Professional Development Woes

Hello,

I spent 4 days this week in professional development.  This class was previously my favorite professional development ever.  Now it's being run by different people and it was a total waste of time.  I guess I got my credits and can renew my license next year, but still, I'd have enjoyed getting something out of it.

Yesterday was my first attempt at taking an entire day off work.  Yeah, I still wound up spending 4 hours working on my vocabulary word wall project.  I just can't seem to quit.  Hehehe.

Today I have been feeling ill, so it could be that it will be the day no work happens.  Due to the long professional development and lack of access to my classroom this week, I really don't have  much in the way of pictures to share.

I'm thinking about making the vocabulary cards I'm making available on Teachers Pay Teachers when I'm finished, but I'm not sure if anyone would be interested.  Since I'm getting paid for part of the time I'm using, I think they'd have to be free.  I haven't looked into being a "seller" there, so if anyone wants to help me through that, I would love it.

I just read about a blogger meet up in Las Vegas.  I really want to go, but it's on the evening after I have a professional development day.  One of these days, I'll make it to something like that.  I hope you are all having a nice summer.

Joell

Is it Really Summer Vacation?

You know, I can sort of feel it.  The huge amount of pressure and responsibility of taking care of and teaching children has been lifted from my shoulders.  Still, I've spent at least 7-10 hours almost every day this week working on school stuff.

I will still be teaching first grade next year, but it will be in a different room.  I'm trying my best to look at the positives:  closer to the copier/printer, lots more shelf space, closer to all my first grade team teachers.  But the negatives come up too:  no window, smaller room, in a noisier area of the building.

I have decided to use this as an opportunity to organize myself.  Despite my attempts to start out that way, I didn't get everything packed up before the end of school.  So, on Monday I got lots of help.  Now, I appreciated the help, but it certainly made the move far from organized.  Stuff got all mixed up and my new room looked like this.

And that's the NEAT part.  I  had stuff scattered over the top of every horizontal surface, helter-skelter.  I worked hard all week trying to organize.  I took the day off of the classroom on Thursday for common core training.  Went back on Friday and realized there was no way I'd have it organized AND everything off the floor for cleaning.  So I focused on getting all the stuff off the floor, but it's still not organized.

Next week I have 4 days of common core training, which I hope will be very good.  I'm hoping the custodian will get my floors all cleaned while I'm there so I can go back the following week and work some more on organizing myself.  Plus, then I can set out desks and figure out the layout of the room since this one is a completely different shape from my former room.

Besides the classroom move/organization stuff, I've been working on my massive vocabulary word wall project.  I don't think I'll get much of a break this summer, but hopefully next school year will go well because of all of the extra work I'm putting in now.

I'm also working on making some of my old plain stuff a little nicer looking.  I'm hoping to share some of that when it's done.

I'm going to try to blog at least once a week over the summer.  And hopefully find time to learn more about what I'm doing with this blog.  Thanks for reading!

Joell

The Last Day

Hello,

Today was the official last day of school.  One of my first grade team members retired today.  We've worked together for nearly 20 years and I will greatly miss her.

I have really loved my class this year, so it was with more sorrow than glee that I saw them go.  Trust me, I've felt the glee some years.

One of the silly items of the day is the tee shirt one of my students wore to school.  I think you'll see why I had to get pictures.

(Ms. Wilkins was Chuck Norris' 1st Grade Teacher!)

(That's where he got his moves)

And here's my response:

(You are the next Norris!  Love, Ms. Wilkins)

I'm pretty exhausted since I've had difficulty sleeping this week.  I have about half my stuff moved to my new room, and the other half still in the old.  Stuff is scattered all over the place.  So, I'll be working next week.  I'm hoping I'll be able to really organize my things in a way that will work well in my new setting.

I'm not exactly sure what happens with teacher blogs over the summer.  I guess I'll check in now and then with my summer activities or ideas for next year.  One of my summer goals is to get better at blogging.  

Bring on the summer!

Joell

No Picture Again

We did these really fun sun glasses this week.  I took pictures, but they all have kids' faces in them.  Then I managed to catch a cold, so I'm without the energy to want to do anything.

This coming week is our last week of school.  We have some fun things planned:  our trucker pen pals will come on Tuesday, we'll also get to dunk the principal on Tuesday.  Wednesday we'll have awards day, Thursday is field day, and Friday is the last day of school.  I'm hoping it will all go well and I'll be able to give my students a great send-off to second grade.

I intend to spend some of my summer time learning how to really blog.  I also have a HUGE project for vocabulary, and several professional development classes.  Who says teachers don't work during the summer?

Joell

Professional Development and the End of the Year

Well,

I didn't get any pictures taken this week.  I felt like I was scrambling all week long.  It's the end of the year and all these crazy things keep coming up.  Then there's all the extra work involved in things like talent shows, awards programs, cleaning up the room.  And this year, I get to pack everything up and move to another classroom.  Not to mention the fact that we are all just "done".  Overwhelmed?  Uh....Yeah.

I spent most of yesterday and all of today (Yes, Saturday) in professional development.  While it's good stuff we're learning, it's a hard time of year to stay focused on professional development with so much other stuff that needs done.  Okay, enough wining.  I'll try and get at least one picture next week.

Joell

Picture Pie and a New Idea

Hi all,

I've had a bit of a motivation problem since I returned from New Orleans.  It's been all I could do to get through the teaching day, so the blog has been neglected.  Not a good way to start a blog, but oh well.

Today I wanted to share some art/math my students did on Friday.  There is this wonderful book called Picture Pie by Ed Emberley that I picked up from a library rummage sale.  All of the pictures are made out of circles.  It's a wonderful way to teach or review fractions because students fold the circles to get halves, fourths, and eighths in order to make the pictures.

I have a document camera and a projector, so I took pictures of several of the pages from the book (since I only have 1 copy) and put up a slide show of those pages on my screen so the students could see how to make various creatures.  This can also be used as a center once the kids get the hang of it.  That way they can look at the book itself and make some of the more complex things.

Here's a few of the pictures my students made.  Sorry for any blurriness, my camera was  having issues.

And here's how they looked in the hall:

My New Idea

So, I went to the Salt Lake City Public Library today.  It's a wonderful place, of course.  The architecture is astounding.  I got myself a library card (I had one many years ago that was lost.)  I hit the children's stacks, and came across six copies of this book--just enough for reading groups.

This book (The End by David LaRochelle and Richard Egielski) tells a fairy tale-like story backward.  So, it starts with "The End" and "And they all lived happily ever after."  And it goes backward through the story.  I'm going to do this with my reading groups this week, and use it to review cause and effect.  If I manage to find the time tomorrow, I might make a page of links with each event in the story, so the kids can link the causes and effects together.  Then retell the story both backward as written, then forward.

I think I have made the links and you can get them here.  Let me know if it doesn't work. 

And finally...

Tomorrow is Mother's Day.  I am so very blessed to have a wonderful mother who taught me who I am and how to survive in the world.  To all the mothers out there, I hope you have a wonderful Mother's Day.

Joell

New Orleans Burn Out and Sales

Hi all,

I had such a great time last week at the Plain Talk About Reading conference in New Orleans.  I have all kinds of new ideas to try out in my classroom, and it was also a good review of stuff I already knew.

Of course, after the day filled with learning, we went out on the town to pig out eat and have fun.  We also took a tour of the city.  It brought home the scale of the Katrina fallout on an emotional level.  My favorite place we went to eat was Emeril's NOLA.  I tried some new (to me) foods:  mussels, oysters, and hushpuppies.

These are some of the elevators at they Hyatt Regency where we stayed.  They were a whole new way of operating an elevator.  You selected your destination floor before you summon the elevator.  On the elevator there are no floor buttons so you need to make sure you get on the right one.

I hope to get back to posting school related stuff this week.  Until then, there is a Teacher's Appreciation Week sale going on at www.teacherspayteachers.com, just use the code TAD12 when you check out for 10% off your purchase.  Many of the teachers who sell things there are also having sales, so you can get some good deals.

Thanks for stopping by.

Joell