Deep Breaths

I have to write this post quickly because I realized I forgot my laptop charger in my classroom. ALL WEEKEND. I may suffer withdrawal symptoms later today and especially tonight. I guess I could use Rob’s desktop but I find his keyboard difficult to type on. Does anyone else have that problem? New keyboards are hard to get used to using? Agh, I’m wasting precious battery life with this ramble. Onto the school week!

Monday felt very similar to how I’m feeling right now sans laptop charger. It was just madness and confusion and I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to:

      a)    go cry in the corner; or     

      b)   put my head through a wall.

I decided to go with secret option c and run out the doors at lunch and give myself a nice break in the car with some Christmas music.

I have to get one thing straight: my kids were not being bad. Not at all. It was because I had been gone for three literacy periods last week (refer to previous post) and I was determined to finish the task that the supply teachers didn’t get around to doing. I guess it was so far beyond the point of instruction that my kids were in a panic because they didn’t know what to do or they didn’t have the confidence to do it independently, and I had 18 little children poking me, tapping me, lips quivering, panicked faces, following me around the classroom, calling my name, elongating the second syllable (Lawreeeeeeeence). It was just too much.

On my little break at lunch, I thought for a moment and asked myself, “Is it worth it?” I’m talking about the assignment, not the profession. That’s clear that up. I decided to go back after lunch and scrap the assignment and just move on. I could  get a mark out of them with something else. I think they were equally as relieved when I told them we were moving on from Little Red Riding Hood (that’s the writing task that had us all flustered) and move onto the adaptation of Beauty and the Beast. They were thrown because I didn’t read them the original, but I explained that there just wasn’t enough time. It’s okay because they loved “No Lie, I Acted Like a Beast” and did a wonderful job at writing the final point of view recount. Finally, I could breathe again.

This little situation really taught me how to roll with the punches. The teaching profession requires you to be flexible, and I totally am with a lot of things; but I’m also insanely obsessive compulsive with so many other things that I was finding it hard to let go of my plan. Sometimes, you have to wave goodbye to your control and start anew. The kids were happy, I was happy, and I got a great final writing piece to mark.

The rest of the week went uphill from there. They were pretty sad when I told them that due to the cold weather, it was time to shut down Candy Land. They booed, they pouted, they BEGGED for me to keep it open. They suggested that when I teach them Grade Two (haha, cute) we could open it once more. I gave them their final math tasks and I was so happy to see that they could do it independently. Goodbye, Candy Land. You made math fun for the month of November.

I’m going to go into detail about our Christmas plans in another post, but I’ll touch on it here. We are doing a fundraising project for those who are less fortunate, so to REALLY end off Candy Land, my Grade Ones and the other Grade One class made two gingerbread houses on Friday. We will raffle them off next week to raise money for our project. The kids loved it and we all had a lot of fun making them together.

There’s a lot more to tell from our week in Grade One, but to do that, I’d have to explain all about the big Christmas plan. Maybe I’ll make a mid-week post. I will tell you that I stayed at school until 5:00 on Friday getting ready for December. I know I’m crazy. It was Friday night! I got rid of our November stuff, put out some December materials, and hung some decorations to make the room more festive. I hope the kids love it as much as I do when they come in on Monday.

Okay. Time to get this on Blogger and upload the pictures. I’m at 51% so I think I should be good to go. Think of me as you’re on your computers today. Mine will most likely be sitting sad and unused on the coffee table, and I will be angrily hitting the backspace key on Rob’s keyboard in the other room.

Grade One creativity is so beautiful, isn't it? Don't worry. They all had to wash their hands before touching anything. 

Head over and visit my friend, Sam for her Holiday Hoopla package. I used her cards and adapted them to make a Math Match Up game. Now that the kids know how to represent numbers and skip count, this will be a great math centre activity. Print, laminate, cut, repeat. That was my Monday night.

I had some great door ideas planned from Pinterest, but I realized I was being too ambitious. Maybe next year...

19 days until Christmas break!

A Monday Giggle

Good morning, fellow teachers. To some, I’m sure 6:30 is excruciatingly early, but to the average elementary teacher, I’m sure you’ve already accomplished a heck of a lot this morning.

I have already got myself out of bed, showered, checked emails, and…well…that’s when the productivity ended because I stumbled across this blog post and I thought it was so funny. I just have to share it with you. Click on the link to read why you should not date a teacher. I guarantee you’ll laugh.

 So for those of you readers who are saying, “Aghh! What on Earth do I get Molly for Christmas?!?!?!”

Just head on over to Scholar’s Choice. You can’t go wrong.

And to Rob:

Thank you for putting up with this behaviour with a smile on your face. You are a brave, patient man. It’s probably why you’re able to teach high school.

Happy Monday!

Supply Teachers, Assemblies, and Workshops… Oh My!

My kids had a total of three different supply teachers this week, as well as two assemblies. So as you might imagine, this week wasn’t our most productive week. On Tuesday, I had a prep payback (due to a previous supply teacher shortage, I had to take my kids during a period that I normally had a prep, so the school had to give me that time back). Right after recess, we had an assembly. On Thursday, I had an appointment to go to, so I was off until lunch; but my kids go to drama for an hour, so I only saw them for 40 minutes that day. On Friday, I went to a workshop for Kindergarten and Grade One teachers, so I left my class with a supply and another assembly to attend. My kids always give me the third degree whenever I’m not there, which is really cute because they just want to make sure that I’m okay. Because of this chaotic week, I really don’t have too much to share.

We read two versions of Little Red Riding Hood; the original and an adaptation called, Honestly, Red Riding Hood was so Rotten! You all know by now how much my kids love these stories.

We continued our work with our 2D shapes, symmetry, and skip counting in our Candy Land. I gave them this activity to do, allowing me to assess their knowledge about 2D shapes. 

At first, I gave them a blank area and let them draw it, but it was so hard to determine what their shapes were. Like all good teachers do, I put that R word to practice and REFLECTED on how to make the task better. Colour coding seemed like the logical choice.

Tuesday happened to be our 50^th day of school, so we had a little 50s party! Some of them came to school wearing polka dots, dresses, preppy sweaters…but my favourite was my one boy who gelled his big, curly hair down into a comb over. It was priceless! We made root beer floats, and listened to some 50s hits. They really enjoyed "Good Golly Miss Molly" (for obvious reasons). As we were making our root beer floats, our school’s speech and language pathologist popped in to chat with me, and one of my boys approached her and said, “I’ve had SO much beer today!” I really hope he didn’t say that to anyone else in the school that didn’t know that he was actually talking about a root beet float!

I know this is a very short blog post, but that’s what happens when I’m not in the classroom with the kids very much. I really missed them! For now, I’ll leave you with our shared reading for the week. 

(A poem that went nicely with our current weather, as well as our work with nouns and adjectives)

I just got in from a big day of Christmas shopping. I now have all the gifts for my boyfriend's family and a few things for the people in my family. After a long and successful day, it's time to rest up and get rid of this step throat. That’s right. Strep throat. AGAIN. I’m tellin’ ya, I just can’t seem to stay illness free this year!

27 days until Christmas break / 27 days until I’m far away from all the germs : )

Seriously, Ms. Lawrence is SO Forgetful!

I’m that person that will tell you the same story a thousand times in your lifetime. What usually happens is I’ll tell you the same story more than once in the same day. I shared this bit of information with my class and they thought it was hilarious; especially since I read them a Snow White adaptation called, Seriously, Snow White was so Forgetful! I swear, the books in this series are hilarious.

What I didn’t forget were all the parent/teacher interviews I had on Thursday and Friday. I have 18 kids and I saw 17 families for one on one interviews. The 18^th family spoke to me on the phone. It’s nice to know that the families of my onesies are so involved in their children’s learning and social growth. Every single one of my families are so sweet and nice, and I don’t think there was one interview where we weren’t laughing about something. As a teacher, it’s great knowing that you have support from your students’ families. It makes various situations that much easier.

In our world of Candy Land, I introduced them to the rides. I think we had enough imaginary pizza, cotton candy, and pop for a while. The point of the rides was that for each ride they went on, they had to use five tickets. The questions I gave them reinforced the counting by fives skill. For those who really grasped counting by fives, I would give them high numbers in their problems, such as:

[Student] went on 8 rides. How many tickets did he use?

And those kids would run up to me and say, “I was soooooo dizzy after going on that many rides!” It was too adorable how excited they got.

I also returned to the 2D shapes piece in math and told them that our Candy Land was doing so well with all that money we earned from the restaurant, that I have decided to open up another Candy Land in a new location. Thus, (yeah, I said thus) we need to become architects and design the new restaurant for the new Candy Land. When I explained to them what an architect is (that an architect designed our school) they. were. pumped.

They had to use and identify the 2D shapes in their restaurant layout. It was an easy way for me to determine who knew their 2D shapes.

We ended the week off with some Eric Carle artwork. I read them A House for Hermit Crab and we made our own hermit crab art that I got from this website:

http://www.momto2poshlildivas.com/2011/06/happy-birthday-eric-carle-week-art-wa.html.

How great do these look?

It went well with our shared reading we looked at this week.

We began learning all about nouns and adjectives. I time travelled a little bit and found this song on YouTube. It’s from a computer game I used to play when I was little called Jumpstart Second Grade. The song was clearly catchy enough that I remembered it after all this time.

Here are some other pictures from our classroom this week.

Oh, the random things they leave for me to find! As she says, “Have a good weekend!”

A Continuous Case of the Sillies

It was a fun and silly week in Grade One as we started off our new units. The big idea for this month is “There are two sides to every story”. I let them ponder that for a few minutes, and hoped that something would click after reading a few stories. Our literacy focus this month is on recounts and points of view between an original fairy tale and its adaptation.

I started them off by reading Cinderella by Cynthia Rylant. The boys were NOT impressed. It’s a longer book and I’ll admit, it’s really not that exciting. They were squirming on the carpet and interrupting the story to ask when it was over. Normally that would drive me nuts (and it sort of did) but I was actually happy to see that they found the original story to be pretty dull….because….the next story I had up my sleeve would put the first one to shame. I bought this fantastic series of fractured fairy tales. They tell the same classic tales from someone else’s point of view. A few days later when I read them Seriously, Cinderella is so Annoying! they were howling with laughter. They were more than happy to compare it to the original Cinderella story. This one is told from the stepmother’s point of view where she is the nice one and Cinderella (or Cindy) is an annoying chatter box who never stops singing and telling crazy stories. The kids loved it.

Halloween had come to an end and although I didn’t want to see any more candy, I didn’t want the kids to lose their excitement over having engaging math problems to solve. So I built the wonderful world of Candy Land! Using my imagination of course, I designed a delicious world where the Halloween goodies were made into a thrilling theme park. The kids totally ate it up (get it?!). Anyways….there are various components to Candy Land and I told them we must begin by identifying the shapes that I used to construct the castle. We talked about 2D shapes and what they have in common.

Next, I took them into the restaurant where we have this menu posted on our math wall.

These prices helped the students answer the restaurant questions I gave them this week. Here is an example of a question and a computer made model of what their answers look like. I’m so proud of them!

We ignored the fact that I would obviously have a heart attack with this much food. Maybe I should start saying "Ms. Lawrence's entire family went to Candy Land..."

We finished the week with a Friday art lesson. I read them these books

They LOVE that temperamental pigeon. We made our own pigeons out of 2D shapes with things that we shouldn’t let the pigeon do. Some of them were hilarious!

My example

"Don't let the pigeon get earrings!"

I'm not sure what this one says, but I love his sleepy eye.

Our Grade One pigeon display

I’ll leave you now with a few more pictures and blurbs from the week.

 Anchor chart for our social studies unit

Our share reading for the week. The kids made their own pages and we made a class book!

Isn't it obvious why I chose to use this book to teach the kids about what makes us unique? 

They love the letter blender. I started by cutting out the blends, but I got lazy and just ended up drawing them in.  

 Report cards are done, edited, and signed. Literacy and math units are marked. Time to enjoy this rainy/snowy weekend : ) 

Spooooooktacular Festivities!

We had such a wonderful week in Grade One; a week filled with festivities, too much sugar, and three units to wrap up. Yikes! Let’s start at the beginning.

On Monday my laryngitis was still hanging around, although I wasn’t whispering anymore; I was speaking just OVER a whisper. That made it pretty hard to do a read aloud for our final retell book, BOO! By Robert Munsch. Thankfully, my kids were so engaged and willing to help me read it, so every time I had to read “BOO!” or “AGGGHHHHH!”, they took the floor so I could rest my voice. I guess it was more like a shared reading.

Speaking of shared reading, we read this classic poem for our Halloween week.

We also finished up our science unit on Daily and Seasonal Changes by working really hard on mini posters. For each season, they had to draw a detailed picture of what they enjoy doing in each season, and write two sentences that describe their pictures. This was my example. It didn’t even compare to some of the beautiful pictures I received.

Okay, enough about the academic side of things, let’s get to the fun Halloween stories I bring to you this week. Remember in a previous post I told you I was working on our class pumpkin? Well prepare yourself for….MIIIIIKE WAZOWSKI!!

The kids were madly in love with Mike, and he spent two days relaxing on his own chair until he made his way down to the library for the pumpkin contest. The winning class was announced on Thursday afternoon and you know what? We won! My kids were over the top excited. Our trophy is sitting on the bookshelf for us to admire (it lights up and changes colour, so the kids actually do admire it).

I kept up with the Monsters Inc. theme and let them watch the movie for our class party. I laugh every time I watch it. Especially this scene:

Randall: Okay, I think I know how to make this all go 

away. What happens when the whistle blows in 

five minutes?

Mike: I… get a time out?

Randall: Everyone goes to lunch! Which means the scare 

floor will be...

Mike: ...Painted?

I just think Mike's lip quiver is hilarious. 

I also may have spoiled my kids way too much by baking them 

spooky Halloween cupcakes and sending them home with 

baggies of candy.

The costumes were so adorable. I had everything from a fairy

 princess, to a “half human, half monster, half zombie” (we’ll 

work on fractions later this year), to a few “dark vaders”. 

Precious. I was the Cat in the Hat, and I convinced a few that I 

had grown my tail overnight. I love fooling them with silly 

stories. 

I have always said that November 1^st should be a PD Day, but 

I really lucked out this year. My kids were angels. Now I’ll 

admit, two were away in the morning, and two went home in 

the afternoon (one of them threw up in the garbage can…too 

much candy, perhaps?) so yes, I had a lower than usual 

attendance; but we focused, we got our work done, and we 

had a lovely Friday together.

Monday brings new literacy, math, and social studies units, 

which means lots of marking and prepping. I also have my 

cousin’s wedding to attend today, so Ms. Lawrence will be 

VERY busy. Good thing I have bowls and bowls of candy to 

keep me going!

Happy Halloween!!