Etch 'n Sketch Reflections

Ahh, winter break, a time for some much needed rest, relaxation, and binge watching! Oh, and watching a certain space movie involving laser swords. But it’s also a great time to get some work done in a nice, quiet school. I know there are some teachers who like to be totally prepped for the week after break before they leave, but that’s not how I work. The week before break already has enough going on, so I like to ease back in the new calendar year by taking advantage of an empty school to get ready for the students’ return. I can’t really say there is much to report on. Prior to leaving for break, I had the students do a word inventory for our Words Their Way program, so those have been checked and the students have been reorganized into their new word groupings. I also took the quiet time to put together several weeks' worth of the word lists for the groups. That and a little mid-year cleaning in the room made for a happy break :-) With that said, I'm going to make this a s...

Yeah, so I couldn't decide on a title. I wanted to be festive, but I also wanted to show that Pinterest was my very good friend this week! I really love this time of year: having seasonal music playing in the mornings when the students come in; stressing the message of kindness throughout the day; asking students if they are spreading kindness or sadness; having a little extra social time with my colleagues! Of course, as I mentioned last week, there is a higher level of energy this week, but it has been a pretty good week! The social studies project the students are working on with Mr. Daniels' class has been going pretty well (there have been a few hiccups with having 4 students collaboratively working in a Google Slide presentation...well, several actually, but who's counting :-) I think this has been a fun experience for the students, and I look forward to finding some more ways to join our classes. But now, on to Pinterest! This Friday, we will be having a classroo...

Other than the end of the school year, the week leading up to winter break (which, ironically, is the end of the calendar year) is probably the most antsy week for students...and teachers. So many things to look forward to: trying to finish up units before the students leave for a week and forget everything (not that they are really internalizing too much to begin with); trying to keep every possible blind in the classroom closed for the fear that a student might notice through the slit between the edge of the window and the blind that IT'S SNOWING (and every other student in the room must know about it at that precise moment because none of them have EVER seen snow); reminding the students that yes, you need to wear your snow pants if you want to play in the snow; and, the topper, planning a classroom celebration for the students to send them off prior to a (hopefully) relaxing and much-needed break for everyone. So, with the craziness that is already happening, why not throw in...

Well, another fast week has seemed to pass us by! I can't believe we will be on Christmas break in just over 2 weeks...there's still so much to do! But I'll be honest, I hope next week goes quickly because I'm going to go see Star Wars next Friday! Anyway...it was a fast week but a productive one as well! Overall, it was a good week with a few highs and lows. My colleagues and I had some fun creating a video to model good and bad writing behaviors. Here is a link--hope you enjoy :-) The audio is rather soft, so you might need to turn your volume up. I would imagine you can guess which example it is... In other news, we had some good learning opportunities for treating others with kindness during this holiday season. The timing for everything is actually perfect! Wednesday was a bit of a low day of the week for some of the students in terms of being respectful towards each other. There was an announcement from a couple of 4th graders that came over the speakers in...

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...