Trying to get back in the groove

  I was sitting here reading back through my old posts and realized how much I enjoy the act of sending my ramblings out into the Internet. It's a form of therapy.

  The past year for me has been crazy busy! I had THE BEST CLASS ever!!! We all cried on the last day, it was so sad. They were begging me to loop, their parents wanted me to loop, I wanted to loop. Alas, the thought of seeing them morph from sweet little 5th graders to hormonal junior high students was too much for me. I told them I would be in the same room next year, come visit. I also have a whole list of names for babysitters in a few more years. Truly the most wonderful class I have ever had.

   My boys are now about to be 4 (tomorrow), almost 13, and 1. My how the year flew by. I have pre-k supply lists to buy from and 8th grade *shudder. After four years of babysitting for us my wonderful Mom has retired to become, in her words a real Grandma. Now she can borrow them for a few hours, spoil them, and send them home. So we are also transitioning to a babysitter for our youngest. He is so attached to me that August 5th is going to be horrible for both of us.

  The other big news is that come August 2nd I will be half-way through my master's degree! I didn't actually plan on even starting it this past year, you know newborn and all, but this opportunity just came along and I went for it. I'm glad I did. The classes have been great so far, this summer I think they are piling the reading and discussion board posts on us since we aren't "working". I feel like I'm learning a lot and that's the important part. (I also get a raise in August for bachelors + hours)

  I'm using this blog to stall on a homework assignment that I guess I better get back to. With the big birthday tomorrow I won't get much time.

Adios!

The wonderous world of Pinterest

         I have been pinning like crazy this summer! The discovery of a Pinterest app for my iPhone has given me countless hours of enjoyment over the past twelve weeks. Driving in the car for 12 hours? Check-out Pinterest every few hours to pass the time. Nursing a baby in the middle of the night? Look at Pinterest to see what other people are up to. I have actually started checking it first thing in the morning along with Facebook. Stuck waiting at the doctor's office for check-ups? Glance at Pinterest to take you to a happier place. Needless to say I adore the site.

          A friend of mine recently posted on Facebook that she felt like Pinterest was making her a better person. I agreed with her post, not that it was making her a better person, but that I felt the same way sometimes. The website has given me numerous activities I have done with my older sons this summer. About 90% of them were a success and have become things we do regularly. It gave me ideas to use on vacation both for things to do and things to pass the time in the car with. Don't get me started on the recipes! Lord! Everything I have cooked from Pinterest has been delicious and turned out perfectly. My husband is enjoying that aspect of it. They need a few more low carb recipes and not so many cakes, but I digress.

           I have made it a point to only pin things or ideas that I intend on actually doing/trying, especially on my various school boards. Periodically I go through them and click on all the links to read the actual webpages and evaluate whether or not I will realistically use the idea. I also went through and had to break my "school" board down into subject boards since I couldn't stand the lack of organization. I have two columns on my computer desktop at the moment, one is for things I need to print and the other is for things I need to print then laminate. They are 100% from Pinterest. There are times I feel like there won't be enough hours in the school day to try everything I want to. I hope this year's class is okay with being my Pinterest guinea pigs.

 
Happy "Pinning" to the rest of the Pinterest addicts out there!

Winding down toward August

    After a summer that seemed to revolve around the bodily functions of my two little boys I am beginning to think "Back to School". We began potty training our three year-old and then with our newborn, well they just seem to require more frequent diaper changes. Even our twelve year-old got drafted for potty duty, which let me tell you he just loved. I really love my sons but I'm almost reday to go back to work and not worry about potty issues for 7.5 hours a day. Yet another reason I love 5th grade.

     My grade level had our first get together this week and outlined our reading and writing all the way till Christmas break. We have another meeting planned for a few weeks from now to go over a bunch of the other details that are needed at the beinning of a school year. I'm in the process of planning a science meeting since we are all going to be relatively new to teaching that subject this year.

  Naturally being prone to making lists this is my favorite part of the year! I love all the planning and the sense of newness that comes with August. As of right now here is a list of the lists I have going on;

1. school supplies needed for back to school
2. Pinterest ideas to try
3. copies to make
4. copy then laminate
5. Ikea shopping list for school
6. vacation packing- hey I have to have a little fun before August. :)

  I have many more than that on my phone (love the notepad feature on the iPhone) and computer but those are the main ones I'm using at the moment.

   Thanks to pregnancy brain and then newborn baby sleep deprived brain syndrome I have been trying very hard to write everything down just to keep track of what I need, what is going on, what I was told, when something happened, what I'm supposed to be doing, etc. It has come in handy so far.

   I'm going to use these last three weeks of vacation to try and get my newborn on a better sleep schedule, finish potty training my three year-old, prepare my oldest for the wonders of seventh grade, slowly buy what I need for my classroom so as not to shock my hubby, and go on vacation to Austin next week.

Hope your as excited as I am to be heading back for a new year!

Changes!

       Since my last post I've had some big changes occur...most notably the number of children I have. That's right, two weeks ago I gave birth to my 3rd son. He is just beautiful and I'm thoroughly enjoying seeing his personality develop a little more each day. I have to admit that watching my almost 3 year-old adjust to not being the baby is almost as entertaining. I was aware he was bossy before but now, holy cow. As long as the rest of us realize that his is the only opinion that matters we all get along fine. My oldest is fascinated with his new brother in short spurts, being almost 12 and going into 7th grade he is more interested in texting his "girlfriend" and watching endless videos on YouTube than a baby.

     The other changes are finally knowing which room I'm being moved into, who my teaching partner for next year is, and which subjects I'm teaching. Love the room, much closer to everything. Wonderful partner for next year. No changes in the subject areas, which is fine.

   I can't seem to relax this summer so far. I keep picturing my next class and wondering what kind of personalities I'll have, how will they interact with each other, what kind of books will they enjoy, are they going to be readers, which ones will be the ones I remember forever? Aside from the normal looking forward to a new school year feelings I really think that Pinterest is aiding this. I keep finding fun ideas and projects for school every time I log in, which I have to admit is frequently since I'm nursing. The ability to start over and change things is one of the great appeals of teaching for me. Every school year has the potential to be better and more amazing than the one before. I love that Pinterest is helping me to become excited about a new year and a new class again. Of course to actually fit all the ideas I've pinned into a day or even a week would require longer school days and possibly year-round school. Which I am not ready to endorse just yet.

      I was so tired and ready for vacation four short weeks ago and now I'm excited and wishing I could go work in my room already! Luckily I have a science curriculum meeting in the 27th of June so I can go in just for a few hours.

22.5 Days

        As of tomorrow at 9am my class will be done with the standardized testing.

                                                  Whoopee!!!

       That means we have twenty-two and a half days of school left. The half day is very important ask any teacher. There is no way you want to round that last day up and make it twenty-three when twenty-two and a half sounds a little shorter. Lucky me because I am currently 8 months pregnant with my third darling son I only have seventeen days left.

   The end of the school year is always a slightly chaotic time full of checking-out, cleaning-out, organizing, packing and changes to room location or subject area. While I am waiting to see if I will be teaching fifth grade science again next year (keeping my fingers crossed that I am) and to what room I will be moving (if they let me know before I leave that is) I get to have some fun with my class and try to coast through the last few days with a sense of calm and serenity.

    Or not.

     The science teachers in my building completed all of our curriculum about a month ago. After flipping back through my lesson plan book I can actually pin point the last day I taught anything other than test review was Feb. 29th. I am so ready to do something new and exciting! A few of us decided to focus on health and nutrition the last month of school and collaborated to create a really exciting unit. We will be starting daily stretching exercises and the keeping of a food and exercise log next Monday. The classes will get to learn how to read nutrition labels, locate portion sizes, sugar content, and additional helpful info about the food they are consuming. They will even get to audit our school cafeteria to see how the menu fares nutritionally. I am going to have my classes look at some articles on the spread of childhood obesity and they will brainstorm some ways to combat that in their own lives. Then for the grand finale of the year sandwiched between field trips and such they will get to go outside and play some "lifetime sports". A Lifetime sport is something like golf that they can play throughout their lives not just while they are young and in school. The teachers will be teaching them some golf techniques, croquet, badminton, tennis, horseshoes, and a few others. Sounds like Science will be nice and fun for the last twenty-two and a half days.

Looking Forward------------>

     Today we began our state assessment testing, which for 5th graders means three lovely weeks of testing for an hour or so a day, two to three days a week. 1 day down 6 to go. Yippee.

   Since the science team has been reviewing for several weeks at this point due to our super power ability to cram a years worth of curriculum in to 7.5 months (jealous math teachers?) I am flat out tried of thinking about standardized testing. Ugh!

    To motivate myself around this time of year I begin the great stack of lists! Organization makes my heart happy! The more detailed and anal retentive the better. Yes, I am the kind of person who can spend HOURS in The Container Store. Or I could before we moved to a state that only has one and that one is four hours away.  *sigh* But, I digress.... 

   The Great Stack of Lists! I have a list of science supplies we need to order for the lab, a list of materials I need from the Dollar Store for organization next fall, a list of improvements to make to units or projects I taught this year, a list of stuff to bring from home to make my classroom better for next year, a list of decorating ideas, and a list of ideas for next year. You'll notice a slight theme... most of my planning and organizing revolves around getting ready for the next school year, not finishing out the four weeks post-testing we have left of this school year. Hmmmm... once I realized what I was doing I tried to stop, really I did. I think I added a list of things to do to get my room ready for summer. Not really much better. I don't know what subjects I'll be teaching next year, who I will be teaming with, which room I'll be in, or even which grade I'll be in (new principal). So realistically it is a little absurd to put all this effort into next year at this point. 

      So, what's a girl to do? Break out the ruler and pencils to create a calendar of the remaining post-test days of school. I know I could print one off the internet but I like creating one from scratch, I can fool myself into thinking I am exercising my creative muscles. After carefully printing in the dates then marking off the ones with events already planned (DARE graduation/field trip and MAP celebration day) I counted up what was left. A whooping 16 days! I forgot to mention that I'll be taking maternity leave the last week of school so I can subtract 4.5 of those days from my personal schedule. 

   Sixteen days, sixteen days, sixteen days....what to do with sixteen days? I'll be expected to continue science rotations of my seventy-five science students for at least fifteen of those days. I need a really exciting science unit to end the year with and erase from my students memories the month of review which I have tried desperately to make exciting and fun. Some days were more successful than others. After talking with the science team we all decided on a Health & Nutrition Unit. 

  Back to my happy land of lists and planning as I put my energy toward coming up with fun activities to fill those fifteen days! Yay lists and calendars and planning! I'll post what I come up with once I'm done carefully filling in my calendar and making lists of the supplies I'll need.

My lesson planning in process.

Part of the stack of lists

The list I have taped to my

My pretty paper calendar

A Motivation Conundrum

                      My class and I had an in-depth discussion on motivation the other day, they are a notoriously hard to motivate bunch. Intrinsic motivation is not in their collective vocabulary yet. I passed out sticky notes to each one and had them make me a list of things that would help inspire them to do their best. The only restrictions being, "No field trips, not a lot of money, and easy to prepare." Boy, they sure gave me a list to chose from. The best part is that they really surprised me with some of the options. At the end of each quarter my school has what we call "Read and Feed" the kids wear pj's, bring snacks and drinks, and just read for a half a day. Apparently they really enjoy that! An extra "Read and Feed" scored 7 votes out of 22. The most popular by far was an extra recess, free and easy so I told them to consider it done. Electronics time was also popular with the majority of them, those game boys and iPods are addicting. I can probably swing that as well one afternoon for half an hour with no problem.

           There was a collection of requests for snacks so I'm working on a way to bring something in each day of the testing to keep them going. I saw a link on Pinterest, (the most wonderful place in the world) for some great printables to use as encouragement during testing. I followed the link on over to this website http://www.technologyrocksseriously.com/ and ended up adding another blog to my reading list in the process. The author has some of the cutest printables available! I followed her link to the Teachers Pay Teachers site and downloaded copies of her Sweet Notes of Encouragement. Luckily there were enough for each day of testing, the 5th grade level has six days total. I plan on using the "Blow the top off the test" with bubble gum, "Work EXTRA hard", "Hugs and Kisses for putting forth your best effort", "Every teacher wishes they had SMARTIES like you", "Lets not have an SNICKERS, do your best!", "A BURST of energy to do your best", "2-4-6-8 we know your tests will be just great!" A few additions to my grocery list and some color copies = instant daily motivation with minimal effort on my part. Thank you to technology rocks, seriously!

                       My lovely husband has made it an annual event the last few years to bring in pizza and Andy's Frozen Custard after the testing to reward them for doing their best. I love his desire to get involved with my classes and he enjoys getting to connect names with faces after hearing about them for seven months or so. Last year he was challenged to take the 50 state map ID test the kids had just completed, he was only able to finish about half so he's been studying for this year!