Currently

Yay March! Spring Break Month-My Birthday Month-Spring Month! I love March. And since it is the beginning of March, that means it's time for Currently!

So since it's basically never winter not a real winter doesn't get cold here, Evan and I have been able to keep our door open letting in fresh air from outside. And we get to hear birds chirping outside at all times of the year (well I'm assuming so at least since I haven't been here a year. Maybe when it's 64732842378 degrees out, they don't chirp?)

Spring Break Is. So. Close. Like in a week close. And I'm going to Wisconsin! Yay!! But, state testing is between me and my break. Dragsville USA. I hate state testing. Which brings me to my needing part. My district tests my poor babies on two state tests. AIMS and Galileo. AIMS is for reading fluency and Galileo is for everything. For AIMS, they are tested three times a year, and since my kiddos are young, it goes pretty quick. I think the older kids have to do it for like 2 weeks but my kids just have a day of it. For Galileo, they are tested five times a year. FIVE! Each time takes a whole week plus we are required to do a week of test prep aka practice tests and questions the week before. Which equals to 9 weeks of wasted instruction time! (The first test is like the second week of school so no test prep). NINE!!! And people are on our cases about cramming things into our 15 minute breakfast time? I think not. So annoying. I feel like Arizona's rank in education would improve if they let teachers teach instead of test. Soapbox over now.

In other news, since it is March, that means Shamrock Shakes are back! Yummy minty goodness that is so good only because it's for limited time every year. I always get sucked in though. 

My like is loopholes. Which is kinda random, but I love beating the system. Especially when that system has silly rules. 

My love is laughter since it can fix pretty much anything. It can fix a sad day, an awkward situation, an angry moment, etc. etc. etc. I love laughing. 

And my hatred is lettuce. I remember being in highschool, and reading magazines with 602 Dating Tip from Guys, and there would always be a tip about not ordering salad since guys like it when girls eat real food. And I always thought to myself that that would never be a problem since salads are yuck. Except a casear salad. I like those. 

This week's agenda = state testing for four days and then a who knows day for Friday. Probably some St Patrick's Day things, some centers, some catch up on my own 736 classroom assessments I have to do. Go link up at Oh' Boy Fourth Grade!

Top Five Things I Have Learned as a First Year Teacher

Yikes where has February gone?!?! Hello March on Friday?!?!
Crazy. We only have three months of school left. Um, hello? How/when did that happen?!

I feel like a broken record when I say that. I have been saying it all year. Only three months until my first year of teaching is over. I have learned so much over the best six months. Way more than in college. 

Here are the top five things I have learned thus far:

1. Classroom management is the most important part of having an effective classroom. And it's infinitely harder when you're in the room by yourself. Going along with that, be tough with your management. My achievement specialist frequently tells me I am too sweet. I am getting better with being tougher, and let me tell you - world of a difference. I don't mess around anymore. Period. And it has made everything so much more enjoyable.

2. The levels of paperwork and hoops to jump through are endless. And time is so limited. I feel like I am constantly being followed by a paper monster. And it feeds off of things in my mailbox. And the things that I need just so happen to go missing. 

3. Copy everything you need for the week either on the Friday before or the day before. Nothing is worse than when you have five minutes left of prep and discover a line at the copier. Especially since our copiers lived with the dinosaurs and one of them is almost always broken. 

4. Document everything! In student teaching, I don't really recall my CT ever documenting behavior, work, etc. I have a file folder for every student that I keep DRA data, our Galileo and AIMS data, any notes from parents, signed deficiency notices, writing data, etc. I have a couple of kids who are very behind grade level, and I was able to pull out these folders to show parents during conferences to show them exactly where their child was and where he/she needs to be.

5. Always stay true to yourself and take everything with a grain of salt. This year has been rough. I'm working on finding myself as a new teacher and am also being told how, what, and when to teach down to almost every minute of the day. It's been hard to form myself as a teacher, but I am trying to make the best of the situation by doing the best I can to follow directions yet remain true to myself as a teacher and to my education at UW-Madison. Madison (where I went to college) is a progressive and liberal city so it's been a challenge to fit into Phoenix where it's much more conservative and structured. But I'll be here for at least a little while longer so I gotta keep trying to fit in while staying true to myself as an educator. Which might be difficult for me since I [sometimes] have a hard time following directions and I tend to go my own way and think for myself...

Blur

This week has been such a blur. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were regular school days. 

But Thursday and Friday were both half days?

Can I mention how much I love half days? Especially when 45 minutes of our 3ish hour day is taken up by a special and we eat lunch at 10:20? Such a short and easy day! Just a little bit of math on graphs and one reading center so I could listen to my poetry club members read me their poems for the week. 


And then our Valentine's party!! The kids were so excited to pass out their cards and candy and have some Vday treats! So cute. And I got a ton of candy. I feel so loved but my wedding dress might not be too happy about all the candy that I have been/will be consuming!


Now, to be fair, we had a half day today to make up for yesterday when we had to stay at school until 7:00 for parent/teacher conferences. I actually really like P/T conferences because it's really nice to talk to parents. It can be a little rough at times. Especially since I feel like I'm too sweet sometimes. The achievement specialist says I need to toughen up and scare parents, which is hard for me to do. Of course the parents I really needed to speak to didn't show. Typical. And so annoying. 

Scary thing though - on Thursday, I had my first real lock down. Like, not a pretend/practice one. There was a shooting across the street from school so we were on a Level 2 Lockdown (Level 1 is for danger at our school, Level 2 is danger in the area, and Level 3 is practice). We had just gotten our lunches and were heading back to our room to eat when the announcement came on with a Level 2 Lockdown. I think my heart probably skipped a beat and thoughts of Sandy Hook flashed through my head as we hurried into our room. I didn't tell my kids that it was real because I didn't want to scare them although I was scared myself even though it wasn't directly at our school. Luckily it only last about 30 minutes. I definitely let out a sigh of relief when we got the all clear. 

So basically a blur of a week. Luckily, I have off on Monday too!! Yay!!

Happy belated Valentine's Day!!

February Currently

So since it is February, that means it's Currently time!!! A bit later than normal, but oh well - it's been a busy weekend!

One of my new favorite TV shows is Bones. Evan and I have been watching all the episodes since last year and now we are so close to being caught up! I think we only have to watch a few more to get on track! It's such a good show - watch it if you never have!

For President's Day Weekend, we have early release on Thursday and Friday. Now on Thursday, we're stuck at school until 7:00 for conferences, but on Friday, we can leave when the kids leave. Plus we have off on Monday. So my parents decided to get away from Wisconsin cold and come and visit me!! Yay!! I've already decided that we should go to the Botanical Gardens and the zoo plus a few yummy restaurants out here too. It'll be super fun!

Is it just me or does the weekend always seem to fly by? Every. Time.

Who doesn't want  a spa day? The answer is no one.

Today is a busy day. We're having people over for the Super Bowl so I need to clean some more and cook a few things. I'm making Spinach-Artichoke Dip and Crab Rangoons. Yum! Plus I have school stuff to do and laundry and who knows what else.

And pet peeves? Let me tell you, Phoenix is home to some of the worst drivers. Everyone either goes too fast or too slow. No one uses turn signals except when they put them on and then take forever to switch lanes. There are always crashes on the highway. On Friday, there was a car that rolled over. It's not icy, snowy, rainy, windy, or twisty here. So how is it that this car just rolled over? Unclear.

And standardized tests and rude people, don't even get me started.

Your turn! Go link up!

What are you working on today as a writer?

I've seen a lot of posts lately on how other teachers teach writing so I decided to join along. 

This student regularly fills up pages all the way
down to the very end with words!

So before this year, students wrote in draft books and were responsible for writing something called DTAP (or DTEP? Something like that). It was very strict and students kept all of their writing in their draft books. Now in Madison where I did my student teaching, we taught writing completely 100% different. We used Lucy Calkins writing curriculum. In a nutshell, students write their own stories and books about things that really happened to them and each day, we teach a short minilesson to help them become better writers. 

Well, when I got to my new school, I definitely wasn't feeling the whole draft book kind of writing. I was used to kids writing what they 

wanted to write about and me teaching ways to make that writing better. I feel that students learn so much more if they have some independence in their learning so I secretly started teaching Lucy Calkins to my students. Basically I would rush through the draft books (since at my school, we all share lesson plans and teach the same stuff) to get to LC. Well, my kids loved it. They loved writing their own stories in their books and becoming authors. In fact, students used to ask me (when we were writing in draft books) when they could write stories. Music to my ears. 

This girl loves to show off her folder of stories. And that's probably only about two months of books too!

See the extra flap for added writing space?

Well long story short, I was talking to my principal who said that she used to use LC and that my school had the books buried in a closet! She then launched into that our writing scores weren't up to par and that she wanted us all to use LC. 

So the very next day = no more draft books and strictly LC.

So I love LC. The end. No just kidding. The beauty of LC is (I think) that students are able to really have an autonomy for what they do. They take pride and ownership in their books and stories.  

Proud of her work!

The year-long LC curriculum has seven books in the set:

1. Launching a Writing Workshop

2. Small Moments: Personal Narrative Writing 

3. Writing for Readers: Teaching Skills and   Strategies 

4. The Craft of Revision

5. Authors as Mentors 

6. Nonfiction Writing: Procedures and Reports

7. Poetry: Powerful Thoughts in Tiny Packages 

There are also 2 "teacher books" The Nuts and Bolts of Teaching Writing and The Conferring Handbook. The Nuts and Bolts tell how to launch writing workshop and The Conferring Handbook tells how to best help students individually during conferences. All of the books are easy to read since they written in a conversational style. Each minilesson depicts a real classroom in New York and is full of the dialogue that was actually said by the teachers and students. There are also side notes about what is happening, what do if your students need more time, and LC uses real life authors to show children what writers do. Also, each of the books builds upon the others and each book lays out specific minilessons that go in a certain order. Writing workshop also ends with a sharing time when a few students are invited to share what they have written that day with the rest of the class. They showing off their work!

She struggled with writing at the beginning of the year
and now can write lots of words.
And most are readable!

To me, there is nothing more satisfying than the "hum" of writing workshop. Some children are writing, some children are cutting flaps for their books, other children are stapling pages together. And I am going around to different kids, checking in on what they are working on and helping them become better writers. I might be helping one student stretch out words to include more sounds so it is easy-to-read. Then I go to another student to help him add periods and capital letters. And then I might check in with another student to help her add dialogue and get the quotation marks placed correctly.

My new friend from California...he'll catch on :)

To me, this is the best way to teach writing. It's also the only way I've taught writing so I may be a little biased, but my kids are excited to write and everyone can easily write 3 or 4 page books with others often writing 6+ pages. 

I recently got a new student from California and it's so obvious that he's never written this way before. He struggles to write stories that are cohesive and on one topic, even a struggle to get him to put multiple ideas on multiple pages. I've loved seeing how far my kids have come as writers and I can't wait to see how much more progress they make in the remaining months of school! 

Totally random note now. So I started off the year with way more girls than boys. And for awhile, I was only losing boys. But now the tables have completely flipped. I keep losing girls and getting new boys. Now I have way more boys than girls! 

Poetry Club Members Only

So today was the first day of poetry club for seven of my first graders. These kiddos are reading at grade level but they aren't reading very quickly. So with some tips from my assistant principal, I have launched poetry club today! Poetry club is (hopefully) going to increase my kiddos' reading fluency, both reading speed and less robot-reading. 

So the first thing we did is made poetry folders. Nothing fancy - they got to pick what color folder they wanted and write their names on it with a marker. 

Now the real work of poetry club. 

I gave each of them a copy of the poem and we read it multiple times.
1. I read it to them while they tracked with their fingers.
2. We all read together.
3. The students read to together.
4. I listened to each child read while the others practiced. 

So the bulk of poetry club happens at home. It's the student's job to read the poem at home to anyone that will listen - like mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, aunt, uncle, friend, brother, sister, cousin, neighbor, ANYONE!! And that person has to sign and date a sheet that says that the student read it.

And in order to inspire the students to do that, a little bribe of candy never hurt right? The student that reads it the most will get a special reward. I was thinking a juice box and a lollipop. 

Also, during centers, these students must pull out their poetry folder and practice reading their poem. Then, on Friday, I will have them read it to me to see if they have achieved mastery.

I'm a little worried about students not doing it at home. But hopefully the prospect of juice and candy increased fluency will get them to do it!

What a week...

What. A. Week. For starters, it has been endless. Like the longest week of my life. And I can't believe that it's Thursday. It seems like it should have been Friday days ago. 

And to add more, I have lost two students this week, got a new one, and one came back after missing a week of school last week. 

And it's been unusually cold in Phoenix - we're talking like high 40s/50s - so not actually THAT cold, but cold for what I am now accustomed to.

ANDDD I have felt sick all week. Like headache, stomachache, achy body, over-exhaustion. I went to bed at 8:00 last night!!!! Crazy!!

Let's just say, this weekend has never been more anticipated. And the fact that it's a three day weekend is enough to get me over the moon! 

So one thing that my students are really struggling on is fluency. With AIMS Web testing, they are graded on how many words they can read in one minute. At the end of first grade, we hope that they can read 68 words in one minute. So right now, they should be at about 30ish words. However, a bunch of my kids are stuck in the high teens and twenties. So on Monday, I'll be starting poetry club with them. We will be reading a poem together on Monday and then it'll be their job to read it during centers as well as at home. They all seem pretty excited about it so I hope it helps with their fluency! I'm also starting a chapter book club too for my higher readers - hopefully next week - but I'm having trouble finding enough books for them since I want them to be reading the same book. Gah! Hopefully I can find enough for them!