Happy New Year – Life of the Rookie Teacher

First Full Week Back

January 12, 2019July 6, 2019Posted in Education, UncategorizedTagged 3rd Grade Life, Art Project, Back to School, Cat Lover, Happy New Year, Harry Potter, January, Minnesota, Snowmen, Teaching Life, Winter1 Comment

Well I’m not going to lie, this week has been long and crazy. Coming back from break was great! I missed my kiddos so much but man, a full week of school after 3+ weeks, is hard! I feel like the first full week of school in September!

Monday morning started the week off great when one of my kiddos brought me a Christmas present that came in the mail last weekend. She had told me about it but then was sad because she said it wasn’t coming. (She’s a cutie who likes to fabricate her stories so I wasn’t even sure she was serious about this gift in the first place.) Oh my goodness it was AMAZING.

Side note: To get how amazing, you have to know that I have a cat who I love and I’m OBSESSED with Harry potter!

Her family had gotten me a shirt that was all of the Harry Potter characters AS CATS!!! It was honestly the best shirt I’ve ever seen in my life!

It made my whole week and it was only Monday morning!

For the most part, the week went pretty smoothly. My kiddos were back to normal! Most of them were with me all of the time and my usual special kiddos were back to their normal selves (which was actually shockingly refreshing!)

We FINALLY had a normal week!!!! I’ve missed normal weeks!! We had a normal reading week and started our new math chapter. Everything was finally back to normal. For me, that makes the week go by faster and easier.

Today we did one of my favorite winter projects to end the week! I love snowmen (my last post is a perfect example of that) so I wanted to add snowmen to our “rocking work” wall. Last year (my first year) I just simply searched on Pinterest for an easy and cute snowman project and I found this one (which is pretty common but cute!)

They had an idea on what to do and then I let them take their own creative path. They turned out so cute!! They definitely were creative but overall, they were super cute! I have a wall in the back of my classroom to hang their artwork. I’ve found this to be a super easy way to display work without wasting my time taping/stapling up work every few weeks.

My life has been so crazy that I haven’t been able to post anything in a week! A lot more happened this week that I should have talked about but we all know how teaching life takes over 12 hours of your day before you’re ready for bed again! My goal is to do better and share more about what we do day to day in our room. More than likely, that won’t happen for awhile but I will do my best!

Happy first full week back!!

Winter Project PLUS ELA Standards

January 5, 2019July 6, 2019Posted in Education, UncategorizedTagged 3rd Grade Life, Art Project, Back to School, Happy New Year, January, Minnesota, Sequencing Events, Snowmen, Teaching Life, Winter1 Comment

Coming back to school this week, we only had 3 days. In those 3 days I really didn’t want to start any new reading unit so I decided to review different reading strategies we’ve discussed throughout the year.

I also wanted to do a fun winter art project to spice up our classroom (it looks pretty dull without our Christmas decorations.) I tried to think of a way to combine some reading strategy to an art project. Lucky for me, my mom is a teacher (and taught 3rd grade for years) so she gives me tons of ideas and activities that she used to do all the time. I found one that mixed making a snowman with putting events of a story together. We are reviewing sequencing events next week so it was the PERFECT little gem of a project to find!

Every student got this sheet to start. They had to fill it out with their steps on how to build a snowman, or “snowpal.”

Once they showed me they were able to sequence how they build a snowman, they cut out their little circles and used them to make a snowman on blue construction paper.

Seriously, this was the cutest and easiest project I’ve ever done! I didn’t realize how amazing it would turn out until they were done! I let them have free reign when it came to creating their snowman. Most took the literal route and made the cutest “snowdogs” and “snowcats” out there!

This made for the quickest, cutest, and easiest Friday morning after Christmas break and now my cupboards have the best winter decorations to spice up the room!

Welcome Back!!!

January 2, 2019July 6, 2019Posted in Education, UncategorizedTagged 2019, 3rd Grade Life, Back to School, Happy New Year, January, Kindness, Mindfulness, Resolutions, Teaching Life, Winter3 Comments

Happy New Year everyone!! I am officially back at school and I feel so refreshed and very much restored. I woke up 30 minutes early this morning because I was so excited to be back in the swing of things and start this next half of the year off right!

I wanted to treat today like the first day of school again. 11 days of no school and crazy routines will throw anyone off especially 23 8 year olds. They all came in and found that I have a whole new seating arrangement. I needed a fresh look and this way, they are around new people! When the day started, we had our morning meeting which ran a little differently than normal. Because they were all so excited to share about their breaks, I set aside 20 minutes just for them to share. They loved listening to everyone’s stories and it was a way to help them get all of their chatter out before we got into our day.

We then spent our “activity” time of our morning meeting talking about our class expectations. I’m a big person on creating these expectations as a team/group instead of me just telling them my rules. I like to have them be apart of that process, so they can take responsibility and ownership of our room. We made a list of 6 “main” rules and 6 consequences at the beginning of the year. I took both lists down and we discussed them and talked about how we can make them better or stick to the expectations in a new way. I found a great (free!!) resource on teachers pay teachers that was all about rules and expectations. I found this on the shop Teach Create Collaborate. They took this back to their own desks and filled out 3 of the most important expectations/rules we have in our room on their own.

Once they finished, I had them talk with their groups (groups of 8) to discuss what they came up with to be their top 3 rules/expectations we have and why. From there, they also discussed what some consequences might be if one of the rules were to be broken. While they discussed I put the two words on the board and we got to work brainstorming together!

It definitely looks like a big jumbled mess (and some of the rules and consequences might not make much sense) but these were what they came up with, all on their own. I had no input on what they decided because I wanted them to take pride in creating our new set of rules and consequences. I then transferred these onto two different posters to hang in our room. I had each student sign both before hanging them up to show they approved of what was created.

Once that was completed we did a mini lesson on resolutions. I’m not the biggest fan on having one specific new year’s resolution but I am big on setting a goal for yourself that you work hard on everyday. For example, last year my resolution (goal) was to focus on myself, this year I have dedicated this to be the year of adventure. I shared this with my students but also told them some normal resolutions they might hear (workout more, get better grades, learn how to do a cartwheel, etc.) I showed them 2 awesome Youtube videos that explained resolutions and gave kid friendly examples. The first video was published by Syracuse entitled Kids share adorable New Year’s resolutions. The second video was a class Kid President video entitled Kid President AWESOME Year Challenge.

My kids loved both and got awesome ideas on what their resolutions should be. I found another free and awesome resource on Teachers Pay Teachers that was a cute writing template for them to write down what their resolutions would be. I found this on Amanda Garcia’s TPT store. It was the perfect mini writing activity for the day and to get back in the swing of things.

My math time was all review to get them back thinking math and so I knew they didn’t forget anything we really focused on right before they left. We played addition/subtraction scoot for the first half and then they worked on independent work the second half. The rest of the day was pretty calm and relaxing. My kids were back to their “normal” selves so my fingers are crossed we will have another successful half of the year!

Sidenote: I started Harry Potter as my read aloud today and my class is already in love with it! I could not be any happier!!!!