Hoorah for Horses!

I am able to blog in the middle of a week day because my county is having (drum roll please….) HORSE SHOW BREAK!!! Yes. The Tennessee Walking Horse National Celebration is held in Shelbyville where I teach, and so many people go and are involved that we shut down school for a whole week! At first I thought it would be a bummer to finally get the kids into a routine after 3 weeks, only to have them leave and come back remembering nothing. However, each year so far the kiddos come back and things are completely normal. It’s a great opportunity to reinforce procedures, though, and I always do. We also usually get a few students moving around when we come back, so I may have a new kiddo to explain our procedures to.

During my Horse Show Break I have been to Dallas to visit some dear friends and their 14 month old daughter. We had a great time! Now I am reading, sunning, hanging out with my mom, cleaning, cooking, and sleeping in for the remainder of the break. Oh, and blogging!  

The first 3 weeks of school have gone very well considering (considering the crazy political drama going on right now regarding our budget and high numbers of students). My class is doing a great job learning how to be first graders! We have gone over a lot of procedures and they are picking them up quickly. I always block out the first few weeks of school because they are so hard, but this year I am feeling really good and relaxed! Maybe it’s just a great mix of kids, or maybe its that I am becoming more comfortable with starting a class. Probably both!

Quick room tour!! I do apologize that I took these pictures with the lights of when the room was messy . :/

A new addition to the room this year: my mom’s easel! She made this for us when we were little and I added some chalkboard paint to it. It will be great for word work!

I moved the small group table. The salmon colored shelves hold basal leveled readers, trade books organized by theme, my files, and mentor texts. The yellow shelf holds our math workstations, other math materials, and our “Penguin Pals”. And one broken ukulele .

Our carpet area got shifted around, too. You can see our heart that we crumpled during Chrysanthemum.

My door! I found this amazing Penguin Crossing sign at the St. Louis Zoo this summer and HAD TO HAVE IT!! We rezoned this year and our class lists were changing every minute it seemed, so I skipped out on putting names on the door this year. But I feel like this door is just as cute and inviting!

Know, Understand, Do (yes I know Understand is missing!) board. This is new following our curriculum maps. We will put what we need to Know, Understand, and Do on it as we move through our units.

Word Wall (post-it style!) and FACE board for reading. FACE goes with the CAFÉ book, but I saw someone had rearranged it to say face, so I changed it last year. I am having some pictures of the kids reading printed during break, so soon this board will be covered with cute kids and strategies!

Desks in rows this time. I usually do 2 long rows facing each other, but we re-read First Days of School by Harry Wong this summer and he suggested forward facing rows, so I’m trying it out. Only problem is that the rows end up like zigzags by the end of the day…

My desk! Got a new table cloth this year and moved the classroom library on that side of the room.

Classroom library! Blue bins for the kids (levels and genres) and red boxes for me! This is also where we keep other reading manipulatives. Notice our love of Helen Lester, Mo Willems, and Kevin Henkes .

Last Thursday we were able to take the kids on a field trip to the Horse Show! They really enjoyed it. We saw lots of horses, the stadium, ate “horse show donuts”, and even got to see some of the classes being judged!

 

The kids were cheering for all the “cowboys and cowgirls”, even though we didn’t have a clue what was really going on! I don’t follow the horse show, and it was my first time to go, too. So we just enjoyed looking at everything and eating our fried donuts. We got back to school and made a bubble map about the horse show, then drew and wrote about it.

This summer I got the idea to have my students write about things we learn as a class blog! They will decide what to write about, then write and draw or take pictures and I will put it up on the blog for them. I need to get permissions to have their work and photographs shown when we go back to school. I am really excited about this endeavor, and I can’t wait to share what we do with it!

First Day of School!!

Tomorrow is our first day of the new school year! I am, as always, very excited and very nervous. These two videos pretty much capture my emotions.

FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!

 

This one made me laugh cause the teacher is not even in the room when the kids are… Where are the procedures???

 

I should feel ready. My classroom is looking very lovely (pictures to come!). I have my plans ready for the first day. We’re going to spend time getting to know each other, and practicing a few procedures. I have my back to school outfit!

 

This dress from Old Navy and a black cardigan!

We had Open House on Friday and I got to meet a lot of my students. I have 19 on my roll now and I met 11. Mostly girls! Everyone seemed sweet and excited. They all looked happy when they were exploring our classroom, looking at the books and checking out our penguins.

But those unknowns keep creeping up and making me worry. What if some of them refuse to listen? What if there is chaos?!?!?! I think part of this worry is that I usually block out the first days of school after they happen because they ARE the most stressful.

All my worries can be put aside, because I know that I can handle anything thrown at me. I just have to remember that, and breathe, and enjoy the first day of school! All those sweet, little people who are going to grow so much and become so dear to me will be waiting for our new year to begin! Now I’m feeling like Nemo. FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!

Sale Day 2

Yesterday I started a sale on my TpT store in honor of Harry Potter’s birthday. HOWEVER- it was also the birthday of J. K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series. So, today I wanted to write a little bit about her.

She is a woman I truly admire; a hardworking dreamer I can identify with. She not only dealt with poverty and depression, but has been quite open in admitting they were hard won battles. Personifying depression in a dementor was a genius idea, because it helped people empathize with what she and so many others feel during depression. Empathy can lead to understanding. Understanding can lead to help.

She also values imagination more than any one else I can think of, maybe Walt Disney or Jim Henson, but she believes imagination is for more than making art. In her speech at a Harvard commencement, she told them this: “Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power to that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.”

During that speech, I learned what a humanitarian she is, and that she had worked with displaced people who were still reeling from the oppression they had suffered. She had personally encountered the victims of real-life Voldermorts, and the horror they had lived through inspired her to write. She shared a part of their stories with her readers, and her readers (using their powerful imaginations) empathized with people who, like Cedric Diggory, died because he was in the way of someone whose power corrupted them.

And I can’t even begin to talk about how clever and witty I think she is. I am eagerly awaiting her first adult novel in September. So happy birthday, Jo! I hope you will keep inspiring us and taking us on adventures for many years to come! 

This is her speech. It’s long, but definitely worth a listen!

Click on the picture below to shop my TpT store. 10% off everything until Friday!!