Youth Group - a different kind of teaching, and Read Aloud Day!

This morning marks the kick off to my church's new Youth Group program. I'm fortunate enough to be able to use my teaching talents to participate as the coordinator and assist a great group of teachers. We are using Lifeway's The Gospel Project curriculum and I think it will be really good. 

Isn't it funny though, that when you go to teach something that isn't in your classroom, or is in front of a different group of people, how nervous we get? I can't believe how much I've worried, planned, changed, and prepared for this lesson today. Takes me back to being a first year teacher! I'll be honest, I don't miss that feeling. 

In addition to writing the lesson plans for the teachers each week, I also decided to do a bit of decorating in the room that we will be using. Take a look! The theme comes from a kit I picked up at Office Depot. I think it is just enough color for the small space!

Those ugly brown bars got some cute border paper the other day too!

While I was planning for that this morning I stumbled across World Read Aloud Day! Did you know that it's coming up on Wednesday March 5th? So, what does a proactive teacher do when she knows how busy her favorite readers are? Yep, sends out early morning emails to her favorite principal, librarian, superintendent, and coach (Kris if you are reading this, look for that email soon hehe). 

Here is a link if you want more information about it. I want to surprise the students with a full out read aloud day. We'll have some special surprise readers lined up, as well as a homework assignment to bring in their favorite picture book for that day. We'll get into groups and read to each other our favorite stories! I can't wait. They offer this great classroom kit and I'm going to send home the statistic page. What motivation to read to your children! Sign up, it's a good time.

http://litworld.org/storage/litworldwrad2014classroomkit.pdf

It's snowing here today, wherever you are, enjoy your Sunday! And if you can, try to do something for you today. Recharge, because tomorrow we start again! Happy teaching :)

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!

Homework & Rewards

It was a dark and stormy night...oh wait, it wasn't, I just couldn't sleep and it was 3am and I figured why not check out Pinterest to see what's going on. And there it was...a fun solution to a homework predicament that I've been having.

Back Story: getting 6th graders to complete homework is sometimes the most challenging thing in the world. They think they know how to play the system (i.e. my computer didn't work last night, I didn't understand, I think my mom threw it away...yep). Unfortunately they don't realize that they were placed with a teacher who doesn't buy any of those excuses, especially when I give them multiple resources for continuing to work THROUGH the problem, not give up on it.

Anyway, for those students who need a little more motivation I don't mind giving positive rewards. Yes, I believe that students shouldn't expect a  physical reward as a motivator to do what's expected, but some students really do need them in order to build good habits. This year I am going to do this:

The idea came from this pin from The Nest Effect and she has some wonderful ideas. Vistaprint.com is a site that I've used before but never like this. It took me 10 minutes to create my cute owl cards. You will get 250 for free (assuming you don't mind the website promo on the back, I don't and the kids won't notice). You just pay the $6 for shipping. I want to spend some time looking at her behavior cards too, with a bit of rewording they could easily work for 6th graders.

A few initial thoughts: I'll need to spend time explaining the process and procedures for using/losing/turning in. I also want the students to brainstorm rewards options WITH me so that I know what will help encourage good routines for them. And finally, I need to order more scratch and sniff stickers..yep, that's right, love them!

I hope that your back to school planning is going well. Don't stress, it all falls into place. But I wouldn't hold off until the week before school (especially if you want to order these, it does take about 2 weeks to get them in). Happy planning everyone, and if you need some encouragement or specific ideas I'm happy to help. You can also check out my Classroom Pins from Pinterest if you'd like.