Monday, June 29, 2015

How to {ROCK} as a First Year Teacher - Linky Party

It's almost the end of June and I am already thinking about starting a new year. We start in August down here in Georgia, so it's coming sooner than I want.

To get the ball rolling I thought I'd link up with the incredible Chandra at Teaching with Crayons and Curls to share what I think every first year teacher needs to ROCK it!



 
 


* Finding a veteran teacher to befriend will help you tremendously. They have been in your shoes before and they have survived. Sitting down with them and talking through their process for pacing out the curriculum is going to be very beneficial. And they probably have some tricks up their sleeves on how to cover those awkward moments or pitfalls sure to pop up.

* Technology is NOT your friend. It may look all shiny and new and promise to save you HOURS of your time. But it will go down, it will freeze up, it will cause a power failure on the very last day of school. Grades are too important to trust to this finicky friend. I write everything down in an old school gradebook and then transfer to the school's suggested electronic filing system.

* Breathe. Deep. Then breathe again. As soon as that morning bell goes off they will come whether you are ready or not. If you breathe then you'll have time to remember that you are strong and can face what is about to come. Even if you forget what you were saying or drop your coffee all down your front, it will be okay. You still have tomorrow to fix any mistakes. So breathe.


 * To this day I am still afraid of parents. They make me nervous, but you can't avoid them. They are your direct line to sanity this year. Make sure to build a relationship with them from the start. Always begin with something positive before you ask them to help you keep their child awake all day in class.

* Best advice my professor ever gave me during student teaching. You can not be their friend and then turn around to take away recess from them when they aren't behaving. It just creates more headaches for you. They will trust you more if they understand you are coming from a place of authority. It's okay to have fun with them and laugh, but remember that you are the adult and will have to put on the Big Pants sometime this year.


* You are going to wear many hats this year. Teacher, parent, counselor, nurse, and coach. You are always on. Remember that you are trying to compete with SpongeBob and video games for their attention. You will need to sing, dance, and act all day. Just remember you are a Triple Threat and you can do this!

Good luck with your first year and try not to overload on Pinterest. A lot of that stuff won't pass fire codes.

Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Wagons Ho! Oregon Trail

I'm so excited to have finished this newest TpT product. I had a ton of fun creating it because it brought me back to my childhood curled up on the couch with a good book. I used to love reading those Choose Your Own Adventure stories. I could spend hours flipping back and forth between the pages. If I made the wrong choice I could just go back to the last page and try again. Such fun getting lost in the stories where I was boss.

When I was trying to figure out how to approach my next product I thought it would be a perfect vehicle for such a try out. Why not combine history with a little interaction?

I found this site where it would help you format your Choose Your Own idea. inklestudios was easy to use but I definitely suggest walking through the tutorial first. That was a big help in figuring out how it all works. Once you are done you can have your book formatted for use with tablets and such and it was only $10.

I had to find some other stuff to go with this idea, so I put together some task cards and a daily writing project that followed the Choose Your Own story. There are Main Idea question cards and Cause and Effect cards that take situations from the story and ask you to answer questions about them.

The daily writing  project also takes events from the story. There are twelve stops along the way out west. You would provide each student with a little journal (paper folded and stapled) to use throughout the project. You share one slide on the powerpoint each day. There is a prompt for students to respond to. I've provided a rubric to go along with it. You can print out a copy for the students so they know how this project will be graded if you like.

So, if you have to teach Westward Expansion at all, may I proudly present



Sunday, June 14, 2015

Organizing Math Stations





Hey there, I am linking up with one of my favorite blogs of all times, The Primary Peach, to bring you a Sunday organizational tip.

If you're like me and have finally caught up with the digital age you have all of your files on your computer now. Our school lets us directly connect to the office printer so that we can send the stuff that we need printed off multiple times right to the 'big' printer and not have to waste the ink on our classroom printers. This is so helpful when you forget are planning for the week. I can send it immediately to the printer and just walk over and pick it up. So quick!

To get back to my point, I began to realize that I have not opened my filing cabinet files for at least two years. Everything I use is on the shared drive whenever I need it.

Another problem I had was trying to keep my math stations organized. They were everywhere. I tried to keep them in a fun fabric drawer like thing I found at Walmart, but they always got mixed up and I could never find what I was looking for when it came time to switch out the stations. I needed a way to keep them in order by subject.

So guess what I did? I went through my entire Language Arts and Math drawers and threw everything away. Yep, I did it! It was so freeing. I had things from when I first started teaching first grade in there from 1995. It was time. Total purge.

Now I had a space in the room where I could coordinate math stations by strand. I put each station into a folder inside of a gallon Ziploc bag so I could grab it when I need it. If you looked inside you'd see all of the Place Value games together, all the Multiplication stations in one place, and all of the Geometry ideas close by.

I am fully advocating the need to go through you filing cabinet and purging stuff you haven't even set eyes on in the past year or so. Then you can use that empty storage unit however you want. Believe me, it's a wonderful feeling!

P.S. I left my Social studies and Science drawers alone because some of that stuff is hard to find on line.