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...

...seriously be done with half the school year, can we? How did we already get to this point? Maybe it's just me getting old, but it seems like these milestone moments of the year come and go in a flash. Before I know it, Easter will be here! But I won't get ahead of myself... Being that this is the middle of our school year, it seems like a good time to reflect on some of the highlights for this year. Math this year brought about a change of structure, and I really like it. Using the Daily 3 model allows me to really get a lot of face time with students at the individual levels they are working at. This model really requires me to put the responsibility of learning in the students' hands, and I need to trust that the students are making good choices with what they are working on when they are not working with me. We have also made a change to the system we use for learning multiplication and division facts. Beginning last year and then over the summer, I worked on a ma...

The book Wonder,  by R. J. Palacio, has been all the rage in my classroom these last few weeks. A few students saw the movie during winter break and brought books in that they received for Christmas. Since then, they have been rather popular books to check out from the library. I have to admit that I haven't read the book, but I've heard wonderful things about it. I know my daughter has read it, so I'll have to see if it is a book she has that I can borrow. I know one of the main themes of the book is kindness, which is a major topic that we have been discussing in the classroom this year. Speaking of kindness, one of my students did a very kind thing for me recently! She was one of the students who received the book for Christmas. Apparently her book was part of a set, and one of the books in the set was a book of quotes. She thought of me and the mindfulness thoughts that we do every week, so she is letting me borrow the book for the rest of the year :-) One more me...

That's what it was. Like, "I can't remember what I did on Monday" long. The main issue was that I have a cold, so it made for some tired days. That and I was kind of losing my voice. I'm pretty sure all of Wednesday must have seemed like I was going through puberty the way that my voice was cracking. I definitely am very thankful for the Redcat hands-free microphone and speaker that I have in my room after this week! Luckily, I feel like I am on the tail end of my cold--most of the stuffiness is gone, and I just need to catch up on sleep. I probably should have stayed home one day to give my throat a rest, but I'm stubborn... It was a pretty eventful week. All the testing that I talked about last week is pretty well finished up. I'm very pleased with the progress that the class made with the aimswebPlus testing. The class as a whole showed some pretty nice growth! I haven't had a chance to check the math fact tests yet, so that is on the docket for t...