The First Day...

Forgot to send my lunch count, but everyone got a lunch

Didn't do an official Reading or Writing Workshop, but my kids read and wrote all day

We didn't practice sight words, but they pointed them out to me all day

Moral of the story: The best teaching is the stuff that isn't planned


Quote of the day:

(My main man "K" screams out as I am reading First Day Jitters)
"MAN, I JUST LOVE THIS CLASS!"

Haven't had this feeling in a while...

It's that butterflies/nausea that comes with welcoming a new class...A mixture of excitement and anxiety. They don't know me, and I don't know them...it's been a while since I have had a "fresh" class. I remember last year waiting at my classroom for kids I had already met, grown to love, and knew very well.

This is different.

Not as scary as my first year, but defineatly a little bit of fear of the unknown...

Still, I'm looking forward to the crazy days that lie ahead...Seeing the weeks and months fly by, but most of all, being that person who has such a great impact on such tiny lives.

Stay tuned for the first day update :)

"To New Beginnings!"

Here are the "after" shots of my new room. I'm excited to get back!

Walking in the classroom...


View from the door...


Leveled books and book bins - I'm going to hang our Poems and Songs above them with fishing line


Corner nooks, blue baskets are genre, yellow are favorite authors, green are favorite characters and series



Student tables, NO DESKS! No desk means community supplies, and NO CLUTTER!


Overhead shot of the carpet...where the magic happens!


Now all I have to do is wait...

The FACE of a Reader

Looking forward to filling this "menu" with strategies that will turn my kids into Readers!

Welcome Back Picnic!

Tomorrow is our welcome back to school picnic...and I made these beauties...



Best Regards to Bakerella and her awesome blog for the idea!

Three-Year-Old Thursday

Three years ago, three of my cousins came to Christmas
and said "We're having a baby!"

I Couldn't Have Said It Better...

I stole this from another blog, but I thought it was cool because I always make the teacher/doctor analogy...

He had just come from a faculty meeting, and it was clear from his demeanor that things had not gone well.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I listened as long as I could,” he said, “but they could not get off their blame-the-the student shtick. Finally I said that they sounded like doctors in a hospital saying, ‘Don’t send us any more sick people–we don’t know what to do with them. Send us healthy patients so we can look like good doctors."

Parker J. Palmer shares this anecdote in his book The Courage to Teach. He carries the analogy further by sharing how it helped him come to this crucial understanding about teaching:

The way we diagnose our students’ condition will determine the kind of remedy we offer.

He goes on to say that we spend little time thinking about the maladies that our teaching is meant to cure and that we allow our treatment to be shaped by the thoughtless stereotypes we have of our students. Palmer’s thoughts on this remind me of the other book I’m reading, Never Work Harder Than Your Students & Other Principles of Great Teaching by Robyn R. Jackson. The first principle in this book is to start where your students are. As I read her thoughts, I couldn’t help thinking about how important it is for us to value our students no matter where they come from. When we don’t value them for who they are, it is much like what Palmer’s friend says. We are like doctors who don’t want to work with sick patients. It is important for educators to stop seeing the students who enter our classrooms as deficient. We should be like House and his team. We should embrace the maladies of our students and work diligently to find cures. When one remedy does not work, we need to try again until a cure is found.

We need to work together to diagnose our students’ maladies and work together to cure them.