First Few Days of School!

The kiddos first half day was last Wednesday! It was an exciting and exhausting half of a week. I absolutely love the school that I'm a part of and really enjoyed meeting the kids. It's so fun to finally share all of my hardwork with them.
We did a lot of get to know you activities and practiced procedures. It was awesome to have the Smartboard in my room. I created a slideshow to go through with the students as learned about one another. I'm really looking forward to learning more about the Smartboard :). I look at it that if the technology interests me then it's going to engage the students also.
I bought a ton of writing prompts from TeacherPayTeacher that are common core aligned. The students answered the prompt of what they wanted to be when they grew up. They did awesome! It was so fun to read and to watch the students try their best on their handwriting. We always filled out and colored "Guess Who" sheets which we'll continue to share and go through this week before we put them in the hallway. They are very colorful and fun for the kids to answer.
I'm trying to reflect and think of things that worked and didn't work to reference to in the years to come but am drawing a blank. We are going to begin our curriculum tomorrow and at first I thought it was too soon but now I'm looking forward to getting into a routine with the kids along with practicing and modeling the expectations and procedures of the classroom and school. Hand in hand.
Most of all, I love the collaborating and family support I have found at my school. I'm able to collaborate with the other second grade teacher daily and she has really taken me under her wing and shared her ideas with me. My mentor is awesome and is going to really help me with my reading this week since she was the second grade teacher in my room last year. I'm just feeling very happy with how things have worked out in life! Phill Robertson says it best...

"Following Jesus has been a blast. The Lord has blessed me mightily. It is what makes me happy, happy, happy." - Phil Robertson

Beaver Lake and My Classroom!

Last Tuesday I started my New Teacher Inductions. We had a week of training and today was my first day in the building in service and working in our rooms. To say the least, I'm overwhelmed!! So much information and so many things to do that most people never know we do! Although I came home really stressed out and got ahold of my top five people to complain to; I am so happy to be in the school and district that I'm in. I have already learned so much and I have found an amazing support team in my school. :) I couldn't be happier!
I was lucky that my principal let me in before my family vacation this summer to Beaver Lake, Arkansas!

It was a week filled with nothing but anchoring in a cove and relaxing with the family! A few of my favorite pictures and highlights of the trip...

My Mom planned the whole vacation and I can't say it enough; this woman is my rock. I have no idea what I'd do without her. I can only hope to be the woman she is today :)

My family. So grateful that my parents can still go on vacation together.

We shared another awesome vacation together.

KC Grahams are always tons of fun plus give me the two cutest nephews.

We had a ghost tour of the a haunted hotel, The Crescent.

Last but not least; Rambo. My very favorite pup. 

Now for my classroom, some before and after pictures! I've added a lot more since then but haven't taken pictures yet. 

I never thought I would walk into a classroom with SO much stuff!

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CAFE board, schedule pocket chart, and behavior punch cards.

The one thing I worried about in college was having books in my classroom. I have SO many books now between Mrs. P, the classroom, and my own.

Classroom library; now I have a rug in that space.

The kids' book tubs.

Before

My desk area :)

Word Wall and what I'm thinking will be the word work station.

Don't let the old school closet door fool you; it holds A LOT of stuff!

 

After I organized and all of this stuff comes with the room.

How many sticky notes I had! I never thought. I'm grateful; do not get me wrong but it was overwhelming to organize!

My small group instruction.

I'm hoping I remember the outlet of blogging during this hectic year! It will give me a source to reflect whether it's private or public posts. In a week from today I meet my first group of kiddos! :)

Beginning of July :)

Yesterday I got the keys to my first classroom! I'm so excited and SO happy I will be able to get in there before next Friday. I know I'd be making checklists my entire vacation if I only had two days between receiving the keys and leaving for Beaver Lake. Now I have a whole week. :) I'm letting myself relax this weekend because my cousin, Taylor, is getting married to Kierstin.

We started off the celebration last night with a family BBQ. We swam at my Mom's house and my nephews are seriously little fish! They all love the water.

Jaden isn't even two and fearlessly jumps into the pool without his life jacket. He watches his big brothers ALL of the time and wants to be just like them.

These are for you Katie (since you're the only person I know who looks at my blog ;)) A look into a mother's life of three crazy boys.

It was a perfect night and it was nice getting to hang out and see everyone.
The rehearsal dinner is tonight and wedding tomorrow; followed by the reception AND a brunch on Sunday. My family obviously likes to celebrate marriages and being able to get together.

 The beautiful couple! So happy for them and so glad I was able to celebrate it with them.

Mr. and Mrs. Kuhn 

So proud of Taylor!

Future Classroom!

These are pictures I had taken of my future classroom last year :)

 And now I've seen my future classroom empty. :)

Can't wait to start making it my own room :)

Organizing All of My Teacher "Stuff"

Have to show off my Erin Condren teacher planner. Loooove it.

I have already started to accumulate a lot of things for my classroom next year. I was lucky to have Mrs. P give me a lot of things she used in her classroom after she retired. Including her classroom library. (It's funny because having a big classroom library was something I was worried about having. Now I have my own books, her books, and a classroom library that comes with the classroom. So many books!)

Everything I was getting/creating/buying was outgrowing sitting behind our bedroom door. Plus it stressed me out to have it all there anyways. 

Luckily, Momma Linda let me use part of her storage room to starting organizing my classroom library and store my "stuff" there. At the beginning of the summer; I attempted to sort through and organize my classroom library. 

In my student teaching classroom; the books were on a bookshelf. The students were free to read them and keep them in their desks during free time. She kept some books that are more popular in a basket above the bookshelf; the students could read these books during free time but weren't to be kept in their desks. 

When I was able to observe at Lee and Sheridan; I started thinking about organizing the books in tubs.

My teaching partner at Sheridan's classroom library.

How a second grade teacher arranges her book baskets. She book has a number on it corresponding with which basket it should be in.

So I went with baskets. But it was A LOT of books. I just told myself that having these books organized to go into the classroom will make it easier to organize the books that are already in the classroom.

A work in progress.

Last week I organized the posters I have for bulletin boards. These are all posters that Mrs. P gave to me so a big thank you to her. I'm debating if I want to store my poetry posters the same way.

Again, all things from Mrs. P!

My Mom had an extra plastic closet hanger so I hole punched each poster and hooked it onto the bar.

Trying to organize all of the posters! And again, I know there are a lot of posters that come with the classroom I'll be in next year.

All finished :)

Slowly but surely, I'll take over the entire storage room :)

 Ready to get some of this stuff into my classroom!

Poetry Project DONE!... Almost.

Summer is flying by! It's crazy that next week is 4th of July. Looking forward to spending time with friends and family though. I made a huge to do list for summer to get ready for my first year teaching next year. I'm lucky because I have been meeting with my teaching partner and another second grade teacher once a week to collaborate and prepare for next year. Plus meeting with teachers at Lee for a "make and take" once a week. All of these ideas are thanks to Jill Rich. An AMAZING teacher I've been able to work with at Lee. We create something that can be used in any grade and for any subject. Pretty lucky! Today we used a white shower curtain and drew a keyboard on it; it can be used with a fly swatter for spelling words, letter sounds, etc.

A simple graphic organizer.

This is made out of juice container. You can create cards that will be age appropriate for any grade and can use the same container over and over again. A great center idea. This one is for Kindergarten. The students can see the upper case letter and when they look in the hole; they'll see the lower case letter.

This is made out of a juice container also. You can create cards that have the question on one side and the answer on the back. (flipped upside down) When the students place the question in; the card slides down and flips to show the answer when it comes out at the bottom. A lot of modeling will be needed!!

Graphic organizer to use for a science experience, sequencing, etc.

Summer school has been going really well. The time flies since it's only in the mornings. In the afternoons and basically every night I have been working on getting poetry ready for next year. I got this idea from Mrs. Rich also. She is the best teacher I have ever been able to observe and collaborate with. I observed in her room at the end of the year and noticed all of the poetry posters hanging up around the room. (I wish I would have taken a picture.) They were so cute, simple, and fun.
She later explained to me that she has a different theme each week. Each theme has a poem, song, graphic organizer, book, table cloth, games, etc. (Awesome, right?) She recently told me she has created 63 tubs. Connecting everything in the week to a theme isn't something I want to take on my first year BUT I decided the poetry was. I have already been thinking about and begun organizing my things in tubs by month so this will go right along with it.
I have been creating the posters that will hang around the room plus organizing the students' copies. Each student will have a poetry book where they will paste each poem and visual aid to go along with the poem. At the end of the year; the students will have a whole book of poems to add to their home library!

Starting to organize the students' copies of the poems and visual aids. To the left is my poetry binder. :)

I copied Mrs. Rich's poetry binder organization. I have a hard copy of the poem and visual aids that I could use for the students. Plus after creating the posters; I put the picture I used in creating the poster.

I organized the students' copies of the poem and visual aid in baggies. I started out writing the number of copies in the baggie on a sticky note so I can resuse the bags next year without this year's number on them crossed out BUT I got lazy so I wrote them on the bag.

All of the students' copies of the poem and visual aid for the year!

And those all went into here :)

Some of my posters! I've made 32 posters in the last three weeks! So happy the end is in sight.

When I went to the Scholastic Book Fair; I kept in mind the themes of the poems and bought books that go along with some of the themes of the poems. My next part of the project is to create simple graphic organizers to go along with the stories I choose for the theme. This is a way I can connect it to the district curriculum; introduce/review the same story structures we are doing that week. I'm going to color the picture and add some generic things (title, author, literature or informational, etc) but leave space to write them in as I go with a dry erase marker.

SO glad the end of creating this is in sight! It'll be awesome to have organized and ready to go for the whole year. :)