July marks the half-way point for summer break. Due to {calendar changes}, we've got a 9 week summer. That's a bummer.
Granted, I've spent a week with family in Arizona and am looking forward to a two week honeymoon. I've completed one book and am half way through two others. I've had craft time, seen friends, enjoyed movie marathons, and napped without guilt. I've went into school to help with open library and cleaning tasks.
I've had a good summer break so far and will continue to enjoy my well deserved time off.
(For all the squawking about summer break, I worked an average of three unpaid hours a day during the school year. I'm also paid for nine months of work that's dispersed over a full year. The government keeps 25% of my paycheck each month, then gives it to me months after it's been earned. I also don't earn vacation time. I get one universal flex day and between 1 and 4 personal days depending on how much sick time I use the year before. Next year, because I took 3 sick days, I get 2 personal days. That's three days off for the entire school year before it impacts next year's personal days. I'm also doing work over summer break, so it's not unstructured time-off. I'm dismounting from my soap box now.)
Students start the 2017-2018 school year on Monday, August 14th. Teachers are required to report back on the 9th. I however, am choosing to cut my summer short and return the 3rd. Here's why:
1) I've got a brand new classroom to set up. The teacher who left my new room wasn't moving out in a timely manner. I have bookcases to move, boxes to unpack, a library to reorganize, and bulletin boards to hang. This all takes time and the one day we're guaranteed in our classrooms to work simply won't cut it.
2) I've got a new curriculum to learn. Moving from fifth to third hopefully won't be the drastic change I'm envisioning, but it's still a change.
3) I don't do well with stress. I've got a friend getting married early September and she wants help assembling wedding favors on Saturday, August 12th. She was one of my bridesmaids. How awful would I feel if I blew off returning the favor and helping her with her wedding because I procrastinated setting up my classroom? I'd rather leave the weekend before school starts open for fun things, not being in my classroom.
4) I live ten minutes from where I work. The air conditioning is only on from 7:30 until 12:00 each day. I can use that week to transition back into the routine of school (and being dressed by 7 am each day). I can go in, work for a few hours, blast music, slowly tackle items on my to-do list, not wait in line for the copier, and still have a bulk of my day left. Chances are I'll do lunch with co-workers, making the day more exciting. Spending a week slowly transitioning back to teaching sounds a lot better than a drastic and abrupt end to summer break.
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?
Sometimes my insomnia is beyond frustrating, but sometimes it yields exciting new classroom ideas. I'm thankful it's the middle of winter break and I don't really have anywhere to be until around noon tomorrow because my brain simply will not shut off.
I have a million ideas bouncing around in my head for the new year.
I have my next bulletin board picked out. They're going to write constructed responses about the themes in their latest novel. We're going to type these responses, thus giving extra computer practice for those who need it.
I will then take the two novels that we've read as a class (Esperanza Rising and The Lightning Thief) to model comparing and contrasting how the authors arrive at similar themes (family, loyalty, bravery) using the characters. (CCSS/NVACS RL 5.9. Yes, we've renamed the Common Core Standards the Nevada Academic Content Standards for well, in my humble opinion, ridiculous reasons.)
I'm excited to start using music for transitions in my classroom, especially at the end of the day.
I'm excited to start teaching more mapping skills, geography, earth science, and most importantly, the return of the map:
Oh yes, we'll build it up again from scratch. There was a disagreement within my grade level about how to approach maps. I understand the idea of starting with the 13 colonies, but I also stand by my approach of teaching regions.
We're going to start with what they know: Nevada. From there, we'll do the surrounding southwestern states. We'll talk about things these states all have in common and I'll introduce the concept of a region. From there, we'll explore the other states in a quasi-reverse Westward Expansion kind of way. We can also connect the map with the settings from Esperanza Rising and The Lightning Thief, which will bring in an exciting literary aspect.
But perhaps the idea I'm most excited about shall be called Teaser Tuesday.
I'll take fifteen minutes or so after lunch to read aloud the first chapter or two of a book. Read alouds are a pretty common thing in my fifth grade classroom, but here's the new twist: It'll be a mystery. I'll have the book cover and title hidden. I'll read just enough to get them interested and of course, stop at a good part. From there, I'll have them do a written reflection on whether or not they'll want to continue that novel independently.
I've already brainstormed using the following novels:
Tuck Everlasting
The Giver
Number the Stars
Hatchet
Al Capone Shines My Shoes
The Bad Beginning
Steal Away Home
The Red Pyramid
Any other ideas fellow teachers? Must read novels that are super interesting to ten year olds within the first few pages or chapters?
