CURRENTLY December

Listening: I have Grey’s Anatomy on in the background as I work/blog. This show is very addictive.

Loving: I recently moved out of Grade 3/4 and into Kindergarten. Why did I move in the midst of the school year, you ask? Because I finally got a permanent contract! Up ‘til this point I have been doing LTOs (long term occasional) positions. I’m so happy to have taken this step that I have worked so hard to reach. And what’s really cool is that I am now teaching at the school I once went to as a kid. Lots of déjà vu happening lately!

Thinking: It might be time for bed soon. It’s 9:00 on a Wednesday after teaching Kindergarten and I’m done. 5:30am comes quickly!

Wanting: My sister follows Instagram accounts about foster kittens and she always shows me the cutest pictures. All it does it make me squeal and beg for a kitten. A little orange one to be exact.

Needing: I got a good chunk of my Christmas shopping done last weekend but I still need to finish up. I would love to be all done by this weekend.

Real or Faux: I have a fake Christmas tree because I am NOT a fan of the winter and I don’t like being out in the cold. A fake tree is so much easier. My plan is to one day get a real tree and tough out the cold so my future children can enjoy the Christmas tree picking experience, but we’ll see how that goes.

CURRENTLY October

My favourite month of the year is here! Happy October, everyone!

Listening: We have this app on our Roku called Rdio (yes, that’s how it’s spelled). There’s the occasional 30 second ad, but it has lots of different playlists to choose from. It also comes with a phone app so you can control it from any room in the house. It’s perfect for lazy people like myself.

Loving: I love October weather. I was tired of sweating to death each and every day, especially working in a building sans air conditioning. Bring on the sweaters, scarves, and boots!

Thinking: My 26^th birthday is coming up and my mom called me the other day to ask what I want. Truth is, I have no idea. I feel like all year I can easily compile a list of things I want, but when it actually comes down to it, I have no idea. I could use a new car or laptop, but I have a feeling those exceed the birthday budget just a tad.

Wanting: I left work yesterday with the dreaded pink eye. #teacherlife After my good friend and colleague worriedly asked me if I had been crying all day, I decided to go to the doctor, and she confirmed what I had suspected. So today I’m off work; not because I’m feeling sick, but because I’m contagious. And bored. I don’t deal with quarantine well.

Needing: I had planned to use this sick day as a day to sit in my comfies and watch movies while I get some solid planning done. I’ve accomplished the first two. I was about to get started on my unit planning but then I (for some reason) Googled myself and one of my previous Currently posts came up and it reminded me to do this month’s edition. See? I told you I was bored.

Boo-tiful: I think what make you beautiful is the song by the same title by One Direction. Kidding. Sort of. I love One Direction. I think being confident and comfortable in your own skin is what makes someone beautiful. I tell this to people all the time. I’m a hypocrite, though because I have struggled with this myself for years now. It’s much easier to tell someone else to love him or herself the way they are than to do it yourself.

Back To School 2015: Classroom Tour

I have spent the last two weeks of my summer vacation setting up my classroom. As you know, I’m teaching at a new school this year so it took quite some time digging through all my bins and boxes to find everything. On top of that, I had to learn the organizational system of my new school to find all my school supplies. Luckily, everyone is super nice and lent me a helping hand, introducing me to other teachers, and helping me find what I needed.  So here it is: my Grade 3/4 classroom for the 2015/2016 school year!

My sister came in today to help me with my number line doubles. It helped me get the job done in half the time, and it helped her with her math skills.

 Each student’s desk is ready to go. They all have their morning word work books, personal dictionary, duo tangs, welcome letter, pencil, and eraser.

 Stay tuned. Next week I'll write about how I structure the first day of Grade 3/4. Enjoy the last few days of summer break!

CURRENTLY August

Can you believe it’s mid-August? What a great summer it has been so far. Here’s the last Currently before we head back to school:

Listening: It’s nice and quiet in the living room, and all I hear is my adorable little cat, Zelda, purring away as she’s snuggled up against my legs. She purrs non-stop. She just loves life.

Loving: I’m loving summer vacation. In my last post I [briefly?] told you about our trip out East. Since then we (and by “we” I mean Rob) have been building a stone patio in the backyard. We went to the fair with our friends, we’ve celebrated weddings, hung out with friends, and also had some much needed relaxing time at home.

Thinking: Like the majority of teachers, even though it’s summer break, I’ve had school on my mind. I decided that this is the year I would really implement Google Drive into my planning and teaching so I’ve been working on uploading my files for this school year onto that. Am I completely ready to give up my USB stick and join everyone else in the age of modern technology? No. I’ll still have a USB stick (because what if the Internet is down?!) as a back up.

Wanting: That book I ordered online finally arrived. I can’t wait to start reading and highlighting so I can determine how to use these ideas in my classroom this year. Finally, I can stop checking my mailbox on a daily bases. #nerd #keener

Needing: To top off a perfect summer, my family and I are going to the cottage. I haven’t been in 3 years because summers are always insanely busy, but no excuses this year! I’m looking forward to swimming, cliff jumping, kayaking with the dog, bon fires, and board games with the family.

Random Act of Kindness: I don’t think I’ve mentioned that I’m moving to a new school next year. After three years, I’m making a change and I’m becoming more comfortable with the idea as the school year gets closer. Change is good. I’ll still be teaching Grades 3 and 4 and this will allow me to try some lessons I did last year again without being repetitive to the class and I can try new things with a new crowd. And since I’ll be meeting a whole new staff, I think I’ll start the school year off by brining in some treats for the staffroom…because staffroom treats brighten up everyone’s day. Especially if there’s chocolate involved.

Well, according to my Countdown app, there are 21 days left until the beginning of the school year PA day. It’s going to fly by!

CURRENTLY July

We’re nearing the end of July and I just realized I didn’t read this month’s Currently from Oh BoyFourth Grade. Not surprising…I rarely do these things on time. But like I’ve said, they’re silly and fun, and it gets me blogging (which is good because I’ve been a total slacker this past year).

Here we go:

Listening: Gilmore Girls is one of those series I have seen a hundred times, so when I’m doing stuff around the house or working on the computer and need some background noise, it’s one of the shows I put on. I don’t need to watch closely because I have memorized what’s going on, but I’m still tuned in enough to enjoy the many witty jokes. Some other shows I watch over and over again are Friends and the Mindy Project. They’re all amazing and never fail to get you laughing.

Loving: I am loving summer break so far. A few days after school ended, Rob and I packed our suitcases (I definitely over packed; you’d think I was moving) and headed on a road trip out East. Now, Rob is the second oldest of four boys and these brothers of his are scattered across the country. Our first stop was in Ottawa to visit one of his brothers. We spent a few days there and celebrated Canada Day down at Parliament. And I had my first ever Beavertail! If you’re not Canadian, you probably think that’s so dorky and stereotypical, but it was delicious. Then we readied ourselves for the big 12 hour drive to New Brunswick. This, my friends, is what I call a relationship tester. Stuck in a small car with another person can go one of two ways:

a)    you sing along to the radio, play cheesy road trip games, have entertaining conversations, and occasionally have a debate over whose playlist you’re going to listen to

b)   argue over whose turn it is to drive, bring up dreaded conversations because there’s nowhere the other person can escape, fight over the radio, and just wish the other person in the car would take a nap or something

Luckily, we enjoyed scenario A. Relationship test score: PASS

So once we FINALLY made it to New Brunswick, we stayed with Rob’s oldest brother who has a wife and two kids. We spent our days babysitting, playing at parks, going for ice cream, and playing games. We ventured around Saint John and went to the St. Martin Sea Caves where you can walk on the ocean floor while the tide is out. It was really cool.

After a few days, we drove for four and a half hours to visit Rob’s youngest brother in Nova Scotia. We spent our days doing lots of touristy things like hiking, visiting Peggy’s Cove (my favourite part of our trip), Mahone Bay and Lunenburg. We also spent our nights taste testing different chocolates to determine which one is the best for making s’mores. Lindore was the best but Dairy Milk was a close second. In case you were wondering.

To get home, we drove the reverse, going back to New Brunswick for one night, trekking 12 hours to Ottawa for one night, and then finally spent the last day driving home. There’s nothing like sleeping in your own bed when you’ve been gone for close to three weeks, but I’m so glad we took the time to go on a trip like that. We had a wonderful time.

Thinking: Well, ever since our time in Nova Scotia, I’ve been wanting to make s’mores here at home. We have the crackers, marshmallows, and chocolate all here but we haven’t made them yet. Maybe tomorrow…

Wanting: The other day I ordered a book called 80 Morning Meeting Ideas For Grades 3-6 by Carol Davis. It’s something I’d like to implement in my classroom next year but I’d like to read up on it to get some better ideas. This will be my professional reading for the summer but it seems like it’s taking FOREVER to get here. I’m so impatient.

Needing: I need a new Netflix series to watch. I whizzed through Orange is the New Black, and as you know, I’ve been re-watching the same three series because I don’t know what I want to get glued to next.

All Star: This is for something I’m really good at, and if you know me, you'll know I’m good at shopping. Maybe a little too good at shopping. See, I wish I could tell you that my professional read was the only thing I’m expecting in the mail, but that would be a lie. I also enjoy ordering from The Book Depository, ModCloth, and Old Navy. Clearly not all for professional reasons.

Well, I hope you enjoyed reading my lengthy edition of July’s Currently. I’ve had a busy month so far. I hope everyone else has been enjoying their summer breaks and has found something memorable to do before we all head back to school!

The One Room School House

Our class has finally wrapped up our Grade 3 Social Studies unit on Communities in Canada where we learned all about First Nations and Early Settlers. Because there was so much to cover in this unit, it took about two months to do it right.

The kids had learned so much about First Nations and how they lived in North America, making use of their environments and overcoming various challenges, such as facing the arrival of the Early Settlers.

Eventually, we moved exclusively into the life of a pioneer, specifically a child. A few weeks ago, the kids arrived to find that I had transformed our classroom into a one room schoolhouse (well, as best as one can do in a 21^st Century classroom; we had to ignore our new wall-mounted Smart Board at the front of the room).

I took the desks out of groups and arranged them in rows and pretended that there was a big wood stove in the middle of the room.

Furthermore, when they finally found their desks, they saw that I had set them up to resemble the desk of a pioneer student’s.

Since we don’t actually have slates, we pretended by using white boards and markers; and since I bought brand new markers for this little project, the kids were just that much more excited.

So what’s that up in the top right corner? That’s a slapper tracker. No, pioneer school houses didn’t have such a thing because the teacher would just whack the children for misbehaviour and other misdemeanours. Obviously, I would never hit a student, but they were so interested in what would warrant a slap, that I used this tracker to let them see how it worked.

First off, my two poor kiddos that are left-handed immediately got a slap, because that was forbidden at the time. I had them fill in one of the circles-with their right hands!

In order to understand all other punishments, we looked at the rules for a one room school house:

Student Rules

-Boys and girls shall file into classroom in separate lines and be seated quietly on opposite sides of the room

-Children must be clean and tidy in clothing

-There will be a daily inspection of neck, ears, and fingernails prior to class to ensure cleanliness of person

-Young ladies must never show a bare ankle; girls’ and boys’ clothing should cover arms and legs completely

-Move their caps when entering

-Children must sit up straight at all times

-Children must not squirm, fidget, or whine

Punishments

-Five minutes tardy = 1 hour after school

-Double assignment id homework is not done

-Nothing shall be dipped into ink wells except pens

-Children who are caught writing with their left hand = 1 ruler rap on the knuckles

-Do not speak unless spoken to by the teacher. Talking in class = 1 whack with a rod

-Nothing shall be thrown in class. Such behaviour = 5 whacks with a rod

-Chewing of tobacco or spitting = 7 whacks with a rod

-Speaking immoral language = suspension

-Carving on desks or defacing school property = expulsion

-Fighting, lying, or cheating = expulsion

ONLY WELL MANNERED CHILDREN MAY ATTEND SCHOOL.

REMEMBER: EDUCATION IS A PRIVILEDGE

*I’m sorry, I cannot remember where I accessed this list, but it appeared on many websites after a Google search

They had a blast as I looked in their ears and doled out “slaps” for bare ankles showing. Even the poor little guy that came in late from a dentist appointment asked (no, begged) if he could actually stay one hour after school for being late…haha!

Catching Up

It’s been a while since I last blogged about what we’ve been doing in our classroom, so here are a few snippets showing what we have been up to.

Two of the expectations in the Grade Four curriculum are:

Identify the characteristics of healthy relationships; and

Identify the challenges and responsibilities in their relationships with family and friends

I wanted a good read aloud and stumbled upon Because of Mr. Terupt.

My class LOVED this book. Every day they would ask me if we were going to read the book, and when I finished reading for the day, they would beg for just a few more pages.

The story is about a class of fifth graders who have an amazing and inspiring teacher named Mr. Terupt. The kids in the class are very archetypal; there’s the mean girl, the brainiac, the class clown, the kid that hates school, the overweight girl that gets picked on, the bookworm, and so on. The kids in the story were so easy for my students to relate to and we had some great conversations about how to handle various conflicts with family and friends.

A word of caution: this book may not be suitable for all classroom communities. For example, there is one character who comes from a very religious family. She often prays when she is upset or in need of some guidance. My class had a good talk about how some people have different beliefs and it’s important to respect that.

Also, there is a girl in the story whose mother was ostracized because she was a teen mom. Again, we had a good talk about what matters most when it comes to family. As one girl so perfectly put it, “It doesn’t matter how old Anna’s mom is, it matters how much she loves Anna!”

One of the characters mentions having a worry doll to help her deal with anxiety. Social-emotional health is a big area of focus in our school community, so we had a whole class conversation on the things that make us anxious; fighting with friends, math tests, etc. Then, using little foam doll kits I got from Dollarama, we made our own worry dolls. Some of them were very creative!

 One of my gymnastics girls made this headstand worry doll

I’m really not sure what’s happening here but hey, it’s definitely one of a kind!

Because of Mr. Terupt is emotional but authentic and like I said, it was a real hit with my class.

Here are some other fun things we’ve been up to…

Mexican Tin Art

One afternoon, I was looking through an OWL magazine that was delivered to the classroom and I saw this craft idea. We haven’t really painted all year so I thought the kids would enjoy it…and they did! 

You'll need:

-small cardboard squares (we used cereal boxes)

-tinfoil

-paint

Math

We finished our unit on fractions and we started a mini unit on time and temperature. To make it more interesting, we are pretending we are going on a vacation to Disney World (and now I really just want to hop on a plane and go to Florida).

 This is an actual picture from my trip to Disney in 2012

Grade Threes have to be able to read and record time to the nearest five minutes, and Grade Fours need to do the same to the minute. To help them out, I made this beautiful (?) flower clock.  Click HERE for the link on Teachers Pay Teachers.

The petals are actually supposed to be applied to your classroom clock but my clock was too large

Each day we estimate the current temperature, record the actual temperature on our thermometer, and record the time we looked up this data.

The Dress

One more thing…was anyone else shamefully obsessed with “The Dress”? I discovered this trending topic one Friday afternoon and was baffled by it all weekend. So when we got back to school on the Monday morning, I used it for a morning math question. I put up the picture and we graphed how many kids saw either white and gold or black and blue. Some kids had seen it themselves over the weekend and some were just blown away. I think I’m over my obsession now.

That’s it for now! I hope everyone is enjoying their March Breaks!

Smarties and Fear Factor

We started some new math units on multiplication and fractions. To make it fun, we are pretending we are on Fear Factor (thanks to my grade partner for the great idea).

As a hook, I showed the kids this video (click to play):

The reaction included a lot of shrieking. Some of the kids shrieked too.

Our math problems have been similar to:

“[Student A] had to eat 7 plates of 4 African Cave Spiders and [Student B] had to eat 3 plates of 9 African Cave Spiders. Who ate more? How many more?”

It’s a multi-step problem that requires them to not only multiply, but to also add or subtract to find a difference. They’re so good at it, I had to teach them how to stack multiply to work with multiplying 2 digit by 1 digit problems to add to the challenge.

Some of the games and puzzles I’ve introduced for this unit have been Around the World and Square Numbers.

Around the World involves two students facing off and whoever answers my multiplication problem correctly first, moves onto the next opponent. Whoever is the last person to win the last face off wins.

Square numbers looks something like this:

They have to figure out which numbers fit so that they multiply horizontally and vertically to produce the numbers at the ends.

We also started our unit on fractions, which can be a really hard concept for kids to grasp. The first day was a fun fractions day where I gave them each a bag of 10 Smarties and had them represent their Smarties colours as fractions.

Today, we learned about equivalent fractions. We started off by colouring in fraction strips to help us visualize fractions that are equivalent to 1/2.

Equivalent fractions is an expectation for the Grade Fours, so we worked in a small group on understanding this concept. 

Meanwhile, the Grade Threes have to be able to divide a whole group into equal parts and define it as a fraction, so they worked on a problem where they had fake Smarties (black dots) and had to divide them evenly into different groups. Then they had to define (using fraction language) each group.

And because the Ontario curriculum requires the students to use tools and manipulatives to help them work with fractions, we have these up on our front white board as a tool in addition to our own fraction strips.

Now onto Literacy…

I wanted our new unit to involve a read aloud so I chose Book One from the And Then It Happened series.

Each chapter is an isolated story involving the same three mischievous boys. The stories are silly and hilarious and the kids love them. Today, we read a chapter from Book Two, actually called “The Fart Chart”.

Basically, the three boys keep track of the students in their class who breaks wind and allot them points when it happens. Whoever gets 100 points first is crowned the Farting Champion. Their poor teacher doesn’t address the issue but endures daily headaches and feels so nauseous that she has to take her sick days.

My class thought this story was hilarious.

Backtrack for a moment: yesterday, my friend and teaching partner combined our classes to talk about a strategy called I Statements. They are used to help students calmly talk through challenging situations.

After we read “The Fart Chart”, I had the students write a letter to the class from the point of view from the teacher (point of view is one of our learning goals) using I Statements. Some of their letters were hilarious. Here’s a great example:

Before we ended our language block, the kids promised me that they would create no such contest while in our classroom hahaha.

Sometimes you just have to have some crazy, silly fun. 

We ended the week with a fun Valentine’s Day celebration. Of course, I baked them all cupcakes and loaded them up on sugar and other sorts of junk food before sending them home. We also watched Honey I Shrunk the Kids…they thought it was a very retro choice.

And they spoiled me right back.

And now it’s a long weekend. Enjoy your Family Day!