Labor Day Link-Ups

Happy Labor Day! Happy September! Happy Monday! Happy Back To School Week! 

Why is it that in the summer I think, "I will finally have time to blog," and then in September I think, "Where did the summer go; why didn't I blog?" School starts this week, so it seems appropriate to kick-off school year blogging with Farley's Currently and Mrs. Laffin's A Peek at My Week! 

LISTENING: I have never watched Glee on TV, but as I working on all things school related a couple of weeks ago, I was looking for some Netflix background noise. OMG what I have been missing for the last few years?! Music, Broadway, movies - Glee is all of my favorite things rolled into one show. <3

LOVING: At my school we only have one week to set-up our classrooms. It stresses me out, but I managed to get MOST of it done this past week. There are still some little things that I will work on tomorrow and Wednesday, so hopefully Wednesday night I will be able to share some pics. I LOVE how it turned out this year! :o)

THINKING: About my To Do list...so many things that I still need to do before the kiddos come to school on Thursday. 

WANTING: As excited as I am to meet my new 4th graders, I would love one more week. But we all know that teachers are never really "ready," there is always ONE MORE THING to do, so I'm sure that even with another week, I still wouldn't be "ready." 

NEEDING: Along with one more week, I could also use a few more hours in the day. We haven't even really had our first week yet and I am already exhausted...oops! 

3 Trips: Disney - Yes, you read that correctly, I am 29 years old and have never been to Disney. One of these days...

Nashville - My best friend lived in Nashville a couple of years ago and with her schedule and my school schedule, I never made it out there. She is a travel nurse and fell in love with Tennessee so hopefully she will return and I will get to visit this time. I sure do <3 my country music! 

Vegas - I hate gambling would love to see and do everything else in Vegas! 

Now for a Peek at My First Week back at school. 

Last week we had 9 new 4th graders register for school, today I will prepare things for the 3 new kiddos that will be in my class as well as various other back to school tasks that I still need to finish. These tasks are being planned a family BBQ that I will most definitely be making time for today, too! 

Tomorrow we will have our district convocation and then some time to work in our classrooms and first staff meeting of the year. 

I am looking forward to some district PD on close reading. I have done my own reading on close reading, but I am looking forward to what our literacy coach has to share with us. 

Day 1 with kiddos!! YAY!! 

Day 2 with kiddos. Procedures and routines are the name of the game this week. My first chapter book read aloud will be "No Talking" by Andrew Clements. We will be doing some community building such as Saving Fred and some Toothpaste words. The kiddos will also need to take a couple of Math tests, placement test and end of the year benchmark to test to be used as a DDM. It will be a busy, but mostly fun, couple of days! 

Thanks for reading! :o)

Currently - A Peek at my Week

Today's post will be a linky 2-for-1! I am linking up with Farley's Currently *yay* and Jennifer's A Peek at my Week! 

I am LISTENING to Army Wives on Netflix. This used to be one of my favorite shows, then when they changed the cast, I decided I wouldn't watch it. I caved and watched season 7 the other day, so now I had to start over from the beginning again. 

I am LOVING our 10-day forecast! It finally looks and feels like spring here in Western Massachusetts! :o) My allergies are not thrilled, but I will deal; I love the springtime! Those are finally 60s and 70s that I see! 

I am THINKING about the 39 days that we have left of school. Yes, you read that correctly...THIRTY-NINE days! We start school after Labor Day...teachers begin on Tuesday and students begin on that Thursday, therefore, we still have 39 days to go. Our last day is June 26th. 

I am WANTING a day at the beach. I am pretty sure that if I were to look back at all of the currently's that I have posted in the last year, they would all have something about the beach in them. Hopefully Memorial Day weekend! 

I am NEEDING to get organized for Mother's Day. I have shopping to do for Mom and Grandma...and with the test-prep, Poetry Night preparations, and Student Treasures publishing that we have been working on, I haven't started my Mother's Day project with my kiddos yet. I have lots to do this week. 

SURPRISE, Theresa and Robyn! I adore Pinkadots Elementary. These two ladies have outstanding ideas and are lots of fun to follow. If you don't know them, head over and check out their amazing blog. During this teacher appreciation week, I would like to thank you, Theresa and Robyn, for inspiring me to be a better teacher with your incredible ideas. :o)

Now, for a quick, peek at my week! Jennifer at Mrs. Laffin's Laughings hosts the weekly A Peek at my Week. This is going to be a pretty exciting teacher appreciation week! 

Our state department of education has some new CCSS resources. One of these resources is a model unit for determining literary themes using Tuck Everlasting. I want to try out this unit, but I know that the majority of my kiddos will not be reading this text independently, so I am tweaking the lessons to use as Tuck Everlasting as a read aloud. We will begin this unit this week. You can find the link to the model unit here. 

This our last week before our math MCAS. That means that this week we will be finessing up our final topic, which happens to be geometry and prepping for THE TEST! I cannot wait until testing is over for the year! 

So much to do. I will be using my writing time this week to complete our Student Treasures book publishing work, the kiddos' Poetry Night presentation boards, and our Mother's Day projects. I completed these Mother's Day projects with my kiddos last year and they came out very cute. You can check them out in my itty-bitty TPT store that is on sale for the teacher appreciation event! 

Tomorrow is my final college class. That means I have lots of grading and grade inputting this week. I cannot believe how fast this class by, but I am looking forward to having the opportunity to teach another class in the future! 

If you follow me on Instagram, I posted this little gem this weekend:

My family, 2 amazing teamies and I will be attending a reception on Thursday to celebrate all of the winners of the Excellence in Teaching Award! :o) 

Thanks for sticking with me through this rather lengthy post. Happy Sunday and have a wonderful teacher appreciation week! 

A Peek at My Week * 1.12.14

It's time to give you A Peek at My Week - I am once again linking up with Jennifer from Mrs. Laffin's Laughings. 

So for starters, I received a FAB email today from Bloglovin informing me that I had reached 150 followers! After my several-month-long blog hiatus, I was in no way expecting this. I was so excited about 100 followers several months back, and I hadn't even thought to see how many I was at just this past week. So thank you to all of you and I will have to get a little giveaway going later this week! 

Speaking of milestones and giveaways - Mary over at Fit to be Fourth is celebrating her 100 follower milestone with a great giveaway! If you don't follow her already head on over and check out her adorable blog! :o) Congratulations Mary! 

Before I get to my week, I just have to mention how much I love Jennifer Lawrence...and her acceptance speech on the Golden Globes tonight just made me love her even more. She is just so "normal" still. 

Non-school related: Hart of Dixie fans, raise your hands! It's back on Monday night! I have missed this show - one of my guilty pleasures. 

I hate to even use this word, but I have to start thinking about MCAS...we take our ELA test in March. Last week we began talking about some test-taking strategies. This week we will be working on writing answers to open response questions in reading. A couple of years ago I attended a Keys To Literacy training on writing open response answers using the acronym ANSWER. It is my favorite! If you aren't familiar with it, you can check it out {here}. 

And in my intervention block (writing) we will be working on answering different types of writing prompts. I try to hard not to "teach to the test," but we do need to work on test-taking strategies. 

We also have a planetarium assembly on Tuesday that should be fun! :o)

Again, non-educational - even more exciting than Hart of Dixie on Monday is NASHVILLE tonight! This one is my favorite, for sure!

Last week, with my intervention group, we worked on dialogue and punctuation using comics (thank you, Pinterest!). Today I will teach this lesson to my own kiddos during our writing block. Obviously I loved the lesson, I am using it again. The kiddos take a short comic and use the speech bubbles to write their own paragraph transforming them into dialogue within the paragraph. 

Progress Reports go home with kiddos on Friday. **Progress Reports are due on Wednesday, and guess what...mine are ALL DONE! Woohoo! Yup, I'm ahead of schedule, no procrastinating for me!** 

And this is not Friday, but Sunday...GO PATRIOTS! I was really hoping they would be playing the Chargers so that they Pats would get to play at home, but it is what it is. Look out Peyton, the Tom Brady is coming to Denver! 

Thanks for reading and have a great week!

A *Peek* at My Week - January 6, 2014

Time for another one of my favorite linkies - Mrs. Laffin's Laughings: A Peek at My Week. 

Head on over to Jennifer's great blog to share a peak at your week. 

So, we were supposed to go back to school last Thursday, but school was cancelled on Wednesday night for Thursday and Friday thanks to Hercules. I have never been much of a fan of snow days, but it was really nice to have 2 weeks off. I know I teach 4th grade, but I have a feeling that we are going to need to begin the week with some routine review...I feel like I have been out of school for a month, I can imagine how those kiddos feel.

READING

I mentioned back in September that this year, as a district, we are using Comprehension Connections by Tanny McGregor to teach our comprehension skills. Well this week I will finally finish the lessons from this book. I will be introducing and working on synthesizing all week in Reader's Workshop. 

Click on the book for the link to Amazon. I fully intend to do a blog post or two in the coming weeks about my lessons from this book. It is a quick, easy read and very beneficial...check it out!

MATH

Before vacation I introduced 2-digit by 2-digit multiplication to the kiddos using arrays and tables. They L-O-V-E-D it and actually did quite well with it. This week we will be reviewing and working on expanded and standard algorithms. 

WRITING

This week in writing we will begin our biography unit. As I'm sure most of you know, it is often a struggle to fit Social Studies and Science into the day, so in order to incorporate our Social Studies U.S. Regions standards, we will be doing our biographies on famous people from the south. 

I also hope to fit some fun New Year's writing in before we get too far into our biographies. These are the two activities I have planned. Both are great TPT freebies!  

The first is New Year's Resolutions/Goals found on TPT. Click on the name to find the item. Addie Williams did a great job creating this little guy! (Click on Addie's name to link to her TPT store).  I think my kiddos will love it! Or check out her blog below

The second is New Year's Resolution Freebie, again click on the name for the link. This one is created by Judy Wright. (Click on Judy's name to link to her TPT store). This one will be a bulletin board! 

WRITING INTERVENTION BLOCK

For the last three months, we have been working on the fundamentals of writing in our intervention block. Now, I hate to even utter this word, MCAS *eeek* is creeping into view. So this week, we are going to work on writing some good leads/hooks, because that seems to be what the kiddos struggle with the most. I love Melissa Forney writing printables - she has some great examples of "grabbers" to get the kiddos started. If you don't know her, check her out {HERE}. I especially love her Young Writers Survival Kit. 

Hopefully, by week's end, we will get to how to respond to different types of writing prompts. 

These are all skills that the kiddos learn/have learned in writing, but we have the time to do a bit more small*ish* group instruction in these areas for the kiddos in need. 

Finally, I have a meeting with the Human Resources department on Tuesday after school at my college because...I am going to teach my very first undergraduate class this semester! I hope both very nervous and very excited about this new experience. Luckily class doesn't begin until January 27th...so I still have time to prepare myself! 

Thanks for reading!