This Week OFF From School

On week 4 of summer vacation this teacher...

-  hung out with her cousins kids a couple of days

-  has nearly finalized on the kitchen design process

-  has realized that picking flooring and cabinet colours is not an easy task

-  made a main floor renovation budget!

-  went out for brunch with her lovely husband

-  spent a weekend at the lake

-  found and purchased "the" dress that I was on the hunt for... and as a bonus it was also marked down in price when I finally did manage to track it down.

-  Hung out with some friends one evening playing games and chatting

-  has just one more run left in her running program (and I'm planning on finishing it today!... after this I think I will add a couple of minutes every week until I get to about 35 minutes of running and then just work on improving my pace)

5 Things I Would Try in my Future Classroom

1) Classroom Economy

I would use it as a way to keep track fo the different behaviours in my classroom (both positive and not so positive), hopefully encourage good behaviours, and reward my students.  If you want to know more about it... you can find it online (it's a free resource

2) ELA Groups

These would pretty much run like my math groups did.  I would divide the class into 4 or 5 groups likely divided in either reading or writing groups (maybe I would have both and depending on the day would be which was they would get divided).  I think the stations I would have them visit would be:

- Spelling

- Reading

- Writing

- Work with me (which would either be a reading group or working on some writing techniques)

- Some kind of game (Boggle, Scrabble, Bananagrams, etc)

3) Interactive Social Studies Journal (and maybe Science as well)

Just because I liked the interactive math journals so much.  I've actually made my own for grade 5 Social Studies already (it's not for sale because I have yet to actually test it out in a classroom... and I'm not sure I will ever sell it anyways).

4) A Classroom Blog

I've tried having students write their own blogs on Kidblog but that ended up being a lot of work on my behalf because it ended up I couldn't trust a few of them to write appropriate comments which meant I had to review all comments before they were posted. One classroom blog would be manageable... I think. I even think I would give 2 of my students a job updating it every week through our Classroom Economy jobs. Parents would have the link to check in on what we are doing and if I enabled commenting... could post comments that the kids would [hopefully] be super pumped about.

5) A Classroom Pet

Something simple like a fish would be perfect. I would make it someones job in our Classroom Economy to make sure it's taken care of and clean and everything.  Remarkably I don't actually see a lot of classroom pets in classrooms anymore... but maybe I'm just visiting the wrong classrooms?  

Do you have a classroom pet in your classroom?

Psst... Last week I talked about some things that I would definitely do again in my classroom (that I've already tried out).

This Week OFF From School

Here is the run down on weeks 2 and 3 of summer vacation

I've now made it to running for 30 minutes.. which is actually the end of the program so now I'll probably increase it every week by a couple of minutes until I get to about 35 minutes and then just work on increasing speed.

We went to the cabin a couple more times.

I picked 8 more liters of strawberries!... and froze the majority of them.  We should be set for strawberries in our smoothies until March (hopefully).

We've been eating a lot of zucchini around here.  Something has to be made out of zucchini every week and we still are having to freeze some.  So far we've had roasted zucchini with parmesan and spices, zucchini cake, and once we substituted zucchini to use instead of pasta with some spaghetti... but the cheapo spiralizer I got is much too small for our massive zucchini's!

We made more ice cream... John insisted on s'more ice cream and we quickly regretted attempting to make it when we realized marshmallows are incredibly sticky after been roasted in the oven... who knew!?!... it's a joke.

We are planning some pretty big renovations at our place so I went and visited the fine folks over at Kitchen Craft to help us design our kitchen.  It's still in the beginning stages but I'm hopeful that we can find a way to have then oven in a spot I like and still have a pantry in the end.  *fingers crossed*

I go for walks with my cousin that lives in the area a couple of times a week.  This week we visited a Starbucks on our walk and you know what grinds my gears... that we don't have a single Starbucks in my area where we can redeem our stars.  

On another walk I found the most perfect dress at Winners but it was just a bit too small for me... so I went in search of it at 2 other Winners and Marshall stores and haven't been able to find it again.  I'm hopeful I'll come across it again though because I want to wear it to a wedding I'm going to at the end of August.

I did find this dress though

In a mustard yellow and another one in red.  I'm tempted to go back and get it in red.

I've been a weed pulling machine.  The front, back, and side yard are looking a lot better these days!

The backyard... with the garden in the back

Of course if you really wanted to find a weed in the grass somewhere it wouldn't be hard to do but I'm pretty impressed with the job I did regardless.  Now it just has to rain so the grass can go back to being green!

We went mini golfing and despite me getting 3 hole's in one and John getting none I still lost.

10 Things I Would Do Again in my Classroom

It's important to reflect on what you've done as a teacher. What worked, what didn't work, what could be improved on, etc. What better time to do some reflecting than in the summer when you are [perhaps] planning for the upcoming school year. I had a classroom to call my own for a bit last school year but I so very rarely taught out of it that not a lot actually got done in there. Anyways, I'm still doing reflecting to prepare myself for when I once again have that classroom of my own and here is my list of 10 things I would definitely do again in my future classroom (which I'm hoping would be grades 4-6)

1) TUSC

My grade 5 and 6 students loved this and when I was doing a bit of a longer subbing stint in a grade 4/5 classroom they also loved this. As a nice bonus the program and the students will pretty much run it.

2) Math Groups

Starting math groups when I was teaching grade 5/6 was a breath of fresh air to what could have been a disastrous year of math. My students were really able to show me what they knew (and what they were struggling with). I was able to challenge some of my stronger students and work at a more comfortable level for my struggling students. It takes a bit of planning to set up (especially if you plan on doing a couple of the centers of games) and you have to (sort of plan) for 4 different levels of students (well I had 4... 2 I considered on the lower end and 2 on the higher end) I really just planned 2 groups of work though and the slower of the higher groups just worked at a slightly slower pace and the same with the 2 lower groups.

3) Interactive Math Journals

Just because I really liked them and it made teaching math straight forward to me.

4) Moving Up literacy program

I don't think I've ever actually talked about this but I used it when I taught in my grade 5/6 class. There are 4 different levelled books in the box along with a read aloud for the teacher. I did the comic unit with my students (that just so happened to be about space as well - which was a science topic we were covering that year). I wouldn't know how else to pick out levelled books on the same topic otherwise (I mean, I'm sure I could Google it and there would be answers out there) but it was so simple to just have the lessons altogether in the box ready to go. The program is quite expensive but if your school has some money to allocate towards ELA I think it's well worth it. Plus you could share it with all the teachers who teach that grade... not everyone needs their own boxes (this is what we did at the school I was at that used it)

5) Debates

Kids like to argue. This is the perfect unit to along with that so that they can argue in a constructive way. Not only that but they learn how to look at an argument from a different point of view. I've done this in grades 5-7 and it's always gone over well.

6) Art Portfolios

This was something that I started when I was teaching in a grade 5/6 class (I'm sensing a theme here... clearly I really enjoyed my time teaching in that class!). I started them because the previous year, when I was teaching grade 4, so much of their artwork was thrown out before it even got home. This way it was all stored together (by me) and given to them together in the form of a book at the end of the year. To go along with the artwork we also did a poem for every single art piece we did. So not only was it a book of their artwork but also a book of their poems. I hope some of them a have kept them!

7) Virtual Museum

My grade 6 students really enjoyed making the museum for our grade 5 students about World War II. You could really do it on any topic though. I'm not sure I would do it more than once a year... maybe I would do it twice depending on how much the students enjoyed it the first time.

8) Plickers

Super easy to use and you get a quick answer to whether your students have understood a topic or not. You just need to be willing to review or reteach a topic if you find that they haven't understood it quite right. Or at least that's what I used Plickers for (I'm sure other people use Plickers for other things though).

9) Aurasma

This app was pretty awesome. It really encouraged my students to write (because once they wrote something I let them record a video about it). They also really liked it because occasionally during reading time or if they were completed their work early I would let them use the iPad to hold up to the writing to listen to and watch the video that their peers did.

10) Plan a week in advance

A year ago when I was teaching French I always stayed a little later after school (or went in a bit earlier) on Thursday's to plan for the upcoming week. I would try to get all my photocopying and everything done for the week as well. Then I would divide it into containers for each class for the week and put a sticky note on each packet for the day I wanted to discuss it. Alternatively, if I was teaching in a regular classroom I would probably plan it according to the day of the week and put everything that I was going to be using that day in that container. I'm a fairly organized person and I feel I just work better in an organized space. Plus having everything planned a week early meant the majority of my time at work would be devoted for teaching or marking




Psst.. In case you missed it last week I discussed 5 things that I wouldn't do in my classroom again.

5 Things I Wouldn't Do Again in My Classroom

It's summer time!  Huzzah!  Time to rest, relax and get away for a bit and... remind ourselves of some of the things we maybe could have improved on from the previous year(s).  Which is exactly what I'm doing this week!  I figured I would get this one out of the way where I discuss how imperfect I am so that in later weeks when I discuss what I would continue to do in my classroom that is what you'll focus on and we'll all remember that despite our shortfalls we were all doing many great things in our classrooms too!

1) Flying by the seat of my pants in Social Studies

Have you ever notice that I so rarely post about social studies? Just because I don't care for social studies doesn't mean my students don't. Now that I have many ideas of things that work well in grade 4-6 classrooms I feel like it would require less planning overall... which means I would have (should?) have time to devote to planning out my social studies units. Even if it means finding something on Teachers Pay Teachers it would be better than not having super concrete plans for an entire subject!  In the future I plan to plan for social studies!

2) Poetry Units

I did this with my grade 8's and they HATED it. I figured it was just because it was poetry but I did poetry with my grade 5/6 class the following year and I don't recall hearing many complaints. There are definitely ways to integrate poetry into your lessons that you don't need to have an entire unit on it.  What I would do is incorporate my poetry unit into art and share poems that relate to what we are doing in that class and have them write poems that have to do with their art.  I've talked about this before when I mention the art portfolios I made for my students when I taught grade 5/6 and here is an example of some snowflake art and poetry I did with students while subbing.

3) Ruleopoly

It served its purpose that one year but I think I'm ready to move onto something else (something hopefully better) - Classroom Economy

4) Textbooks

This one is hard for me to write but, if I had other resources I think I would take advantage of things other than textbooks (for the most part). This isn't to say I would never ever have my students crack open a textbook but I think there are so many other great resources out there (I mean, just look at Teachers Pay Teacher's and you'll see what I mean). I believe when I was teaching grades 5/6 we had Math Power and I don't think we used much of the actual textbooks (however, when I taught grade 4 I know for a fact we used that math textbook A LOT!). What we did use however was use the homework book. This additional resource I found super useful because at the top of each lesson it went over what you needed to know quickly and then gave a bunch of questions to answer. Less wordy than the textbook and simpler to look at.

5)  Empty "Threats"

I don't know what to call it because it isn't really a "threat" really... but if I tell a students that I'm going to have a conversation with their mother or father I need to start following through on that.  I never noticed it more than these last few months in grade 7.  Let me tell you, teaching middle school is rough!  A big difference from what I taught elementary school and rarely had to call home.  

Now it's your turn to do some reflecting on some things that maybe you could have improved on this past school year.

This Week OFF From School

Summer vacation is officially here and here is a glimpse of how I spent my first week officially on break!

July 1st was Canada Day... the park that is closest to us that normally does fireworks is no longer doing them due to some fancy schmancy gardens being  made.  So instead we watched some okay fireworks from the comfort of our home.  We also had a couple of friends over for dinner and played games.

We have a restaurant here that revolves... like it actually spins (very slowly) around so that eventually you've seen out all the exterior windows.  It's also about 30 floors up so the view is pretty amazing.  My husband and I went there for lunch this week and I must say... the views and the food were great.

My birthday was this week. 

The "cake" my husband made for me

I had a free manicure to take advantage of so I went for that (and upgraded to gel so that it would last longer).

First Tuesday of every month you save 10% of your total cost of groceries at a bunch of grocery stores here so it's usually the day we stock up for the month... so I went grocery shopping.

I picked 8 Liters of strawberries at a nearby strawberry patch.

I spread the ones I'm going to freeze out so that they don't all clump together... this was probably about 1/3 of them

I've been using a running app to get me running for a longer period of time.  As of yesterday I'm officially at 25 minutes of running.

I made a bunch of cookies for a family gathering we went to at the park.

We also used up some of those strawberries I picked and made some Chocolate Banana Strawberry Ice Cream.

What I didn't get done was to try to organize all my school stuff into a filing cabinet my husband lugged upstairs months ago... for some reason it wasn't meant for hanging folders and I'm still trying to figure out what purpose this filing cabinet serves if it's not for hanging folders!