Wild Wednesday!

You know it's been a wild week when...

--it takes longer to clean off your desk at the end of the day than it does to write tomorrow's lesson plans.

--students run to the bus instead of standing in line and you just laugh...with the teachers around you...instead of correcting them.

--you can't seem to get the girls' names in your room correct.  I seriously called my little sweethearts each others names all day long.  I totally blame this on my mom!  She has called me my aunts' names more often than not!

--you join in on a game of Heads Up Seven Up for a student's birthday.

--can't wait for recess duty so you can get outside to enjoy some fresh air.  More on this later but I LOVE recess duty!

--are ready for bed at 6:30.

--sit in your car, in the shed, after you get home to enjoy your book on CD because it is relaxing and requires no effort.

--dread when the phone rings fearing you completely forget to take your kids to a special.  On a plus side, I haven't done this yet, but I know I will! Knock on wood...

--have bribed your students with a surprise ALL week to get them to work at the end of the day!  The surprise comes TOMORROW!!!

--get excited for the Read Aloud before lunch because each and every student loves this part of the day!  We are on Magic Tree House Book #3: Mummies in the Morning.

--hate hearing your own voice at the end of the day.

--you have set up a schedule 10 times in 3 days and it still has conflicts.

--you tried partner work today after it failed drastically yesterday.

--you have cut out more word sorts than thought possible to get your students to tackle the short vowels.  Students that are struggling or are bored HATE doing pages out of their workbooks!  

--thrown plans totally wayside to simply practice spelling words because their test it tomorrow and knew some of them weren't going to do well.  We made paper chains with one word written on each link!  This has been one of their favorites!  I even hung them on their lockers!

--feel exhausted but so excited for tomorrow because you have great things planned!  

Hope you all had a great Wednesday!  I am off to get my daily dose of some NCIS.

Toodles!

Following Directions

I have never been a firm believer in kids acting differently because of the weather or a full moon.  Teaching may make me a believer.  For the most part, I consider myself really lucky.  My class listens to directions and completes them relatively accurately.  I would be lying if I said I didn't have a few that tried to push every boundary possible but a large majority are pretty good listeners.  Maybe the honey moon period is rubbing off......maybe it was the weather.  When the other 1st grade teachers commented their classes were struggling to follow directions, I didn't feel quite as bad.

There were times during the day that I felt as if they were outside at recess.

There were times during the day that I just stood in front of my class with my finger to my lips, signaling that they needed to get quiet.

There were times during the day that I just kind of laughed because I wasn't sure we were ever going to complete the task at hand.

There were times when I threatened the loss of minutes of recess.

There were times when I threatened the loss of a whole recess.

Don't get me wrong, I like LOVE collaboration!  My teaching philosophy is based on collaboration.  In the real world, you always are bouncing ideas off of others to figure out the best possible solution.  So why should we teach children in a way they will not live their life?  There are obviously times when we must do things on our own and they must do things on their own in my room as well.  But I am constantly allowing them to work with partners, ask a friend, turn to an elbow buddy and share, and work in small groups.  I make groups, I allow them to make groups, and we work as a whole.  There are benefits to all.

Today was a different story!!  They simply couldn't handle working with others.  Our room became a dull-roaring jungle.  I tried and tried to let them work together but something was off!  During my math lesson, when half of my students were talking to someone next to them instead of getting directions to work with manipulatives with a partner, I had them put everything away and pull out a piece of paper.  On the paper, they were to write their number (each student is assigned a number 1-18).  My next direction was to pass it one person to the left and write the number that was one more than the number on the paper.  This is a math skill we are working on.  Then they had to pass it to their left when I said go.  It was supposed to work out that each person ended up with their own paper.  It didn't work to say the least and I knew it wouldn't.  It fed into my game plan pretty well.  I was able to talk to them as a whole about needing to follow directions or you hold others up.  I apologized to the students that routinely follow directions and made all of them think about their direction following abilities.  If they were one that needed constant reminders, I asked that they turn their listening ears on for me...and leave them on.

All in all, I think I scared some of my students.  It may have been what needed to happen----I hope they all come back tomorrow.  Blame it on what you want but I hope I have 17 students with listening ears tomorrow!

Off to line judge a volleyball game!

Toodles!!  Sorry if there are spelling mistakes....I was typing like a mad woman and didn't go back and reread!

The Darn English Language

People say that it is hard to learn another language.  I would have to agree.  I tried learning Spanish for 4 years but was certainly not ever fluent.  I can say hi, introduce myself, and ask you how you are.  My colors and numbers can be pulled out of the hat but they may not be correct.  Where am I going with this?  Spanish at least sticks to the rules. English doesn't.  The founders of the language tried for a while, tried to used some previous languages, and then just started creating words in my opinion...however they pleased.

Try explaining this to a first grader! We are working on short vowel sounds and consonant sounds.  Most of the consonants are easy and they are pretty good at.  Except for c because it can sound like a k OR an s, the g can be hard or soft, meaning it can sound like the j, k's can be silent, q must be followed by a u, and then there is the x and the z which get thrown into letters and are hard to sound out.  First graders use phonetic spelling meaning their spelling normally matches the sounds that they hear unless they have practiced and seen a word many times.

The vowels are a WHOLE other story!  All vowels have a short and a long sound.  If they are long, they say their name, most of the time.  Short vowels all have their own sound.  But guess what, you put two vowels together and they make a different sound.  Add an e to the end of the word and it makes a vowel long, sometimes.  Then we have oddball words or words that simply don't follow any rule and you just have to know how to say and spell.  We have this rule called the Bossy R...an r with certain vowels makes a complete different sound.  The list goes on!  And while you thought you realized this, you probably take it fore granted on a daily basis that you are a fluent reader and don't have to think about every sound.

This is the life of a first grader!  At this point in the year, most of them sound out every sound of almost every word.  They did have 20 sight words last year.  These words were ones that they were expected to know at the end of the year.  They are commonly used while speaking, reading, and writing.  But that doesn't get you far while you're reading.

This is also why I have a job!  This is also why most schools want teachers to have their reading endorsement.  This stuff is tricky and there are tricks of the trade that I am still learning.  I have found some great resources on teacherspayteachers.com that made teaching these tricky letters though.  Many of you have heard my singing skills, because I'm not the shyest person but my students get to hear my lovely voice EVERY day!  There are songs for everything!!!  For reading strategies, letter sounds, you name it and someone has thought of a song to make it easier to remember!!

For example...The Short /o/  which goes to the tune of The Wheels on the Bus  (the / / makes mean its a sound for all of you non teachers!) thanks to Nicole Rios and her Short O Flipbook.
The sound for short o is /o/, /o/, /o/
/o/, /o/, /o/
/o/, /o/, /o/
The sound for short o is /o/, /o/, /o/
like ostrich, off, and Ozzy!

I will add some pictures of our other songs that we use another time.  I am on the wrong computer!

I'm made a little font change and color change due to some people not being able to read it..cough..cough..Paulette.  :-)  At least I know someone was reading!!!  Let me know if there is something you really want to know about.

Have a great night and even better Tuesday!!

Toodles!

Truly Blessed!

I can't express in one post how blessed I am/feel!  For the most part, things have worked out in my life the way I have had them planned.  Lucky, spoiled, hard work, planned, or blessed....call it what you want.  I feel as it is a combination of all of them along with someone from above watching closely over me.

Today is going to be another list of things, but today will be things and people that I am happy to have in my life.  These following things are why I am a happy, go-lucky, 1st year teacher!

--My Parents!  I know this is a little cliche but I don't know what I would do without them.  They have supported me through everything. Financially. Emotionally. Etc.  I still call my mom everyday and see her several times each week.  I am a lot like her in many ways.  I feel the need to be in the know, I worry, and I like to be involved in everything.  I am much more like my dad though and almost everyone would agree.  He has been the one to push me to do my best at everything, not give up, and do the right thing, all the time.  Many of these things are some of my biggest goals for my students.  We are both easily annoyed, aren't the most patient, and raise our voices quickly.  We butt heads but he is the first person I want to tell good news!  I know they are both my biggest fans.

--Gavin!  Everyone thought we were crazy when we started dating.  I was 18. He was 24.  I was a freshman in college.  He was graduated from Wartburg and a successful contractor.  Three and a half years later, I don't know what I would do without him.  He gets the brunt of my bad days, my emotions, and my frustrations.  He is there for everything and my biggest supporter.  Hopefully one of these days, he'll get down on one knee.... :-)

--My Brother!  This boy keeps me on my toes and has taught me how to deal with those little boys with tempers.  When we were little (lets be real, till the day I moved out), we fought, we argued, and we played side by side.  There were times when I couldn't get to my room fast enough because I seriously thought he would kill me and many more days (even through high school) that we feel asleep in the same bed watching movies or scheming up something ridiculous.  He is my best friend.

--My Sister!  I will always have my very own guardian angel.  While the selfish part of me wishes I would have gotten to grow up with her visibly by my side, I know she has always and continues to be with me.

--My friends!  They have kept me out of trouble, gotten me in trouble, and gave me endless amounts of laughter and advice.  While we have all went our own ways after school, I can count on them for a good time.

--A job!  It was such a relief to get a job right out of school and close to home.  Since Gavin wasn't leaving, it had limited the places that I was applying.  It isn't just any job though.  It's a job that I love and am very happy at.  I love the people that I work with and wake up each day excited to go to work.  Everyone is very supportive and truly want me to succeed.

--My mentor!  While I had heard bad stories about the mentoring program and how much of a hassle it was, I am blessed to have an awesome mentor that is there to support me with everything.  She has helped get my curriculum materials, deal with individual students, and give me countless amounts of guidance.

--Other teachers!  The teachers that I student taught with, had field experience with, and my own personal teachers have given me gifts that I will treasure for a life time.  They are the ones that helped create my passion for children and led me down this path.

--My family and Gavin's family!  They have supported me through school and my career decisions.  They have been my cheerleaders and biggest supporters.  I can't thank them enough.

--My babysitting families!  These families took me in and made me part of their family.  I had the opportunity to spend lots of time with awesome kids and they will always be my babies.  I miss not getting to spend endless amounts of time with them but sadly, most of them are in school themselves.  I wouldn't be the teacher that I am if I had gotten to practice with them first.

The list could go on but these are the biggest things.  Please don't feel bad if you think I missed you.  You are mentioned in there somewhere or in someway.

Have a great night and an even better Friday!  Make it a good day!

Toodles!

Wild Wednesday

I am going to attempt to make every Wednesday a list of things that I have known but teaching has certainly solidified.  So here goes my first Wednesday.  This may be long considering it has been an eye opening first 3 weeks.

**I hate being late.  I leave my house by 6:30 every morning to be to school by 7:05.  I don't have students until 8:25.

**I am an organized person.  I hate feeling unorganized.  When I am, I get easily frustrated.

**I am a neat freak but I am not a clean freak.  My things are almost always picked up....that does not mean things are clean.  My house has lots of dog hair.  My classroom has lots of dirt and dust.

**I need a early morning workout.  It gets my day started and gives me a chance to clear my head.  With me leaving for school so early, this hasn't happened as much as I would like it to.  I try and get up at 4:30 to head to town to run.  If I don't get it done before school it isn't likely to happen.  If I don't get a workout in at all, I am normally grumpy.

**I love my dogs!  After a long day at school, I am always excited to come home and see them.  Right now, I have 7 dogs at home.  While I love having 4 puppies around, I am excited for them to go to their new homes in two weeks.  I will be sad to see them leave.  I have promised my students that if they work hard for me all week I will bring them to share next week.

**I have the sleep schedule of a 7 year old.  I like being in bed before nine and I am ready to get up by 5.  I always set my alarm 20 minutes early though and push my snooze several times before getting up.  I enjoy getting to lay in bed.

**I am a list maker.  Making a list is the first thing I do when I get to school and normally the first thing I do what I come home from school.

**I am a planner but I am flexible.  I always have a plan for my day and try and get those things done.  If they don't, I have no problem pushing them to tomorrow.

** With that, I type up daily lesson plans.  I feel more prepared this way.  They are typed, printed, and on my clip board each and every day before I leave my classroom.

**I am EXTREMELY competitive.  I hate getting beat.  I hate getting second. I hate getting beat by boys.  And most of all, I hate getting beat by my brother.  If you beat me, you can guarantee I will work my butt off to not let it happen again.  I wish some of my students had a little more competitiveness in them.

**I try to be healthy but when it comes to ice cream.  I have NO control. None. Ditto. Zilch.

**Brain food is necessary.  My students think so as well and they ask for it every day.  7:30 to 11:45, when we eat lunch, is a long time for them and me.  Around 9:30 each day, I make them promise me to work hard for the next 2 hours.  If they do, which they always do, they get brain food, partially because I am in need of some.  Brain food consists of a variety of things.  It can be 2 Skittles, a Ritz cracker, animals crackers, or Cheerios.

**I am stubborn.  I have stubborn students.  If it is something I feel is important for my students to do, I will be the most stubborn.

**My biggest pet peeve so far is students not using their manners.  Each student in my class WILL use their manners in a few short months.  Most are very good at this.  Some forget.  And some just are not in the habit of using them.  I have some students that would rather throw a temper tantrum than ask me please before I let them do something or give them something.  I also follow them through the lunch line and make sure they say please and thank you to the cooks.  Call me mean....I think this is necessary.

**I am a perfectionist.  I like things done correctly and neatly.  Some of my students don't know what the word neat means.

**I am easily annoyed.  More so with adults as I feel they should know better.  I get really annoyed though when my kids don't follow directions.

** My name is Ms. Rottink.  Not teacher.  Not Ms. Rottkin.  If you can't figure it out, I'm going to ask you to ask a friend.

**I am a farm girl.  I love small towns and I love the fact that I teach in a small town.

**I am sarcastic with my students.

**Patients is not something that most 6 year old possess.  They can really try but if they get excited or I haven't gotten to them yet, they will most likely get out of their seat and come find me.  I typically send them right back to their desk.

**I don't deal well with liars.

**You help me, I will help you.

**It is hard for me to watch my students make mistakes but I know that it is important to let them once in a while.

**It is okay to not know.  It is NOT okay to not try.  I don't normally except the answer, I forgot.  You raised your hand, you're going to have to try.

**Things may be hard.  Things in life are hard.  If I don't let you see this, I am failing you.

Thats all I have for now.  I am sure I will have more next week.

Have a great night!!

Toodles!

Back to the Grind

As for my long weekend, I spent it with my family shingling my grandparent's house and my parent's house.  Not a ton of fun but got to spend time with my brother, who came home from Ames for the first time, and the rest of my family.  Gavin and Mike were feeling the sunburn by yesterday.  Now back to school.

Holiday weekends are great!  Except for the day that you have to go back to your regular schedule.  That regular day would be today and I think spending three days away from school allowed all of my students to forget our schedule and routine things that we do.  Some are extremely tired but most of all, the temperature in our room makes things that much worse.  While I thought Friday was bad, today may be just as bad if not worse....and we didn't get out early!

Our need for some down time and away from others gave us a great opportunity to practice two of our Daily 5 choices: Read to Self and Read to Someone.  While a lot of the 1st graders LOVE to read with someone else and share their favorite book, I have some that strongly dislike someone else hearing them read.  That is the beauty of the Daily 5.

During our Read Aloud time right before lunch last week, I had a student ask if I would read a Magic Tree House book to them.  These chapter books are too hard for most of the 1st graders at this point but man did they love the first book when I read it to them.  We finished it before lunch and my whole class asked if we could read the next one to follow Jack and Annie's next adventure!

I'm heading out of school as soon as possible because I think my clothes are officially soaked through with sweat!  Gross, I know!

Toodles!

It was a Scorcher!!

My room was the hottest it has been all week on Friday!  If we would have had to stay all day, I think I would have cried.  My students were irritable and were complaining of others looking at them.  It didn't matter how many warnings I gave there continued to be chattered.  It must have been the same in the other two 1st grade classrooms because they asked if we wanted to watch one of our safety movies before lunch.  We did get our spelling tests out of the way and that about did most of them in.  Individualized spelling lists is quite the process but so worth it.  I'll comment more on that another day.

Since we got out early, I took the chance to snap a couple of pictures of my room that I could compare with the ones I took the first time I stepped in my room.  It might have been the most overwhelming thing I've gone through.  I came into a completely empty room and didn't have a clue as to where to start.  I spent three hours in my room the first time I went and tried putting two bulletin boards up but took both of them down.  I moved my desks, stared at my blank walls, drew a diagram of my room, and drove back home.  It came a long way in about a week.

Enough of the writing though...here are some pictures.  I need to give credit where credit is due though.  I got almost everything off of TeacherspayTeachers.com and laminated it.  My parents got me a Scotch laminator for Christmas last year and it works like a dream!  My mom also helped cut out things, sort and label books, and make curtains.  And well Gavin got to deal with me being frustrated, acting like a 1st grader when I got really excited about something, and he claims I pull out sayings on him that should only be used with 1st graders.  Ooops!

I should point out that my classroom theme is Welcome to the Jungle!

The desks were actually in rows when I showed up.  Moving them into pods like this was about the only thing I did that day.

As of Friday, this is how my desks look like.  We had a couple of issues with the pods and had to rearrange.

 The area behind my desk.  I must not have taken one of back here as it looks now.  But it is covered in all of my teaching materials.  

The sink in my room and part of the front board.  This also has gained a lot of decor in the past two weeks.  We brush our teeth everyday after lunch so they hang on the wall. 

Thanks to my mom, the cart beside the door is now covered by that awesome curtain.  I took down that black paper and covered all of my bulletin boards with fabric.  My classroom helpers is the one that you can see in the picture to the right.  The tubs on the counter are where all of my students turn things in at.

These sit by the pencil sharpener.  You can see them in the picture above.  Instead of having students sharpen their pencils all day long.  I have a Helper that does this once a day....although it doesn't look like it has been done for about a week.

Another overwhelmingly empty room picture.  I was standing in my door way and looking towards the far back corner.  On the right is the new and improved form.  

 This is now the shelf that lines the outside wall of my classroom.  With the help of my mom, each book has a sticker on the back cover that helps the students get all my books back to their correct tub.

My reading corner!  I LOVE THIS SPOT IN MY ROOM and we spend a lot of time back here.  My mom and I made the crates.  They work as seats and also storage.  I should give Gavin a little credit because he cut the boards to fit in the crates that are now covered in fabric.

The top shelves hold the rubbermaid tubs full of books.  The bottom shelf hold the baskets that I found cheap at a garage sale.  More on my garage sale extravaganzas at a later date!

A close up of the alphabet and numbers that line the top of my board.  Once again, thanks to teacherspayteachers.com!

 When I student taught in Waverly, my cooperating teacher, Jessica Meier, did this and I absolutely loved the idea.  Each child has their own bucket and then has someone else's name in their bucket.  On Fridays, each person writes the person in their bucket a "bucket filler".  Meaning, they write that person   something to make them feel good!

 It goes along with the book.  I read this to them the first week.  It talks about  how you can be a bucket filler or a bucket emptier by the words and actions you do to other people.  Great book!!  Jess also gave me that bucket on my last day of student teaching!

 Our daily schedule!  Hangs right beside my desk!

Our Jungle themed behavior chart.  Students can move up by making good choices and down for making poor choices.  They can move both ways throughout the whole day.

 Face of a Reader!  Holds all of our reading strategies that we are learning about dealing with, Fluency, Accuracy, Comprehension, and Expanding our Vocabulary!

 I am supposed to be getting an awesome horseshoe table to replace this one.  I will do small group work back here.  You can also see our word wall.

 The Daily 5!  More about how I run this in my room later but here is the bulletin board.  We have only gotten the chance to practice the top three at this point and in a very structured way but hopefully next week I can run this more completely and have the chance to conference with individual students.

The tac pictures are the way that I can show where each student is at in the Daily 5.  I hot glued big pushpins to names that I printed out and laminated.  You can see them in the big picture beside Read to Someone.

Calendar Math!  Takes the typical classroom calendar and adds some math skills.  I haven't used the patterned days of the month yet but will this coming week.

 and while I start my day with a clean desk.  This is how it ends up by the end of the day.  Things EVERYWHERE!

Sorry for such a long post but I wanted to get all of those added.  That's all (LOL) I have for today.  Have a great and safe Labor Day weekend!!

Toodles!