4th Grade

OMG!!! I am moving from second to fourth grade. What do I do? Where do I start? On top of that my classroom is super duper tiny. Any suggestions or tips?

IRA

So it's day 2 here at the IRA conference and I am having a good time. The part that I think everyone likes to here is they giveaway free stuff. I just couldn't believe how much stuff I walked away with today. I spent 2 1/2 hours (yes I said hours :-) ) in the exhibit hall. I was able to meet a new up in coming author, Courtney Shienmel and have an autographed copy to show my kiddies!

  

The line for R.L. Stine was extremely long so I couldn't get to him. There were many authors all around.
The main theme at almost all the booths were Common Core which make me a little apprehensive about starting it next year but I spoke to an Imagine It rep and she told me the eSuite that we use will have the CCS associated with it online soon.
I attended a few sessions that were good and some that made me feel like I was sitting in a data meeting at work! I attended a session on the DAILY 5 but all they kept saying was read the book, read the book, procedure, procedure....if I needed a reminder of classroom management I would have chosen a workshop on that. Hopefully the 2 sisters are more informative.
Chicago is a very historic city. The architecture on the buildings and a lot of us going WOW!! I really think if you had the opportunity to attend next year in San Antonio, TX you should jump on it. It is a great enlightening experience. It is also a great place to network.

Magic Kingdom, Spring Break, IRA Conference, April Currently

Magic Kingdom Fun

So I live in Orlando, home of Mickey Mouse and all fun things imaginable. The place where dreams come true. My family came to visit so my nieces could experience the magic of their dreams coming true. Here we go:

Cinderella's Castle yes the Cinderella!!! The other Princess castles should be done next Spring.

My niece Treasure with my mom and stepdad in the background

My niece Tariya after she had a meltdown over a $70 princess dress that my mom refused to buy.

The girls and I 

We had a great time and I am glad the came on their Spring Break to visit. Now on to my Spring Break....

I had to bring the class pet Max the rabbit home with me this week and he clearly was missing the class in this picture

Florida teachers get into Sea World for free so two fellow teachers and I took the trip less than 5 miles from my house.

I'm underwater lol

To wrap Spring Break up my annoying lovely boyfriend and I took his son to the Science Center for his 2nd Birthday!

IRA Conference

Are any of my fellow bloggers going to the International Reading Association's Conference in Chicago at the end of this month? I am so excited to go woohoo!! 

If you are going leave me a comment I would love to meet up. To top it off I get to go to a Daily 5 workshop facilitated by the Two Sisters!!!!

April Currently

On to the April Currently hosted by the very own Mrs. Farley over at Oh' Boy 4th Grade.

My super power is something I think everyone might wish for as a single or even a married teacher.

Update, Currently

So I have definitely been behind in posting but I have been keeping up with everything in the blog world. Here are a few pics of things I have been doing in my classroom.

We had an in school Field Trip to the Zoo!

 The bear tracks

 They are obviously in deep "discussion" (arguing)

 Our class pet Max! He is a wild bunny that chases us and pees on us! Ugh!!!!

 The kids made Valentine's Day mailboxes.

 My monkey mailbox :-)

 More kids boxes

 My gift to the kids

 Our solar oven experiment

 Everybody say S'mores!

My lovely Thirty-One bag arrived!

Now we are all caught up!

Everybody loves Farley's Currently. This one is so cute for March. To join her Currently Party for Click Here.

March Currently

February Currently and my uber stuffy nose day!

Here is my February Currently...Thanks to Mrs. Farley over at Oh Boy 4th Grade!

So today I was uber stuffy and sneezing all over the place. Germs run around our classroom like crazy. I had 3 kids out today. We try to sanitize all the time. Ugh its the worst when you have to work and your not feeling your best. My kids try to be my little nurses which is hilarious. I loathe being absent so I take my sickness to work even though I tell my kids not to come to school when they are sick "Do as I say not as I do?"

Clutter Free Classroom Challenge

So I am not even going to lie....I feel like I stalk Clutter Free Classroom. Others teachers walk into my classroom and call me organized while in my head I am screaming "This place is a mess." So I decided to post a few pictures of my classroom.

Here is my forbidden zone. My desk area that the kids sit in more than I do since my classroom computer count is limited.

Here is one side of my classroom when the kids are grouped together. Their "Goal Tracker Binder" If any of you know about Marzano and his scales we have a complete book that we were forced to make scales based on our state standards.

Here is a view from my small groups table of the kiddies in their "testing spots." I used two folders  and stapled them together to make their personal "house"- dividers.

So here is my challenge #1. I have posted a few pictures of my classroom. I am behind a few weeks but I hope i catch up.

If you want to join in on her Clutter-Free Classroom Challenge here is the link Click Here.

What do you love? Linky Party

I saw a cool linky party at Funky First Grade Fun. Join in on the fun. Here is mine

Click on the link above to join in.

I found a cute freebie on Second Grade Sugar and Spice blog. Check it out. 

Gas LOL

Passing Gas is like to biggest issue in my class. The kids like freak out about other people "letting one rip." They scream and laugh and basically embarrass the one who did it to the point where they don't want to at least say "Excuse me!" I may snicker a little myself but hey laughing is contagious and I got it from the kids. How do you handle it?

Rollercoaster Day

Today was such a crazy day!
I had to take Max (the class bunny) back to work with his new cage. Which took up the entire backseat! Good things I don't have kids.
Its Report Card Conference Week, mind you we do it with out report cards until Friday. What sense does that make? Woohoo!!
First meeting was at 7:30AM. With one of those blame it on the teacher parents. WHAT was I thinking?
So now I have to give the monster little darling extra tasks around the room to keep him occupied.
Then I finally made my file folder activities to put on the laminating table since were not allowed to laminate ourselves at this school HA!
Centers were interesting explaining the new BOGGLE area.
My kids loved the BOGGLE game thanks to all the people who posted about it.
No recess cause I had to work on Fountas and Pinell testing! UGH!! What fun LOL.
Good things my students are making gains because our FAIR scores were good but not accurate.
Language Arts came and went.
Due to our new AR crunch for points I had to have the kids read practically every free minute of the day including lunch. The poor little babies were so engrossed in their book some of them didn't finish eating/barely ate at all.
MATH was quick as it could possibly be since my students understood equal parts "in a snap" or "like that" *snaps fingers* (its a inside class joke).
We played addition and subtraction Top-It, thanks to TpT I finally understood what Top-It meant ( don't judge me)
We learned about energy in Science and if anyone has any great activities for this please let me know.
Specials flew by while I spent it running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to get things ready for the week. Not much was accomplished because I stopped to talk to my mentor and ran out of time.

Worked the car rider line......I felt like I was burning up. In Florida the weather makes no sense.
And guess what I had 4 meeting scheduled after school and only 2 showed up, but only two showed up which is great odds compared to the last nine weeks conferences (not to many supportive parents at this school which has its bonuses but pitfalls)
After all that I roamed around Michael's trying to think of a craft idea to make for my friends at our gift exchange this weekend.
How did your day go?

Activities that found while Blog Surfing and TpT

I definetly have been blog surfing all weekend. Below is a freebie from:






Click Here Its a great set to the math centers that I am trying build in my classroom.

I also bought a great Word Work Literacy Center from:

                  

Unrealistic Expectations!

So you know the unrealistic expectations by the "man" (in my case woman) never ends. So I decide to be a "slave" to my emails and check them and now I find out I have to create an AR (accelerated reader) chart and put it outside my door to display how my kids are scoring. Whoopie!!
Not only that I have to increase my students goals from 6 to 10 when they barely made it to 4 last nine weeks. This is just hilarious to me. She even said that we need to continue to set the goals high but hey when I have some kids that only read books that have 0.5 points (thats if they answer all the questions correctly) I personally think it is setting my kids up for embarrassment.

Anyways after my rant I am of course about to head to Target and get on it because the deadline is Thursday! I will post pictures of my completed display soon!

Giveaways

So as I am surfing the other teacher's blogs (starting to become addicted), I noticed that there are a lot of giveaways going on. Here are two links I found.




Is giving away a $10 Gift certificate to the TeachersPayTeacher Store. That would definitely get me whats on my wishlist. How about you?
AND
  Is giving away a $10 Scrappin' Doodles Gift Certificate. 
Be sure to check out both of their pages and enter to win because I definitely am!

A Day In My Shoes

I saw this link by Adventures of a 6th Grade Teacher and thought it was a great idea to see how much I do in a day since my bf thinks my days are super easy.

6:00am My alarm goes off on my phone and depending on if I fell asleep at a decent hour I slowly roll out of bed.

6:02-6:25 Handle bathroom needs, including fall asleep in the shower at least twice.

6:25-6:50 Iron clothes which I should have done the night before like my mother taught me but that's not the case at the moment. Eat breakfast, look for shoes and get dressed.

6:50-7:00 Do my hair. 

7:00-7:20 Make a mad dash out the door to get to Publix and get lunch if I didn't cook the night before.

7:20 Supposed to be at work but I am waking him up to drop me to work or kissing him goodbye.

7:22 Waltz into the school since I only live around the corner (a plus!)

7:23-7:50 Sign in, check mailbox, check emails, write today's planner and turn the elmo and projector on, write the CBC on the board, get Truimphs Intervention items ready for the day, check that all centers are ready to go and change the center chart (if I don't the kids will surely remind me ughh)

7:50-8:05 Talk to my neighboring teachers and make sure their is nothing I missed when they talked to each other.

8:05 Let the kids in and be bombarded with questions and listen to what happened to them the night before

8:07-8:15 Announcements, the late breakfast kids trickle in, students copy their planner, unpack bookbags and make sure everyone put their homework in their bookbag, Take attendance, check emails again

8:15-8:45 Intervention (Triumphs!) Convince my other kids to go to a center and not walk around the room aimlessly because the center they wanted was taken and get my Lions group to all go to the same center (no matter what day it is they never want to work together)

8:45-9:15 Whole group reading using the SRA Imagine It! curriculum. I like it way more than Houghton Mifflin

9:15-10:15 Small groups which consists of teaching the school wide focus and trying to fit guided reading in while the others are at centers and the kids fighting over wanting to use my computer and especially the laptop since we don't have enough student computers.

10:15-10:45 "Physical Activity" a.k.a Recess but recess is a forbidden word at my school

10:45-11:15 Language Arts which includes my students constantly begging for me to hurry the writing lesson so I can teach them cursive (they have to learn to sign at least their name according to me even though penmanship has been abandoned in schools even though it is a state standard) 

11:15-11:20 Clean up, line up for lunch, get the math lesson ready for after lunch (bell to bell scheduling people...so unrealistic but you try to follow the rules)

11:20-11:25 Try to make it to lunch on time and convince the kids that decide to tie their shoes once we leave the classroom to make it down the hall.

11:25-11:50 My 25 minutes to scarf down my lunch, chat with my second grade team as they are trickling out of the lounge within my first 10 minutes, try to remember to use the bathroom, check mailbox, check emails and pick up the kiddies on time. Listen to who bothered who and who hit who in the cafeteria like their aren't cafeteria monitors for the kids to tell 

11:50-12:50 Math Time (the biggest time crunch of my day) Teach the lesson as a whole group, independent practice for about 10 minutes, 5 minute quiz, math centers

12:50-1:10 Science or Social Studies depending on the day of the week

1:10-1:20 Grab book bags, Feed Max (the class bunny), Pass out planners, listen kids begging to go to the treasure box, stack chairs, clean the room

1:20-2:10 Supposed to be my planning time but who actually has time to plan? Sit in meetings/workshops/training, listen to the other "entertaining" days of my co-workers

2:10-2:22 Pick up kids from specials, make sure everyone has a book to read for AR, pencils sharpened, check emails, stamp planners or write notes for my "overactive" students

2:22-2:27 Have kids switch with the teacher next door and I take my set of walkers and car riders out

2:27-2:45 Run the second grade car rider spot since I know all the cars for each of them

2:45-2:50 Check mailbox, check emails, clean up my tables, make a mad dash for the door before anyone stops me to have a long conversation like they aren't tired too!

2:50-bedtime Check more emails, surf the web for games that I can play with the students based on the school-wide focus, cook dinner, catch up on my DVR shows, be woken up from the couch to go to bed by him.

That's pretty much my day in a nutshell.

Currently

So I am now trying out Ms. Farley's Currently. I tried my best to get it correctly on the page.

First Day of Blogging

So I am new to the blogs but I am excited to start documenting my journey through the best career in the world. I am teaching second grade and loving every minute of it (besides the foolish ideas of Marzano evaluation system).