Classroom pics

I took pics yesterday so you could more fully grasp my classroom in all its glory.

The inviting exterior:

Ceiling:

Walls and cracks:

(That’s the outside world you see through that crack of light!)

Floorboards and misc. beauty:

Our source of drinking water; note that there are dead ants in the little catch thingy.

Antique computer with floppy drive. The CD/DVD drive is just for decoration. It doesn’t actually work.

Hope you enjoyed the tour! Please visit the gift shop on your way out!

Ready, AIMS, …

Yes, it is that time again. For the next five days, PLUS the following Tuesday, my little angels will once again experience the joys of being tested to death. I took photos (they’re currently being uploaded, but I’ll post them here when I’m done) of the Before and After of my classroom. Last year I just took everything down. This year the principal suggested we just cover things. That’s nice, because last year things looked pretty bleak. This year the room looks like there are giant chocolate bars on the walls.

Ms. Delbridge and I had a great time this week. Earlier (a month ago maybe) we got together and had our students do a writing project together. Hopefully, I already wrote about that. This past week we did another project. Our students wear uniforms — white on top and dark blue on bottom. So they had to create a uniform. They had to design it and describe it. They had to create a persuasive poster and a persuasive essay. On Friday we hung the posters on the wall and had each student walk up and read them and vote on which uniform they’d want. Then they came up and read their essays and each student again voted on which was the most persuasive. It was great fun!

When we did the previous assignment together, I took the students’ photos and imported them into their story documents. Then I decided to look and see if the state had actual technology standards (which is a joke in light of our level of technology). They did, so I had the students create and describe a holiday. Then I taught two students how to move the documents from the keyboard to the computer, run spell-check, import a clip art, and print it out. They taught everyone else, so those were hung up on the wall next to the partner stories.

We had a pep rally on Thursday for the AIMS (the fifth graders had theirs on Friday). Three of my students were in the skit — so they gave autographs when they got back to the room! Wednesday’s PD (professional development, aka staff meeting) was about the AIMS and the site visit that took place Mon, Tues, and Wed of this week. A team came down from the state’s department of education. They observed in every single classroom, and met with staff individually or with a group. I was in a group. I was selected for the group, and the admins said they picked people who could be articulate about our school. We had to have the goals memorized in case they asked. They did ask, and I did have them memorized! Bravo me!

I get to go to a 2-day workshop in April, along with Ms. Delbridge. Others have already gone. I can’t remember what it is — I’ll look it up later (maybe there’s an e-mail about it). I’m looking forward to it, except the part about leaving my class with a sub. I left them with a sub for half an hour for the interview, and all hell broke loose.

The uniform posters:

The classroom BEFORE:

math and science standards, and student writing about what we did in math and science

math stuff and the poster they made the day after the presidential innauguration

they colored in their clip art after they printed the work out

partner writing with third grade

I Have A Dream project for Library

drawings by the Narnia book club

Writing bulletin board with of course the standards and Essential Question

more writing stuff on the walls that had to go

SFA (reading)

my antique computer and one of the keyboards the students use

AFTER:

Whew!

Yes, an exhausting week is over. I think the first week back after vacation can be brutal sometimes! One little event was that when we got to the classroom one morning, a student told me that other students had a BB gun on campus! So I sent him to the office with another student (mostly because he’s … a few fries short of a happy meal and I wanted to make sure he actually made it all the way to the office and remembered why) and I called the office to let them know he was coming and why. The only thing I know is that the kid with the BB gun was … the student council president. He’s a fifth grader, and a large chunk of that fifth grade bunch has just … not been pretty this year. They have one experienced returning teacher, one who had been a student teacher last year, and the rest are new. The kids wander around when they’re supposed to be in class, and vandalize the restroom or disturb its occupants when they can. We have a program this year where a college student with a grant brings various fruits for snacks. We’ve tried all sorts of unfamiliar and exotic things. This week she brought a fruit called a sapote. It looks sort of like an apple with the skin of a pear. The skin is crunchy and thick. The inside fruit was mushy. I did manage to eat most of mine, but it was definitely unusual. Many of the fifth graders, on the other hand, threw theirs against the portables or on the blacktop “sidewalks” in the portable area to watch them smash. Delighful little urchins.

On the teacher web site, someone posted a spam message. I looked anyway at the site they were directing us to, and I actually found it interesting. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBeWEgvGm2Y http://homepage.mac.com/chrisbiffle/Menu38.html So I tried it when I went back to school after break, and I really like how it’s working. The usual attention-getting method is that you raise your hand in a peace sign and eventually, if you wait long enough, everyone will do the same and stop talking. I’m not really into “eventually if you wait long enough.” This is working out better, and it’s fun for the kids. They also have their team points at the end of the week converted to Coyote Coupons, which they like (which I was doing in SFA but I’m now doing for all my classes). One of the things the program is into is physical gestures. We’re doing things in math like parallel and perpendicular, various angles and triangles, lines/rays, etc. We did the teach/OK thing with them explaining these things to their team using gestures, and it made quite a difference! It’s also within the realm of a SIOP strategy, which is bonus points for me. SIOP strategies are things you use to help make learning comprehensible to English Language Learners – like physical actions, using real objects instead of just words and pictures, etc. On weeks that are full school weeks, I do tutoring on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2:15-3:45, so that made this week more tiring!! This month, then, I have three weeks of tutoring (not the week of MLK Day). Anyway, I’m a pooped cookie!

Monday

Tomorrow I start tutoring.  It’s an official district program for students who are ELL.  I work Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2:15 to 3:45 (school gets out at 2:06, but we can’t leave before three anyway).  Hopefully after they take out taxes they’ll leave me something!

In the meantime, every Wednesday staff meeting they give us some new thing to do.  Now we have to do these 2-page lesson plans for writing, science, and math — that’s 30 pages a week, on top of the SFA (reading) lesson plans.  Yeah, nothing like lots of extra work!  It was practically a mutiny at the staff meeting last week!  You know me, though.  I was walking back to the office afterwards and the principal and one of the assistants ended up walking back at the same time.  They made a comment about the meeting, so I said “Well, at least I stopped dozing off during the meetings!”  So they got a good laugh out of that.  I told them that just the night before in my class we were talking about the book Who Moved My Cheese. They said they even had a video of it! I guess no one’s seen it in a while!

What happens when you have a room full of children who don’t believe in coughing or sneezing into anything but mid-air? Yeah, what fun. I had a sore throat starting Thursday and ending some time Saturday. Now it’s the constant sneezing and sniffling. I went nowhere further than taking out the trash over the weekend, though. I need to be healthy for this weekend coming up!

In science today we made flashlights. (see photos above) We made switches out of brass fasteners, f-clips, and paper clips. They also had bulbs and bulb holders, batteries and battery holders, wires, and construction paper. We didn’t get anywhere near this far in the science kit last year! This is my favorite of the science units I think. I’ve learned a lot as well! And face it — how often do you get to make a flashlight? The only problem is that all the equipment goes back in a couple of weeks. Bummer. But they refill the kit as needed and then ship it off to another school. I don’t remember what our next science unit is. We only have two left — the one with seeds and plants and the one with the sand table and erosion.

Saturday

On Friday, some of us at school took a van tour of the neighborhood to see where our students come from. It is amazing how beautiful one housing development is and its contrast to the trailer court next to it! But it was a lot of fun and great to see. Our turf is huge! No wonder we have nearly a thousand students!

Thursday after the meetings we had a grade level meeting and talked about what sorts of things we’re going to do the first day (Monday). So I spent a few hours Thursday night coming up with a schedule and lesson plans. I posted these on Friday and three of the other teachers liked it so well they copied it!

Blog of the Week: http://tinyurl.com/65d59w I know, I haven’t done this in a long time! The blog entry in that link isn’t the most recent (the ones above it on the right sidebar are) but it’s the one that drew me in. The author is a Fullbright Scholar who moved to Bulgaria this week. Talk about Adventures in Moving and Living! Makes moving to Arizona look so tame!

One of the things I wore to school this week was the necklace Lisa bought me at the art show in Mt. Horeb while I was there. Many people commented on how they loved it! My camera is being wonky at the moment, so I haven’t taken a picture of the necklace yet, but I will when I can.

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23, 22, 23

We do our attendance twice a day on a computer.  You have to go into the school web site, find the link, scroll down to your school, click on My Class, click on the AM attendance link, and then take attendance.  I try to get most of that set up before I go to pick up the little angels from the playground.  Well, this morning I noticed that I only had 22 students.  I had 23 yesterday, but I’ve had two who have been gone all week.  So I looked, and sure enough, one was off the list.  She had arrived in October I think.  So I went to the office, and they confirmed that she moved.

We did our morning stuff, went to OMA (music) at 8:45, had a great time playing the violin, and went back to class — where I met my new student and his parents!  I had already cleaned out A.’s desk, so I gave that one to him, putting him in a group with two other boys.  They boys were happy to see him.  He is bilingual:  Chinese & English, and has the same name as a boy I had earlier in the year.

I did my valentines for my students last night.  When I packed them for school this morning, I almost only brought the ones I filled in.  Instead, I brought the whole packet including the unused ones, so I had a valentine for the new student.  I had some extras, and a couple students expressed interest in giving him one so I gave them what I had left.  Seems like Valentine’s Day would be a rough day to be the new kid!

When he first arrived, I had the others introduce themselves and tell about their pets and siblings.  Later I found my blog on the school internet and showed them the pictures of Harry and Ginny.  They liked that!

Did you notice your town was empty today from 3:15-4:30?  I know this because all the people who normally live in your town were on my streets driving today!  It wasn’t just a parking lot in the University area; oh no!  The entire trip from my school parking lot to my father’s house was basically bumper to bumper except for a couple of blocks on Ft. Lowell.  Even the only fun part of the trip was bad because there was a 3-car accident.  Please let all those people come home now!

Dottie made awesome chicken cutlets for supper!  They (she and Dad) had been out at the mall and found this teapot that has two kitties on one side and cat paw prints on the other!  I’ll have to get a picture of it!

gerunds

Smoking.  I keep seeing signs for cigarette brands on my way to and from work, advertising such “enticing” prices as over $4 a pack.  Now when I started smoking in 1975, I bought two packs for 99 cents.  That was a good price, especially considering that it took me extremely little time to go from being a non-smoker to smoking two packs a day.  Isn’t college grand?  I remember I pretty much looked like a dork and my swell dorm sisters showed me how to smoke and look less stupid.

A few of us tried to quit, and that was a dreadful week.  The next time I tried to quit was when I actually succeeded, in 1992.  Generics had recently come out, and I switched from Marlboro 100s to some sort of generic 100s.  I paid between five and ten dollars a carton.  Carton.  Ten packs.  Not one.  So I’m always shocked to see how much the price has gone up!

Learning.  I’ve signed up to take a course the first week of June (June 2-6).  We do three major science units and one smaller one.  We recently finished the major one on electric circuits, but of course I didn’t have much prior knowledge on the subject.  The course is to help you better teach that particular subject.  It sounds a little like John Muir Academy — except — THEY’RE PAYING ME!!  Yep!  It is part of a grant, and so I will not only learn how to teach something that I’m interested in learning how to teach (it’s mandatory, but also very interesting), I’ll get paid for it to boot!  Of course, knowing the district, there’s no telling WHEN I’ll get paid for it, but still!

Teaching.  Today I got to watch another teacher teach the reading program.  It was great!  There was a part I wanted to see that I couldn’t because she didn’t have time to do it today, but I still learned a lot.  My own class had a sub, and it was Day 5 of that story’s reading cycle so the sub gave the test.  My behavior system is kind of complicated, so I quickly assigned a couple of roles and pointed out two very trustworthy students.  No one had to call 911 and the pod was still intact, so I guess it went well enough!

The bottom four of my students alphabetically were absent today.  I’m guessing it’s still the flu.  One of them was my student who missed seven days recently due to pneumonia.  Last Monday we had a math test, and he’d only been back that day so all he got was the review, plus whatever he managed to pick up before he left.  He still scored higher than some of the students who were there the whole time!!!

Um, can’t think of another gerund.  If you have any photos you’re willing to share with my reading audience, feel free to e-mail them!  Sue recently sent snow pics but I forgot to ask if I could post them, so I haven’t yet.  But a lot of you know at least some of the reading audience, so if you have pics that can be posted, do let me know!

ticked

OK, I’m really annoyed. You know we got an e-mail recently about how badly our students do on their math tests, and mine certainly are not doing well even though they know how to do it when we practice over and over again. Well this afternoon — over 100 days into school, in the third quarter, I find out that other teachers are letting their students use their books and their notes! AND — I was told that I just should have asked!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Um, as I pointed out to them, why would it occur to me to ask if my students could do what no students can do in any other school? I was not the only stunned one — the other two new ones were equally surprised. And the teacher we were talking to said that she got to use her notes in college, etc. Not the rest of us! We had to memorize everything, so why would it occur to us that our students don’t? Well, that’s over! We take great notes, and from now on they’re using them during the test. No wonder my kinds are at the bottom half of the heap!

Friday

Greetings from school! The students recently (yesterday) took a technology survey, and one question was about whether or not they use the computers at school to post their writings to a blog. That tells me that this is acceptable practice in this district, so I promptly made them a blog at http://grade4writing.wordpress.com/. What I will do is let them type their “final” copies in and then print them out. Then we will edit them and they can make corrections. They are not crazy about making corrections, but having their best writing on the computer is a whole different ballgame from turning it in to the teacher. We shall see how it goes. They are already all wanting to do it, so I started with today’s science journal writing from yesterday’s experiment and the personal narrative we did this week. Of course, one student can’t find his so he used a different piece of writing. Wow, this is a crappy keyboard on this school computer!!  Be sure to check out the science photos!