Friday – Life of the Rookie Teacher

Adjective Aliens and Nighttime Aligners

November 8, 2019November 8, 2019Posted in Education, UncategorizedTagged Adjective Aliens, Friday, Friday Feels, Grammar, Grammar Teacher, Nighttime Aligners, School House Rock, School Life, Smile Direct Club, Smile Direct Club Journey, Teacher Life, Teacher Love, Teacher Resources, Teachers on Pinterest, TeachersPayTeachers, Teaching Life, Teaching TechniquesLeave a comment

Happy Friday!!

This year I am currently teaching grammar to my class along with 2 other classes. When I was growing up I HATED grammar so as the sole teacher teaching grammar to 75 students this year, I wanted to make it as exciting as I possibly could.

This week started the second round of grammar with my class. We are started this round by focusing on adjectives. Now these kids should have been working with adjectives since they were in kindergarten BUT for some reason adjectives, adverbs, even verbs and nouns are hard for them all to remember.

Yesterday we started by reviewing what nouns are followed by practicing describing nouns, AKA using adjectives. I then went on Youtube and played the School House Rock “Unpack your Adjectives” song. I shared with them how I listened to that song and watched that music video when I was their age and sang along with them.

Once we finished reviewing nouns and adjectives I handed out an adjective challenge worksheet I found for free on A Classroom for All Seasons‘ TPT store. They had to fill out all the adjectives they could think of that fit certain categories.

Today we did a quick review on what we talked about yesterday and then I handed out a fun activity I found on Pinterest when I searched “adjective activities.” They got to create their own “Adjective Alien.” They each got a sheet that had them fill in different adjectives to describe how many body parts their alien would have and what certain body parts would look like on their alien.

Once they finished filling out their sheet, they got to draw their own alien based on their information sheet. It was so fun and they were so cute! It was a nice easy way to end our Friday.

It was a long week and I’m so happy it’s the weekend. A fun cold has been going around the classroom and I finally caught it. I am ready to lay on my couch all weekend!

Sidenote: My Smile Direct Club nighttime aligners have officially come in the mail and I’m 10 months closer to my teeth being straight again!

For more day to day lessons and activities, go follow my school/teacher instagram account @lifeoftherookieteacher!!

Second Full Week Complete!

September 20, 2019September 20, 2019Posted in Education, UncategorizedTagged 4th Grade Life, Back to School, Friday, Friday Feels, I love my job, iPhone 11, Life of the Rookie Teacher, Love, September, Teacher Feels, Teacher Hacks, Teacher Life, Teacher Love, Teaching LifeLeave a comment

Happy Friday! I think I’m officially labeling Fridays as my posting days. It’s a nice way to rethink about the week while also venting if I need it. It’s also a way for me to relax and decompress.

This week I didn’t go overboard with anything crazy like art projects or special assignments. My main goal for this week was to keep things as consistent and routined as possible. (For myself and the kids.)

Monday started the week strong. My kids came in ready to learn (which still blew my mind) so it was a nice easy way to start the week. The next few days were like that but then Thursday came.

Thursday was the day we had to take our fall reading benchmarks test. The assessment we take is about 40 questions but the poor kids have to read multiple passages (that are not exciting) so it takes up to 2 hours for them to finish. Needless to say, they were not in the learning mood after lunch.

The afternoon on Thursday was the first time this year I started to get frustrated. (Now I know what I’m about to share is literally nothing! I know, I’ve had tough classes in the past! But after having such an incredible 2 weeks of no issues, I was shocked that they weren’t listening and being a bit disrespectful.) They came back from lunch, and usually they know my expectation is to grab a book and read to self right away (they are amazing at this) but they came back and would not stop talking! I tried to get them to settle down but for some reason it wasn’t sinking in.

For my discipline system I have a “strike” board. If their name is on the strike board by Friday, they owe me 5 minutes (for each time their name is on the board) of their morning Friday free time. I usually only have to give a single warning for them to settle down, but Thursday it took multiple warnings and a few kids who got official “strikes” for them to calm down.

The rest of the afternoon was just like this. They were so chatty. Luckily they are such good kids that saying they had to write their name on the strike board was enough for them to stop whatever it was they were doing.

Today was very similar to yesterday. They were high energy and chatty. We had to stop and have a talk about how they had been doing such a great job the first few weeks and how my expectation of them is to continue that since they are more than capable. (I know, they’re 9, they are going to talk and have high energy but just telling them that I was disappointed in the past few days, was enough to get them to settle down.)

I do love this class. So far, I can tell it’s going to be a much easier year than it has been in the past. But they’re kids and I’m a teacher, there will be days that we both drive each other crazy. The last 2 days, were those days. I do love them with all of my heart and I am excited to go back and see them on Monday!

To make today so much better, however I was eligible for an upgrade on my phone, so last weekend I preordered the new iPhone 11 Pro Max. When I came home from work today, there it was sitting in front of my door waiting for me! (I’m a nerd who LOVES Apple and technology, so new Apple products are my toys that make me as excited as a kid on Christmas morning!) It was the best Friday surprise!

Until next week friends!

For more day to day adventures and pictures, go follow my school instagram account @lifeoftherookieteacher!

First Full Week With Some ELA Fun!

September 13, 2019September 13, 2019Posted in Education, UncategorizedTagged 4th Grade Life, Art Project, Back to School, Best Class Ever, Friday, Friyay, Reading, Reading Project, Reading Quilts, School Fun, School Life, School Projects, Story Elements, Teacher Life, Teacher Love, Teacher Resources, Teachers on Pinterest, TeachersPayTeachers, TPT Resources2 Comments

The first full week is complete and I am SHOT!! Don’t get me wrong, it was a great week but man I am exhausted with this new sleep/work routine.

I love my class! I knew that last week was great but that was only 2 days. I got to have a full week of “normality” with them and was able to see their real personalities. I have a few chatty kiddos but after my overly emotional class last year with multiple chatty kids, this feels like nothing! They are also super sweet and thoughtful! I had one of my amazing kids bring me a little pick me up this morning. (His mom is a teacher so that was a major part of it but still, it made my whole day!)

This week we started our first official reading unit/lesson. The main focus of this week was to talk about story structure/elements. Because these are 4th graders, most of them are pretty familiar with characters, setting, and plot. (Last year, even at the end of the year, some of my kids didn’t know what a setting was???) I didn’t want this week to be too dull and boring for them. I obviously love projects and doing something other than boring worksheets whenever I can so I had to look into my giant reading resources binder.

**Side note: My first year at my old school, we didn’t have the best reading curriculum (in my opinion of course.) The main idea of the curriculum was that there was one main target taught for 3 full weeks in a roll. Meaning that if the unit was on main idea, we taught main idea for 3 weeks. The down side to that, the curriculum gave us NOTHING to use for those 3 weeks. I spent many hours searching TPT and Pinterest that first year finding hundreds of activities, projects, and graphic organizers for each unit. It was a lot of work that year but I have so many great resources to use now!**

One thing that I found in the binder was a graphic organizer that I actually got from my mom (who has been teaching for 23 years.) She copied it from one of her reading resource books she bought from some teacher store (life before TPT and Pinterest.) The organizer was in the shape of a quilt square. I’m not exactly sure what it was originally made for but my mom used it to share books and certain chapters students would read. I used it as a way to share story elements from different books they have read to practice our week’s topic strategy.

They took the organizer and put the title, author, and rating (that they gave out of 5 stars) in the middle. I then had them share the setting, characters, and plot from the book. Finally, they wrote about their favorite part. Once they were finished they got to color and decorate there squares. I did this last year and took all of their quilt squares to make a giant quilt on the wall. I have yet to post their squares this year but most of them finished and did an AMAZING job. (Again, incredible kids!)

This week was a little crazy trying to get back into the groove of things but these kids made it so fun and easy. I am so excited to get back and see them on Monday!! I just have all of my fingers crossed that they stay this sweet and awesome!

Happy Friday friends!!

Because the summer is over and we are officially back, I am now back to posting as much as I can on my school’s instagram page! Go follow me at @lifeoftherookieteacher to see all of my day to day stories and pictures of my awesome class and our adventures!!