinets, drawers, and closets have ever been cleaner is when the school was brand new. I inherited my room 12 years ago, and I've organized and purged things from the previous resident here and there, but never to the full extent that I could have. It felt good last year to be able to downsize an entire filing cabinet full of master copies from my room. I had always told myself, "They were used by the last teacher, so I will probably use them, too." Some of it I did use, but the curriculum changes, and resources along with it. So it was time to dispose of the paper inside that hunk of metal and free up the space for things I was using. Just as it felt...

It happens every year...field day. A day that pretty much every student looks forward to, and I am usually beat by the end of it. It is a day of extra excitement, and tons of fun, but also a lot of child-wrangling and management skills. My hat is off to the fantastic gym teachers at our school who organize this event every year, as well as all the parents who volunteer to run the activities. We had beautiful weather this year! The students are overwhelmed with joy and competition during the various activities, which include both whole class vs. whole class as well as small group relay events. The events include an obstacle course, fox tail toss, beanbag tic-tac-toe, some water activities (always popular), a scooter challenge, and a bowling pin/frisbee challenge. I usually participate in a few activities, and this year was no different. However, this year I had a new favorite game, which was also the first time it was at the field day. It was a "Critter Grab." The teams needed...

So, if you've been keeping up with my blog, you know that I have a particular student (we'll call her student X) who has difficulties seeing past her own wants and doesn't see the role she plays in the classroom disagreements that she is part of. Well, today she may have reached that tipping point of realization that she is soon going to have no girl classmates that she can look to and call friends if she doesn't start making some honest changes. It may have taken the entire year, with a tremendous amount of frustration, but I think she is finally aware that the girls have reached their breaking point and they are keeping her accountable for her actions. This morning, a couple of the girls (we'll call them A and B) brought it to my attention that X used A's computer to get her way back onto a shared Google project that B had "removed" X from due to how she was treating some of the other girls (we'll call them C and D, whom I'm fairly certain ...

It seems weird to say this, but that was a crazy fast week, and it was a pretty good one on top of it all. Of course there were still the occasional misunderstandings between students and quick reactions rather than calm thinking, but they weren't major explosions. The weather, as a whole, was nice this week other than one day of inside recess (but tomorrow looks TERRIBLE! 80 degrees one day this week and 40 tomorrow? That's a load of cow manure right there...) But it doesn't matter, because tomorrow's Friday, and nothing's going to get me down on a Friday. I had fun with some of the lessons this week. We've been working on reading poetry during literacy time for the last couple of weeks. Last month was National Poetry Month (I know, it's May...our last unit took some extra time so we started poetry a little late!) so we've been reading a variety of poetry books and identifying the thoughts and feelings the poets were trying to express. To cap it off, ...

(For the full experience of this musical masterpiece ) Click at your own risk...if you get the music stuck in your head, that's on you :-) Wow, just like that, it's May! Do you want to know how to make a teacher smile and cringe at the same time? Remind them that there are less than 25 days of school...they will think of the summer ahead and all the things they want to get done with the students before summer arrives.  But back to countdowns. For the last several years, the 3rd grade (and eventually the whole school) has done what we call the ABC Countdown. As everyone probably knows, keeping the students engaged and looking forward to coming to school as the year comes to a close can, at times, be challenging when we have to compete with the allure of sunny, warm days--although these have only been recent events. So, at some point in recent history, we stumbled upon the ABC Countdown as a way to keep the students looking forward to school while we tried to fill their g...