Another Week Down!

Phew! It has been a crazy, but fun week this week. The kids continue to be great students, although I am having to get after them for not turning in some of their work, now that we are really getting into all the nitty-gritty stuff. Also, I started spelling this week. I am doing a new way of spelling that I learned at the university and did while I was student teaching. It is a little different than the regular way we all did it, like write words 3 times each, use them in a sentence, etc... I put them into groups based off of where they are at from a pretest I gave them. There are 4 groups and each has a different list of words. Each week the words have some kind of pattern in their spelling that help the kids recognize them easier. Each night, they have to do some kind of activity with their words with their parents. Well, some of the parents are getting confused about what their kids are doing and the kids are a little confused too, because it isn't the "norm". So I have struggled with trying to explain it all, so hopefully next week will go a little better. :0
Other than that, I have been teaching a lot about Utah's Geography, multiplication fact memorizing, and they are writing an "autobiography" about themselves by using the writing process. I really am having fun, it is just a lot of work keeping up with all of the paper-correcting and recording scores, and making sure that students are turning in their work and all... A lot of planning every night too!
On Wednesday, it was my birthday, and the kids were so excited about it. A lot of the girls brought me little presents and wrote me funny notes and drew pictures. My mom also brought in balloons and doughnuts after lunch. They loved that part! All in all, it was a fun day. I got to hang out with the fam afterward by having dinner at the Olive Garden and homemade cheesecake at my house. By the way, I finally got my very own camera for my birthday, so I was able to take some pictures of my classroom.




This is the front of my classroom. The desks are arranged in groups of three and yes, I have a stove/oven in the corner next to the TV! ( I most likely will not be using that, but who would have thought to put a STOVE in a classroom!)

This is my desk. Notice everything I own is on metal rolling carts, so I can move from one classroom to another! FUN, FUN, FUN!

This is the side of my classroom where the kids hang up their backpacks. It is also my "word wall" (vocabulary words) and my classroom rules/helpers wall. And yes, that is a piano too!

This is where my kids put their textbooks, take lunch count/attendance, do "think time" and get books to read.

This is the other side of my room where all of the EMPTY storage cupboards are because it is pointless to store anything in them when you are just going to have to move it all in 9 weeks! The kidney-shaped table is where I will do reading groups.