Stuff and Things

If you're a frequent reader, you may have noticed my new blog header.  Welcome to the revamped version of my blog.  

This year marks a significant chance in my teaching career.

This year is my first year in third grade.

This year is my first year with a predominately male team. 

This year is my first year as a mentor to a student teacher (from BYU-I).

This is a year of changes and firsts.


While I still firmly love my polka dots, flip flops, and novels, it was time for a change.

Several years ago, I had the opportunity to meet Dr. Frey (of Fisher and Frey).  My students had just returned from a magnificently educational field trip.  We'd studied various scientific concepts and this was a well planned, efficiently executed culminating learning experience for the fifth graders.

However, they are also hormonal ten year olds.  So when we encountered Dr. Frey in the hallway returning from my field trip and they were asked what they had learned, one of my snarky students simply replied "stuff".  Dr. Frey politely probed for more information (as we teachers do).  Another student piped up "things".  Dr. Frey shot me a disapproving look, said "well then" and turned to walk down the hallway.

That's right, they learned:

I have never been more embarrassed and simultaneously amused by my students.  With all the preparation in the world, children still say the most ridiculous things.

In respect to these unpredictable moments, I shall rename this blog in their honor.

In teaching, we cover stuff and things.  In life, we deal with stuff and things.  Cheers to the unexpected moments.

Wait, What?

I blinked and it is week six of the school year.

I'm not quite sure how that happened, but I'm loving third grade.  I'm definitely still adjusting to the difference in ages.  When I plan activities, I'm thinking about where fifth graders are at the end of the year and quite frankly, that's a big difference when compared to where my third graders are right now. 

We've already had our back to school rodeo night:

Sorting into houses:

Potluck:

As well as received our first book orders, had book fair, and completed benchmark standardized testing. 

We've had fire drills and a practice lock down.  We've had our first Reading Rangers graduate, assemblies, I've been observed by several different teachers, and been in lots of meetings.  

Things are going well with my mentee, who is another third grade teacher in my pod.  I also have a student teacher and I'm learning how this teaching relationship works.  Both my mentee and my student teacher are doing great!

Bring on week 6!

So...how's third grade going?

I'm quickly discovering there are lots of new and interesting behaviors in third grade students.  I'm used to the fifth graders, where many of these behaviors have subsided due to maturity or social pressure.  However, that's not the case for third graders.

Let's recap how third grade is going:

There's a lot more nose picking in third grade.

We've had the "everybody farts" talk several times already this week.  It's Wednesday.

We've had the "please say excuse me and don't laugh at farts" talk several times this week.  Again, it's Wednesday.

I don't want to tie shoe laces.  Those shoe laces are dirty and have gone through urine puddles on the ground in the boys' bathroom.  No thank you!
 
If you take your eyes off them, they may roll around on the ground, practice roaring like lions, or just start randomly doing push ups.  Yes, all these things happened this week.

They will find the one staple on the ground and interrupt your lesson to tell you about it. 

They will tell you lots of stories.  I keep waiting for a question at the end but no, there's just a story they wanted to share in the middle of the lesson.

I didn't realize I'd have to explicitly teach how to carry chairs or use a paper clip, but both of those mini-lessons were necessary this week.

 

However, I love it. I feel like I'm able to be such a better teacher when I'm only responsible for twenty four students (not thirty seven).  They are so eager to learn, enthusiastic about school, and I'm excited to see how much they'll grow and mature this year.  

 

First Week of Third Grade

There has truly been no greater meme then the one above.

I survived the first day of school.  More importantly, I did it without the aid of coffee or Mountain Dew.  That's right folks, you're looking at a teacher who went caffeine free the first week of the school year. Granted, a nap happened after school.  To be totally fair, a nap happened most of the first week.

I had every intention of coming home each day and blogging about what happened.  But those good intentions didn't get fulfilled.  I'll do my best to recap the whole week at once.

Monday, August 14th

Without an alarm, I woke up at 12:18 ready to start the day.  However, there was still a good five hours before I actually needed to be up and luckily I was able to get a little more rest.

I left early to grab Starbucks on the way to school.  Last week the front of the school and the nearby roundabout were torn up with construction, so I gave myself extra time.

I got to work and after finalizing my first day plans (which ended up taking three days to get through), I set up my photo booth:

We took a pod picture, but I spaced on getting a grade level one.  We ended up taking that picture on Tuesday. I also set out water bottles for their first day treats. 

Officially I have 23 third graders on my roster, but I have a push in student all day from the autism room.  24 is a great number.  Granted, I keep feeling like I've lost a good dozen students because I'm used to fifth grade numbers.  But nope, I just have two dozen kids to keep track of and it's a rather nice feeling.  (Right now, one of the fifth grade classes is sitting at 41 students.  I am so glad I switched.)

I went outside, met students and families, then we came inside to start our day.  Some teachers wanted to jump right in to teaching cursive and silent worksheets.  

We went a different route.  I explained breakfast procedures and had them write about how they were feeling.  We then watched {this Kid President} video to lighten the mood.

Afterwards, we talked about how we were going to help each other out and make this year awesome.

The first day was a combination of get to know you team builders and procedures.  We incorporated movement and practiced talking with one another.  One of  my favorites is "Find Someone Who":

Kids get up, introduce themselves to one another, and ask get to know you questions.  It incorporates movement in a controlled way, which they need after hearing about school procedures and class rules.

Lunch will be an adjustment this year.  I'm used to 12:15, but alas, lunch this year is at 11:25.  The kids get 20 minutes to eat and 20 minutes to play, but teachers are only contracted a 30 minute lunch.  I spend the first 10 minutes in the lunchroom on duty with my kids.  As a trade off, this means I no longer have morning crosswalk duty, which is a blessing.

For those of you who have never experienced the joy of lunchroom duty, it looks a little something like this:

And is best described in this {video}.

But in all seriousness, I spend half the time separating classes into two lines and walking around passing out sporks, napkins, and ketch up packets.  I often fight with sealed fruit cups and have spilled on myself every single day.  I have a new hatred for capri sun juice pouches.  

By the time my ten minutes of duty is up, I've lost most of my appetite.  Watching several hundred kids shovel food into their mouths will do that.  Still, I'd prefer the duty at the start of my lunch period because most of the other teachers have outdoor playground duty and well, it's hot outside.

We did read First Day Jitters on the first day of school and practiced procedures.  I allotted forty minutes for filling out agendas for the first time and going over back to school paperwork.  It was barely enough time.

There weren't any tears the first day, I got hugs goodbye, and as soon as the bell rang, I was ready for a nap.  

I stayed an hour and a half after school getting ready for the next day, grabbed take out (B had softball and I hate cooking for one), and was asleep by 8 pm.

Tuesday

I spent before school prepping these treats:

I ended up passing them out at the end of the day, but still. It's the thought that counts.  I'd also like to thank Costco for having the box of 54 rice krispies on sale for under $7.  Smaller class sizes means the hubs now has a lot of rice krispies to enjoy as a snack for softball.

We did a classroom scavenger hunt the second day (because we ran out of time on the first day of school).  It was a great opportunity to embed voice levels, team work, appropriate movement around the classroom, the location of extra clipboards (if they didn't bring their own from home), and challenges.  Plus involving students in this process means not only are they more likely to remember where something is because they discovered it, but also have a higher sense of shared responsibility and ownership in the classroom.  These feelings of ownership mean that (hopefully) they will take pride in our room and treat things with respect.

 They did a really good job with moving around the classroom appropriately:

They also worked quite well as a team:

To further practice team work, they learned how to do a sort with "No Way Jose! That's a Fact Jack!"

I created several dozen statements about third grade.  Some of them are true (that's a fact, Jack!) and some of them are false (no way Jose).  Students worked together to sort out the statements and explain their thinking.  The point of the activity was to dispel some myths about third grade and to practice team work.

After each table sorted their cards, they went to investigate how another group sorted theirs.  They couldn't touch the other team's cards, but had to practice complete sentence stems:

I agree with ___ because ____
I disagree with ____ because ____

We'll eventually post more, but for the first week, we're using just these two sentence stems.  I have a few kiddos that are ELL, so these sentence stems are a great way for them to practice and structure their responses.

We also managed to take a grade level photo (since that slipped our minds day one):

This is the first time I've ever worked on a predominately male team. It's an adjustment. I've also taught all the men about a few different technology components, so that feels nice to be helpful.  

We've split up planning responsibilities this year and I'm really excited about it.  Almost everyone is on board.  Our two newest teachers are planning math because the Engage NY curriculum is already scripted.  It doesn't mean they get off easy because of how copy intensive this program can be, but rather they get to read the scripted lessons and narrow them down to create lesson plans for us to use.  Two others are planning writing and I'm planning reading with Ms. H.  We moved down from fifth together and are quite used to sharing the responsibilities.  Language will be shared between us and the writing team.  We haven't talked about science or social studies yet, but have a grade level meeting this week. 

We also did a few gallery walks, where students use markers to answer questions that I've prepared on big butcher paper.  I use this as an opportunity to practice using markers, whisper voices, sharing ideas, agreeing or disagreeing appropriately, and moving around the classroom.

After each group visits each question, we talk as a class and make our class norms.  

We used math manipulatives in the form of cubes to practice solving math problems in a hands-on way.  I gave them five minutes of free play to get it out of their systems, then we used the cubes to solve problems.  Ms. S happened to stop by during the five minutes of exploratory free play and was delighted to see their towers:

Three tables built towers, one table built fidget spinners. 

We did actually do some math with the cubes as well:

It was a great chance to embed Number Talk norms and quickly assess some of my students' background knowledge.

This problem was awesome:

It was nice to see how they worked with numbers.

I also had student helpers solve problems on the board:

I didn't know all of their strategies (the ribbon strategy?!) but got it after they explained their thinking.

The rest of the week was a blur.  I napped almost every day after school.  We read the following picture books:

Ms. Nelson is Missing  

This classic tells the tale of a teacher who brings out her alter-ego when the kids are misbehaving.  Not only did we practice coming to the carpet, answering questions, and being good listeners, we also did a gallery walk about how we should treat each other and our teacher.

My Mouth is a Volcano

 
This is newer find for me and quickly became one of my favorites.  It tells the story of Louis who has a problem interrupting (erupting) others.  The tables turn when he realizes how it feels and how being interrupted hurts feelings.  His mom helps him with strategies for not blurting out.

First Day Jitters

This book goes through the typical struggles of getting ready for school, not wanting to start at a new school, being anxious about making friends, and is quite relate-able for students.  But *spoiler alert*, the main character is actually the teacher!

Thank You Mr. Falker

It's always a struggle to not cry with this one.  Patricia Polacco tells of her own childhood struggles to learn to read while dealing with family deaths, a cross country move, and bullying.  We talk about perseverance, bullying, and asking for help.  We also used this book to learn about writing summaries, which we practiced as a class and with table teams.

We practiced fire drills, took a STAR test on the computer, worked on our reading stamina, set up our daily response journals, and had some talks about choices. We learned about Class Dojo and they helped me create the categories for positive and negative choices.  Granted, I already knew what categories I wanted, but they were so excited to participate in making classroom decisions.  That buy-in from students is important.

They got new book orders:

I always give a few weeks between passing these out and having the orders be due to allow for pay day and students to do extra chores to earn books.  I put our class code and the due date on the book orders to make it easy for families.  I also gave them time to explore and get excited about books.  It's important and I get to see what books are on the "must have" list so I can use Scholastic dollars to stock up on things they want to read. 

(For non-teachers, every order placed earns teachers points.  I think if I place a $25 order this month, I get $10 free to spend on books.  It's quite nice to help me build my library.  Plus Scholastic's prices are quite low to make books affordable for kids.  It's a great system.)

We talked about how to care for dry erase markers and set up classroom supplies.  I print their names on sticky labels and use packing tape to secure the labels.  I usually do this at home and can go through the class set during an episode of Friends.

Alas, I do not do these classroom chores alone.

We made a T chart about what constitutes a nurse visit:

 

We learned about stamina and practiced independent reading:

We had a busy, busy, busy week.  I've gotten two love notes so far and lots of hugs.  Third grade is off to a wonderful start!

Positivity

Wednesday marked the official back to school date for CCSD.

It was a rough start:

My key got stuck in the door and no amount of pulling, twisting, or turning could set me free.  I texted the custodian. I called the office. I put out a help on Facebook. I texted my admin.  20 minutes later, I got in.  I gave up and walked all the way around the building, checking several other doors in the process.  Nothing says welcome to work like not being able to get inside.

However, I shook it off.  It's going to be a good year.

I'm excited for third grade.  I'm excited for a mounted projector, twenty five kids (not forty), new curriculum, a new grade level team, and kiddos that (ideally) still love their teacher.

Almost everyone I talk to is positive about this school year and I hope it stays that way.

I've got a lot on my plate and want this to be a good school year.  I don't have time for the grumpy comments from negative people.

For me, last year was a wonderful end to my fifth grade streak.  I had three dozen amazing kids and super supportive families.  They made a lot of growth and really blossomed into young men and women.  I am proud of them, I will miss them, and I really tried to keep my mouth shut about how much I adored them because the rest of my grade level had really, really rough years.  

However, some of that frustration from last year's kids trickles into this year.  I get it and I've been guilty of it too. However, we've all got to channel our inner T Swift and just

I'm working on my first week lesson plans and already heard grumblings about things kids couldn't do.  We haven't met them yet.  How do we know they can't do something if we don't give them the chance to try? How can we scaffold our instruction (or directions) to give them the opportunity to be successful?

In my mind, this is me shunning the negativity:

However, I'm at work and need to use my adult coping strategies.  So instead, I find my inner Leslie Knope and know that a teacher's attitude makes all the difference.

Let's have a great year everyone!

Transitions

I'm preparing to transition to third grade and getting kind of excited about it.

One of my favorite kiddos has a younger sibling in second grade, so I'll get to work with his awesome family for a second year in a row! (Not that teachers have favorites...but I'm allowed to have favorite parents!)

The classroom I'm moving into probably won't be ready on time.  That teacher is leaving to another school due to personal reasons, and I don't want to further anger this teacher by trying to move in while he is moving out.  It's better to just move everything home (it's not that far of a drive) and move back in August for a clean start.

I've started boxing up materials and separating what will stay in my garage, what gets given away, and what is set aside for third grade.  I'm even labeling the boxes for ease of moving.  Since B is on campus helping coach girls' soccer, he's on campus anyway.  On Mondays, he helps me move home boxes.  I told my students that I'm moving down to third grade and that the classroom books will be the last thing to go so they can enjoy them as long as possible.  Once it was established that the books are off limits until June, they were totally fine with me boxing up the classroom.  Granted, I'm not doing this while they're actually in the room.  There are just piles of boxes slowly being piled up along the sides of the classroom.

In the mean time, I'm also going through materials and seeing what can be scaffolded down to meet third grade needs.  I'm using my "bonus bucks" from Scholastic to stock up on second and third grade classics.  I've got a {donorschoose} project for third grade materials.  Today, between naps, I also drafted my third grade supply list:

We are supposed to supply some blurb that the school district supplies all the necessary materials and the listed supplies are just a suggestion, but we all know that's simply not true.  I get $123 from the state for class supplies, which won't even cover notebooks for my classroom.  Most teachers spend around $1,000 out of pocket on their classrooms each year.  Hopefully my parents will be generous and I won't have to cover too much out of pocket. I was able to stock up on dry erase markers on clearance last year and always try to snag deals at Target.

Fellow teacher friends, am I missing anything for third grade?

Spring Break Goals

1) Celebrate Ms. S's wedding (tonight!).  Not only am I sure to cry a lot (thank you waterproof {Younique} mascara), but take lots of pictures for her.  My friend Mrs. K took lots of the venue and decor for me, which helped tide me over until the professional ones came six weeks later.

2) Paint our cabinets.  We ripped out our medicine cabinets in our master and had custom shelving built. I'm staining the new cabinets over break to match the other cabinets that I painted {last year}.

We're going to Home Depot tomorrow to get some new paint brushes to complete the project.

3) Paperwork

Between a doctor's appointment, renewing my teaching license, getting finger printed for my license, and updating my passport with my new married name, I've got a lot of paperwork to do.  

4) Family time

I'm helping B's aunt plan her mom's 90th birthday party next month.  We're having lunch on Monday to talk about decor and some of the details.  Plus she won some free leggings at a Lularoe party I hosted, so I've got to give those to her as well.

5) Prep for third grade

I'm redoing my "No Way Jose" game to fit third grade standards.  I know I won't need it until August, but I won't have access to a printer over the summer, so I should start this early.  I'll need to cut out laminate, but that's easily done during a summer Netflix binge.  I've also started mapping out my supply list of what I'll need for third grade.  

6) Finish my mom's album

As part of her Christmas gift, I'm making my mom an album of wedding pictures.  Shutterfly doesn't work well with our professional pictures (they're too detailed, so it comes out pixalated), so I'm using another site instead.  I've got the backbone done, I just want to add in some silly photo booth images as well.

7) Catch up on grading

To be fair, this may or may not happen. I'll probably grade in spurts, meaning three papers and then do something else.  It seems less painful this way.

8) Finish Play Like a Pirate

It's one of the books I picked up at ASCD and I'm loving it.  As I shared on Twitter, it's like having a super nerdy conversation with an old friend. I'm feeling inspired and making lots of notes in my book.

9) Nap.  Every day if possible.  (Day 1 complete).

10) Catch up on blogging.  Between classroom adventures and ASCD, I've got a lot of half started blog posts I need to finish.

What are your spring break goals?