And Then There Was BOO!

Halloween is not my favorite holiday because I hate scary movies and haunted houses.  I'm not scared of them (I don't like feeling jumpy), but when it comes to celebrating holidays in a classroom I'm pretty sure nothing is more fun than a Halloween party!  Well, I forget that I grew up at a Catholic school where it's okay to talk about Halloween and other holidays, but in a public school you sometimes can't even call it a party.  They've settled this by making it Storybook Character Day and the kids can still dress up in a costume as long as it is a storybook character.  My students anticipated our celebration all week long, as did I.

We decided to bring a little Halloween themed things into the mix, but we really did have a child in the class that is not allowed to celebrate Halloween.  We had a recipe for making spider cookies and I was so psyched about it!  It was something the students could do that wasn't all about school work, but since it was Storybook Character Day instead of Halloween I had to come up with a book.  Thank you, Eric Carle, for your amazing book selections!  The best book to tie into making spider cookies was The Very Busy Spider.  The cookies are super easy and quite tasty.

Here's what you need:
Oreos
chocolate Twizzlers/black licorice
marshmallow cream

Untwist the Oreo
Break the Twizzler into 8 small pieces
Put marshmallow cream on one part of the cookie
Put the Twizzlers on like legs
Replace the top of the cookie

The students acted like they had never eaten Oreos before. It was great and I had enough left overs to make another spider.  Here's the finished product (unfortunately I had to scale it down to crop out my student):

And don't worry, there were Superheroes to save the day ;)

P.S. I was Iron Ma'am :)

All We Need is Love

As mentioned in the last two posts, today is National Day on Writing.  I don't want to bore you, but I suppose if you're reading this it's because you're actually interested in what I have to say.  The past week has actually been a fantastic week for me to write anyway.

This week we have had nothing but fun activities!  I always have fun activities but they are usually spread out throughout the week.  This week started with an exciting Social Studies lesson on crops and natural resources.  How did we do that?  Last semester my teacher, who is now my university supervisor, taught us the power of a virtual tour.  It's so simple- pictures of a place and just acting out a field trip.  We went to my mom's vegetable garden!  They love doing that, but then following it up with them planting a few green bean seeds definitely helped with the excitement!  We placed the cups in the window and have been anticipating the growth all week.  We also did a lesson on bar graphs and we did that through graphing M & M's.

Math was so simple to make exciting this week.  Patterns.  Even the most simple things can excite them.  I passed out construction paper and had them create all the different patterns they wanted, then as a class we created one giant classroom pattern from the paper colors!  Today they got to make pattern necklaces.

The most rewarding part for me, though, was the writing prompt.  They were learning to write letters this week.  The true objective was to be able to write a letter to the me of some things they wanted me to change in the class.  Instead, I got a bunch of letters saying how much they were going to miss me. One said, "Miss Kirsten, I'm sorry I'll be leaving you for 3rd grade.  You will always be in my heart and you will still be my BFF" (just add a few misspellings). It was so sweet and so heartbreaking.  I just keep thinking, "Come on, December 2nd", but then I think about leaving the sweet faces and I just get upset.   What am I going to do when I'm officially a teacher?

It's been a rough half of a semester, but every part of the roller coaster has made me fall more in love with my students.

We're All in This Together...?

It's only Tuesday and I feel the need to blog again.  I was planning on writing on Thursday since it is the National Day of Writing, so this week you may be thinking I'm crazy for constant blogging, but I don't mind.

After this semester I realize just how sheltered I've been my whole life.  I grew up going to a VERY small Catholic school from Kindergarten until 8th grade.  Once I graduated 8th grade I went to a fairly small Catholic high school.  Growing up I remember wishing every school year that we'd get a new student in our class, but it never really happened.  By the time I made it to high school it was fantastic seeing new faces, but even still there weren't really any "new" students after freshman year.  At least until Katrina hit, and then it basically became a whole new school.  That year was pretty nice because I was able to meet a ton of new people and I didn't completely hate school anymore.

I realize that concept is completely unrealistic.  As I mentioned in my first post, I started the school year off with 20 students.  My second week of teaching we got a new student who transferred from another school. That seemed pretty normal, it was only two weeks into school.  It has been a roller coaster ride ever since!  I feel like every week we lose students left and right.  In one week I went from 21 students down to 18.  Yesterday we lost two more students.  Just when I thought it was all over, the secretary calls over the intercom today asking for a student to escort our new student to the classroom.  Here I was thinking, "Oh, how nice this classroom is with only 16 students."  I just can't get over the fact that we are 10 weeks into school and still losing and gaining students.  When will it ever stop?

Well, guys, as far as I can tell it never will.  During my methods set in February there were still students being taken from one class to be put into another.  Can't we ever just catch a break?  Not that it really matters... I have 17 absolutely nerve-racking, fabulously awesome students and I love each and every one of them (until I get a new student and then I'll just change the number!)

All Write, 2nd Grade!

I found out National Day on Writing is October 20, so in honor of that I'll introduce you to Four Square writing method.  I feel it's GENIUS for teaching younger children the concept of a paragraph.  The administrators at school are huge fans, and are really pushing the writing method. 

Four square writing method simplifies the construction of a paragraph.  It can be used for older students who are learning to write four or five paragraph papers.  The book, written by Judith S. Gould, Evan Jay Gould, and Mary F. Burke, comes with an instruction disk and great ways to introduce the method of writing to students. The provided four square paper is literally four large squares with a rectangle in the middle.  The rectangle is the main idea/topic sentence, three of the squares are the detail sentences, and the final box is the closing sentence.  Who could ask for a more simple explanation of constructing a paragraph?

My second graders have gotten used to the writing method so we've started using it more thoroughly.  During the week they do the entire process of writing.  We start with the circle map to develop ideas about the given topic, then move onto the four square. The students should transfer the sentences for the first draft.  Since that shouldn't take any time at all I usually end up editing each paragraph the same day.

This past week they had to write about their favorite sport.  I have 13 boys in my class, so I thought this topic would be a hit.  I was wrong.  I have no choice for the weekly topic, so they wrote anyway.  I'm trying to come up with some creative ways to accomplish the four square since they are beginning to say, "Oh no, not writing", so any recommendations are accepted.  Here's an example of the four square with the first draft:

Don't forget, October 20th is National Writing Day!

Journey Through Student Teaching...

After nearly 9 weeks of my student teaching experience I've decided I have enough fun(ny) things to share. I'll give a quick overview of my journey thus far.

I was supposed to be in a Pre-K classroom in a completely different school, but three days before school started I was moved to Midway Elementary in a 2nd grade classroom.  As upset and terrified as I was in the beginning, these 22 second graders have stolen my heart!  I actually only have 18 students in my classroom (six of which are girls) and they are wild, goofy, and too sweet!  Everyday there's a new silly story to tell.

The entire parish has low scores as far as the school report cards go, but Midway (D+) has received the SIG grant to attempt higher scores.  Talk about tough!  The grant has a ton of stipulations that are hard to keep up with, but the way I look at it, if I can make it through this semester as a student teacher I can do anything!  The grant requires meetings everyday, more interventions for Math and Reading (but we actually get interventionists for those), data boards, and much more.

Now that there is somewhat of a background of my classroom I can begin sharing the stories (like the lock down we had) and the fun lessons we've had!