First day

It was the best first day of school ever! My kids are precious and so sweet. They respond so well to positive reinforcement and love to give hugs. They have already caught on to the quiet thumb rule and were using it when we went on our specials tour! 

The other half of the class comes tomorrow and then everyone will be there on Friday :)

My night has consisted of dyeing rice for my ball sight word discovery bottles and coloring some new voice level posters. My best friend came over to help and also ended up cutting out a few more sets of baseball words and top banana cards. I have the best best friend in the world! 

What you see in this picture is only half of what we did tonight, which is only half of what will eventually get done!

Meet the Teacher

We had Meet Your Teacher this afternoon at school.  All 17 of my new Smarties and their families showed up, some excited, some nervous, and many shy.  (Side note: can we just talk about how excited I am to only have 17 students?  Last year I started with 23.  This is going to be a nice change!)

Some students (and families) didn't believe I was their teacher- they thought I looked too young!  The struggle is real when you're 24 and look 16.

Hallway bulletin board- considering leaving it up all year and attaching smaller suitcases to clothespins to hang student work throughout the year!

Best moment of the day? 

When a little boy, whom I hadn't even met yet, walked in and came straight over to give me a huge hug!

Or maybe the best moment was when a little girl whom I hadn't even met yet (are you noticing a theme here?), gave me a beautiful picture she'd colored before coming to Meet the Teacher.

Or it could have been that so many of my students from the past 2 years went out of their way to come in and share a smile and a hug.

Loved this idea-- magnetic letters inside a flower jar!

I'm positive this will be the best year yet.  My first year was so rough I wasn't sure teaching was the right job for me.  My second year was significantly better, and I'm genuinely excited and ready for this year to begin.  I can't wait to see what kinds of gains my students will make in all areas of their lives, not just academically!

A hallway bulletin board created by one of my teammates!  So creative!

Blessings

Going to try to remember to post 3 positive things that happen most every day.

Today I thoroughly enjoyed my last day of summer:

1. The weather was absolutely perfect for a motorcycle ride with my friend, Will!

2. I finished reading Love and Logic.

3. Most importantly for today, I got to have dinner and hang out with my cousin who lives in Michigan and whom I only see once every few years. We used to spend entire summers together when we were kids, so it's always a good time when I can see her again!

Goals for the year

Well, today's the last day of my summer, and I'm thinking about the upcoming year.  There are several things I am changing up in my classroom!

Management: I'm doing it... I'm chucking the chart (Gasp)! I've been reading several blogs that encourage teachers to get rid of behavior tracking charts because they're a tool that creates fear and shame, regardless of how positive they're meant to be.  Thanks to Matt Gomez and Miss Night, I'm going to be brave and get rid of the system, and move toward a principles approach. (Check out Chuck the Chart for more information). I've been reading Love and Logic and will be using that approach this year.   

Math: Some of my fellow team members and I participated in a Kathy Richardson Accessing Math Concepts workshop this week, and I am so thrilled that I get to implement her strategies in my classroom!  We are participating in a grant that funds our work, and I can already see a difference in my perspective on how children learn early number concepts. This is going to be so beneficial for kindergarten, first, and second graders at my school. We're also going to be doing Number Talks, which I've heard about over the past few years, but have never actually done. Again, something that will be very beneficial!  

Writing workshop: have a share time more often! So many times my writers get so involved in the process of wiring that we run out of time to share our work. We need to do better about that this year. 

Reading: continuing LLI! Woo hoo!  Also, "teacher directed reading" I want to push my team to do close reads that are kindergarten appropriate based on NC standards and the 4 C's of the 21st century skills- communication, collaboration, critical thinking and creativity! Tara West (Little Minds at Work) has a great post all about close reading in kindergarten!!

Sight words: I bought Marsha Mcguire's Ball Words Sight Words Mastery System- and I'm really hoping it will motivate my kiddos to learn their sight words.  

Back to school nightmares

Back to school? Already? It feels like summer just began, but our first (official) workday is next Friday and the nightmares have begun. You know what I'm talking about. The crazy, never-would-happen-in-real-life, out of control situations that could only happen in the darkest corners of a teacher's mind. 

My most recent nightmare involved my principal requiring kindergarten graduation to be on the 3rd day of school. In the nightmare his reasoning was that parents don't care when graduation is, as long as they get to see their children perform. So, my fellow teachers and I were scrambling to guide our smarties in pulling off a graduation ceremony! Since it was a nightmare, I'll leave it up to you to imagine how the ceremony went. 

Thank goodness that was nowhere close to reality! 

Have you had your first teacher nightmare yet for this school year?