My First Month

Hello Friends,

Since my last blog post two months ago, I completed my long-term substitute job teaching fifth grade at a different school than the one I currently work at and signed a one-year contract to teach a kindergarten/first grade combo class for the rest of the year. If you read my previous post, then you know I had my doubts about having my own classroom this year, but as things tend to go for me, sure enough I was picked up and without a moment left to spare!

This Halloween marks the end of my first month at my new job working in a new district, at a new school, and with a primary combo class that had had 5 different subs over the course of the entire first quarter that I was not there. I have a couple of things to share from the past month and my new experiences.

1. Small tweaks can make the biggest differences. I can't quite pinpoint exactly where I picked it up but over the course of my attending a string of professional development opportunities and watching tons of videos of effective teachers teaching, I noticed that those teachers were calling their students 'scholars'. My go-tos last year were the tried and true: boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen, class, kiddos, my dears, and my loves. "Scholars? That's awesome! I wonder if my kinders and first graders will get it," I thought, but I resolved to call my students that the very first day I met them.

Well, it's been a month and my kiddos, scholars have lived up to their sophisticated title. What has happened in the last month has been nothing short of MAGIC. We went over what it means to be a scholar when we created our classroom norms together at the beginning of the month. As a class we agreed that scholars listen and follow directions, do their personal best, respect themselves and each other, are kind, courterous, and polite, and finally, take pride in all they do. If these sound like every other classroom rules posted in most classrooms that's becasue they are, but as my scholars internalized these norms it was easy to add more and be more specific. Scholars are laser-focused, scholars don't cry, scholars never cheat their brains, etc. Bottom line, my students LOVE being called scholars and they totally own what it means to be one.

It's literally gotten to the point where they get offended when I call them boys and girls. "We're not boys and girls, we're scholars!" they'll tell me. If I catch them acting naughty I just remind them that they are acting like little boys and girls and immediately they show me scholarly behavior. It's incredible. I wish I would've done this my first year of teaching! (I'm also aware and thankful that I just have a really angelic group of children this year.)

2. I love teaching writing in K-1. I'm no Shakespeare but it's no secret that I get a deep sense of joy from writing. Although I find it's one of the hardest things to teach and teach well, man, oh man, I love teaching writing to kinders and first graders!! My school is using Lucy Calkins' Units of Study and I am a huge fan. Yes, I love Lucy. This is my first year implementing a writer's workshop and I am really pleased with the level of enthusiasm my students have for writing and equally as pleased with the caliber of work that they are producing. Right now we're working on informative writing via chapter books. The sample below followed a mini-lesson on how to write a "How To" chapter.

This is one of my kinders who wrote this and I thought it was hilarious.

Shark Pups

Mermaid drops a purse so the sharks have pups.

Pups turn to babies.

Shark pups turn to baby sharks with boosters.

And they grow up.

I toyed with the idea of letting him run with this, but then remembered we're working on informational text. His brain darn near exploded when I told him that sharks don't really have boosters. We shared a great moment.

I am counting down the days for our Publishing Party. I told my scholars I'd invite my friends and their families to come celebrate their chapter books once they are published. They are all working so hard and diligently to write the best chapter books anyone has ever read!

With that, have a grand evening and as always, thanks so much for reading.

Well Done

Hey Friends,

Long time no post! I so badly wanted to post some end-of-the-year updates in the last couple of weeks but time really escaped me during that home stretch. I'm pretty excited to announce however, that I finished my first year of teaching on Friday, June 7, 2013. That's right I'm no longer a "first year" teacher! Don't worry, if you're wondering, I don't intend on changing the name of this blog. Instead, it will serve as a little keepsake and reminder that every year of teaching is kind of like your first year as no two classes are ever the same. Besides, now that my employment status is up in the air, who knows what grade I'll actually be teaching this upcoming school year (if I'm even able to land a job that is). I'm sure it will feel like I'm a first year teacher all over again.

I initially planned to write a reflective piece about my first year of teaching, actually I did in fact write it. The essay I wrote deeply looked at my past year documenting the struggles and challenges I faced with my overflow population, but after going back and forth, I decided not to share it. I made it a point to focus on the positives early on in the school year, at least when it came to this blog - a project I started for fun in grad school but have really grown to love and cherish as an on-going hobby and collection of unforgettable memories. I love reading back on old posts and remembering the special moments I shared with my very first classroom. I also love seeing the evolution of balance that I attempted to achieve while juggling a new career and trying to maintain a happy personal life. In keeping true to this spirit of the blog, I will continue to share my stories through a positive lens. After all, attitude is everything.

So in California, new teachers generally hold a preliminary teaching credential that they have to clear within 5 years (extensions can be granted). Although there are a few options available out there, I decided to go down the most well-traveled route via a two-year program called Beginning Teacher Support Assessment (BTSA) Induction. Taken from their website, BTSA engages preliminary credentialed teachers in a job-embedded formative assessment system of support and professional growth to fulfill the requirement for the California Clear Multiple Subjects credential. BTSA Induction programs are locally designed and implemented in accordance with the Standards of Quality and Effectiveness for Professional Teacher Induction Programs and aligned to the California Standards for the Teaching Profession.

Insectsy and We Know It II

Hey Friends,

If you're coming here straight from part one, you're awesome! And if you're not, don't worry, you're awesome too :). I am starting to think I might have a crush on Mr. Eric Carle. This past week we used yet another one of his children's books, The Grouchy Ladybug as our focus text. Our sight word last week was 'look' and with the abundance of dialogue in the story, I thought it was a good opportunity to review the word 'said', 'you' and 'are' as well. Here are some student samples:

Insectsy and We Know It I

Hello Everyone,

It has been such a strange and overwhelming past couple of weeks, and I think if I had to sum it all up in one word it would be - bizarre. As many of you know, I survived my first case of food poisoning last week, but apparently it was a mere link in a chain of unfortunate events surrounding my bubble of friends. The reading specialist at my school recently got bit by a rattlesnake (he's doing much better now), the school psychologist was out for a couple of weeks due to appendicitis, and last night, my boyfriend also caught a bad wave of food poisoning. Bizarre, am I wrong? I'm bracing myself for a plague of frogs to fall from the sky next weekend. I'm serious. All these obscure and rather outlandish situations have really begun to bug me...

Earth Means the World to Us

Hi Everyone,

Last week we learned about the 3 R's: reducing, reusing, and recycling. We read a bunch of books about recycling and discussed what it means to take care of our Earth. My students especially enjoyed We Are Extremely Very Good Recyclers by Lauren Child. The illustrations and characters (Charlie and Lola) are so much fun and the way the book covers the topic of recycling is just wonderful. Later in the week, after the concept of recycling was in my students' schemas, we sorted out paper, cans, and plastic on our Promethean Board by taking turns completing this short activity.

The Secret KinderGarden

Hi Everyone,

I hope you enjoyed your weekend! I don't know where you are reading this from, but here in San Diego, we are enjoying some absolutely gorgeous spring weather. The low point of my weekend was having to drop my boyfriend off at the airport. Lucky (or unlucky if you ask him) bug gets to travel to Colorado for a few days. I miss him already! The highlight of my weekend was playing frisbee with my friend at the breath-taking beach in Coronado and trying African food (my first time) for dinner. It was the ultimate late Sunday afternoon/evening of R&R if you ask me.

The Carrot Seed

Hi Friends,

Last week we finished our unit on what plants need to grow. I am loving the content that I'm teaching this quarter! It is so engaging and fun for my little ones. The overarching theme of last week was plants, but more specifically, carrots. We used The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss as our focus text and it is truly one of my favorite children's stories. It is such a simple yet poignant tale about the tenacity of a little boy and his belief that despite what everyone tells him, his carrot will grow. I found this text very refreshing as it reminded me of the innocent sense of empowerment that I once had as a child and strive to maintain here in my adulthood.

Needs of Seeds

Hi Everyone,

We finished up our soil/plant wall yesterday and I think it turned out lovely, don't you? The illustrations to accompany the interactive writing are my favorite! Stay tuned for more from our plant unit later this week.

So I have a confession to make...

Creating Classroom Community

Hey Everyone,

Happy Monday! I've kind of been on a blogging kick lately, have you noticed? Anyways, I finished our new classroom door a couple weeks ago (I guess that makes it kind of old now), but forgot to feature it. It took a couple hours to make, but I really believe it was time well spent as it bolsters the sense of classroom community in our room. My students gave me tons of compliments when they saw it the next day and even brought other students from other classrooms to show off to during recess.

A Really Dirty Unit

Hi Friends,

As promised, here are the lessons I did on soil with my kinders last week. After writing and learning about mud pies, we dug a little deeper and explored soil. I launched the lesson with an interactive flipchart on our Promethean Board. For those of you who are not in teaching or familiar with it yet, a Promethean Board is like a chalkboard from the future, and the future is apparently now.

Our morning weather graph flipchart using ten frames with sentence frames

at the bottom to help compare information we see in our graph.

Mud Day

Hey Friends,

What a busy week! We finished our unit on mud, seamlessly setting the stage for plants, by focusing on soil this week. I did so much with this unit that I think I'll post a separate blog post featuring the actual lessons at a future time. For now, I just want to celebrate surviving another two weeks of teaching! My students' behavior continues to be one roller coaster of a ride. I will say, getting spit on and told "you suck" by the same little five year-old girl was a new experience altogether. Interesting way to start off my career to say the least. You know what they say, sticks and stones...

Cubes, Cylinders, Cones, and Spears

Hi Friends,

We started our unit on shapes last week and finished it up today. We did a lot of exploring to learn about the different properties of 2-D and 3-D shapes. I actually taught this unit when I was student teaching a year ago and changed it up a bit for this year.

  

Muddled

Hi Everyone,

With exactly 44 days left before I'm woefully unemployed, I've already started to think about and reflect on this past year. Honestly, I'm really proud of all the things that I've accomplished thus far but I'm also overwhelmingly disappointed with my constant struggles to get my classroom management under control. Recently my class size went down to 19 students and I truly believed things would start to get better. They haven't.  Although I feel like I have my back up against the wall, I'm not giving up until I hear that dismissal bell ring on June 7 and will continue to remain hopeful.

Student teaching, every resource I've read, every teacher I've spoken too, none of it seems to be helping me get through my daily challenges with my students' behavior. I just feel lost. Luckily, I can feel my skin thickening every minute that I am in the classroom and I know come next school year, I'll be ready, so ready. I've found that in these times of trouble, Mother Mary does not call to me. Instead, I get quite the morale boost from reading all the stories my kiddos have written capturing some pretty special moments in the classroom, reminding me that no matter how hard I am on myself, I am a good teacher and I can do this!

100th Day of School

Hi Everyone,

This week, my students and I reached a momentous milestone - we celebrated our 100th day of school! It was a fun-filled day of various activities that my students really enjoyed. To quote, I remember one of my kiddos saying, "This is the best day of school ever!" to another classmate - adorable. As delightful and merry as it was to celebrate, the day week did not go without its kinks.

Keeping My Poise

Hi Friends,

Although Valentine's Day is complete hogwash (blatantly just a Hallmark holiday), there's no point fighting the kids. Kids LOVE Valentine's Day, or Friendship Day as we call it. Good lord, I think it was more popular in my classroom than Halloween and Christmas combined. Needless to say, energy levels were high. Herding and harnessing all that excess energy left me utterly drained, but at the end of the day, I'm glad I kept my poise.

Snow Much Fun Learning

Hi Friends,

Happy February! I don't know about you but I am so looking forward to the four-day weekend coming up, that's right we get an extra day. Oh, and I guess I'm looking forward to spending Valentine's Day with my special sweetheart too :). I just got done making some red playdough for the kiddos following the same recipe found here. A couple weeks ago they got in quite some trouble for leaving the lid off their green playdough and getting lazy with cleaning the center up once activity time was over. Hopefully the short playdough hiatus I enforced will serve as a reminder for them to be more responsible with their classroom materials. As far as my kids are concerned, playdough is a finite resource so they need to learn to take good care of it and make it last. This is an important concept in general but I think it's even more applicable to the current movement in education to teach 21st century skills.

In 'N Out

Hello Friends,

This week was off to such a rough start but it's been smoothing out quite nicely. For one, after working two 4-day weeks in a row, my alarm wasn't set for Monday of this week. Whoops. I completely overslept and had so much prep leftover that I hadn't had a chance to finish over the weekend. I managed to get everything ready before I had to greet my kids at 8:20 when the bell rang so phew, dodged a mullet there. Just another manic Monday.

Winter

Hello Everyone!

My first week back was hectic to say the least, but Monday always seems to find a way to rear its pretty head around doesn't it?

Letter of the Week: Vv

V is for Vase/vegetables.

Back to the Drawing Board

This week our LOTW was the letter Oo, but in all honesty I don't think my students got very much out of this week so I won't be posting about our curriculum. Instead, I'd like to focus this week's post on classroom management. My classroom management (or lack thereof) just got out of hand and I've chosen to go back to the start. After talking to other teachers on my team and really reflecting on my classroom management system I've realized that I have not provided enough support/scaffolding for my students to succeed and meet my expectations. All week long we practiced our classroom rules and expectations. We practiced, and practiced, and practiced some more. We role played different scenarios during our Good Morning Circle time. Teaching kindergarten is so much more than simply teaching the ABCs. I have to teach the routine. Without a solid foundation, I know the remainder of this school year is going to be a struggle.