It's only two weeks in.
Open House was last week and I still haven't recovered.
In addition to ya know, teaching, I've sat in on a planning meeting for our upcoming Rodeo night, an ELL presentation, had a meeting about advanced students, had a grade level meeting, and gotten my room ready for Open House...by Wednesday.
Thursday morning I helped to lead a new teacher training, will teach all day, make a quick run to Sonic, and get ready for two hours of Open House.
I've got amazing parents who brought me cookies for Open House:
Thank goodness Friday was already planned, next week is planned, and I've got a busy weekend ahead of me!
There were some late nights, but I've got this view:
In terms of long range plans and grade level plans, I'm already behind. I was behind on day 2. I'm not really sorry about it.
By no means have we wasted time in the classroom. Instead, I'm in an adjustment period where I'm quickly realizing things in third grade take much longer than I'm used to...because they're 7 and 8 years old.
In math, we've explored number talks, built problems with cubes, learned about arrays, and started making the connection between repeated addition and multiplication.
I picked a student who was struggling to give me the number of items in each box. That ownership and helping me make our reference guide was really important to that kiddo.
They've taken their first three "entrance tickets" (10% formative assessments) and are continuing to learn about math discourse. Two of them went into the grade book.
In reading, we've built up our independent reading stamina, read several picture books, taken our STAR test for beginning of the year benchmarks, reviewed fiction and nonfiction, completed sorts, and I've begun benchmarking for AIMSweb oral reading fluency.
In writing we've covered nouns (common vs. proper), friendly letters, and brainstormed ideas for our letter to ourselves at the end of the year.
(The post-its were a spur of the moment decision but I like how the notebooks turned out. Students wrote their own examples underneath the post-its. We also got up and labeled different nouns around the classroom.)
I also used the post-its on the anchor chart:
Last week we began drafting our three paragraph essays and revised/edited with partners. Final drafts are due Monday, but it's not for a grade. I'm using their first papers as a benchmark so I can make a list of mini-lessons the class needs. We've also been doing morning journals (available {here}) and I'm slowly incorporating mini language lessons about restating the question in the answer, capitalizing proper nouns, and using evidence to explain our thinking.
They also built up their writing stamina and enjoyed free choice seating:
They've learned about summaries and practiced whole group (to My Mouth is a Volcano and Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day), in table teams (to Thank You Mr. Falker), and individually with their books.
We've reviewed fiction and nonfiction writing. They also cut up extra book orders to sort into F and NF, which allowed me to go over procedures for gluing, cutting, and using class supplies.
We spent a few hours doing activities on Monday's solar eclipse and have most of our classroom routines down.
We've already changed seats, know where our privacy folders are kept, and have our graduation count down board ready.
We've established our sentence frames for talking to one another:
We've done some get to know you activities and brain breaks as well. We've practiced gallery walks and structured movement in the classroom. We've taken pictures, celebrated a birthday, practiced routines, and taken pictures in our class photo booth. We've reviewed assembly procedures and learned about our first fundraiser for the school in a popcorn assembly.
I'm not a sit quietly and do worksheets kind of teacher. So while I may technically be behind 10 days in, I think we've done some quality learning. That's what makes this worth while.
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