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.