RA, Planning, and Weekend Work

*Yawn* 

If you are reading this as a first year teacher, or a pre-service teacher, I hate to break it to you but weekends just won't be the same...ever. Most weekends I do actually get to sleep in (granted my daughter will be 4 at the end of the month so that is all relative) but not today. Today is a morning of coaching responsibility which will require getting approx. 18 sleepy students, 1 awesome co-coach, and a school bus to a Math League meet that is about an hour away. 

We do have a lot of fun on these trips, I just really, really want to be in bed (it's currently 6:30am as I type this). I'll update once we get our results. We have a young team and they are doing a great job learning the program. We've managed to hold our own and I'm really quite proud of them. If you are interested in seeing more about Math League, we using the IMLEM model and are quite pleased with it. Check it out here: http://www.imlem.org/

In addition to that, as most teachers are doing at this point in the year, I'm starting to plan out what my curriculum is going to be looking like in the spring. I'm not the teacher who does the same thing every year. Honestly I can't think of one year that was exactly the same as any other. And I love that! 

So far I've already made an addition to my writing curriculum with our daily journals. The students love them. They were able to bring in their own journals and we've been doing some free writing. A few ideas I'm going to modify from Pinterest:

 

I was given the opportunity on Monday to present Reading Apprenticeship to our interns along with some fantastic colleagues of mine. Good stuff happening there. I think my intern will be using Reading Apprenticeship as his Inquiry Project for the spring and I am looking forward to sharing some ideas that he will be using. 

I am looking forward to planning some reading stations to go along with that! My team is also planning to celebrate MLK day (we have school that day), Chinese New Year (January 31st), and Valentine's Day (we do Affirmations to build positive community). I can't wait to share some pictures of those days soon.

Finally, for those of you who might be like me, completely eager to do something for yourself but lacking the time. I wanted to share a pin that I found really interesting. I love going to the gym but getting up early is challenging, especially if you've been up late grading or sending emails. This seems doable and I want to give it a shot. I'll be honest, I haven't tried it, I'm not endorsing it, I just thought it looked like something that most of us could do. Happy Saturday everyone, and if you are reading this much later in the day...good for you!

Room Update & Reading Apprenticeship

Wow, what a day. I think my summer has officially come to an end. My kiddo was up at 3am which allowed for many snuggles (and a few elbows to the side and some gnashing of teeth..how can such small teeth grind so loudly?) before my training today. Needless to say a coffee IV would have been appreciated.

Before I get to the Reading Apprenticeship recap I wanted to share some photos updating the work I've been doing in my room for this year. Enjoy! (and scroll past them if you just want the Reading Apprenticeship recap).

This is my new quiet corner. I hope that students will appreciate having a private space to work. It's also right beside my intern's desk so they'll be monitored for progress :) I hung up some Dr. Who quotes on the side of the bookshelf.

This is the front of my room, we have a super comfy chair that I do read aloud from, and generally becomes the birthday chair as well. My intern's desk is the one in the picture, mine is on the other side of the carpet.

I made these for school last year and they were awesome! They are just simple picture frames with scrapbook paper and stickers inside. I use wet-erase markers and write up our weekly objectives (I teach too many subjects to have daily objectives).

Brag Boards - kind of. These laminated poster board pieces are numbered and are designated for each student in the class. I'm prepared for 25 students. They are used for social studies. Since we study Ancient Civilizations the kids make a name tag in the writing style from each civilization. We put them up on our boards to show off, but also to view how writing has evolved over the years.

Homework folders! Each student will be getting one of these on Back to School night. If they take care of them I hope that they last most of the year. The next two pictures are close ups of the front and inside.

Alright - on to Reading Apprenticeship! I received a call yesterday asking if I wanted to join a 3 day training about Reading Apprenticeship. Well, I love reading (my masters is in library science) so I said sure! Then I hung up and Googled Reading Apprenticeship. If you want to know more feel free to head over to their site: http://readingapprenticeship.org/cs/ra/print/docs/ra/home.htm

So our training began today and will continue for two days next week, and then 4 more dates throughout the school year. The benefit of going to the training...swag! We each got a huge binder and two books to help us. Our instructor was from the IU and she is amazing. I haven't been to such a beneficial training in a very long time.

Some of activities included using 4-square, think/pair/share, pair reading, VIP, ABC vocab charts, and more. It was very interactive and very informing. And this was only covering chapter 1 in the book. Our district is going to implement this over the next year or two and I'm excited to be in on the beginning stages of it. If your district offers this training I would highly recommend it. Once I learn more about the process and how I plan to use it in my classroom (and maybe how it will look on my evaluation!) I'll update more. Happy Friday everyone!

And a final picture - my finished Tardis door...go Dr. Who :)