The Good Days With The Bad.....In One Day

Had an incredibly wonderful "I love my job" moment this morning and a not so incredible "this is what I hate about my job" moment this afternoon.

Good:  I had the first of my required observations this first thing this morning and my class worked nearly perfectly for an entire hour.  Pretty sure I didn't have to reprimand or remind a single child of proper classroom behavior or to get back to work.  They were FANTASTIC!!!

Bad:  Made a girl cry.  :(  Gave a spelling retest today and caught one of my little third graders cheating.  She said that her parents had promised to take her for ice cream if she got 100%. There were two words that were pretty tricky and she had written them on the back of her hand during the test.  I told her I couldn't regrade her test because she'd cheated despite her claims that it was an "accident" the words were written on her hand.  When she begged me to retake it a 2nd time I told her no.  We are only allowed to retake it once.

Does that make me a mean teacher?  Maybe, but I would bet she will think again before cheating.  She cried for the next ten minutes and I had several of my kids come tell me, very worriedly, "she's crying and I can't figure out what's wrong!"  Glad I have such thoughtful students but I had to tell them I knew why and to just leave her be for a while.

A Start To An Excellent Year!!!

Oh my goodness, it's been two weeks now and I can't believe how great this year is going to be!!!  My students are so fantastic.  They are such quiet workers, good listeners, helpful students, so responsible and great leaders!  Sometimes,  I don't know what to do with myself they are so great!  After a summer full of working EFY (Especially For Youth - a summer LDS Youth camp), I had a blast organizing my classroom this year before school started.  Here's a few sneak peaks:

 Reading Corner

 Get to Know You Beach Ball

 All ready for the first day! 

 We learned about Captain Dependable to help us learn about being responsible.

 One of my cute girls gave this pencil to me last week!

 Our School Supply Giving Tree for BTS Night

This past Thursday, our school had Back to School Night and kicked off our new Leader in Me changes at the school.  We started the night with a Ribbon Cutting Ceremony where our Student Leaders introduced some of the new changes we have at our school.

Our third grade team with Simba the Sabertooth!

As we were heading into the school to gather in the gym, a parent from last year came and told me this sweet story.   Her son, Boston, was in my class last year and I guess had a crush on me.  He tells his mom every time he sees someone pretty he says, "She's pretty but not as pretty as Miss Wiser."  That definitely melted my heart and gave me a unique insight into the minds of children. They are so genuinely loving and sincere in their interactions with others.  I sure love my job and learning from these beautiful children.

5 More Days!

So we only have a few days left!  We've had lots of great adventures the past few weeks.  Just wanted to share a few.

First, we had an ice cream party to celebrate passing off our multiplication.  The kids got a certain number of toppings based off what they passed off in class.  Then we had a bunch of parents who helped scoop ice cream and toppings for each child.  They had a blast and we spent the rest of the afternoon outside with them playing on the playground.  I had one parent come and tell me we made them look bad cause they don't play with their kids that way.  I laughed and told her that's because we can send them home at the end of the day and sleep!  :)

Then, yesterday we were cleaning out our workroom to make room for our new reading program next year.  Our principal told us to be generous throwing things out because we probably have things hidden from when the school was first built 40 years ago.  We had a blast yesterday, reading some of the stories we found, and then we discovered this beauty!!

We had such a laugh when we found this!  We even put a bow on it and wrote a card that said "To Michele, Love, 1974" and put it in her office.  I sure hope she had a good laugh from it like we did!

Mother's Day

I know this is a little late but here was our fun project for Mother's Day!  The kids and I had fun doing these.  :)

Creative Period

Hey guys!  It's been QUITE a while.  I can't believe we only have 33 days left of school!!!  We finally have Spring Break this week and so tomorrow's the last day this week. I'm just about as done with school right now as my kids.  Sound familiar?  Well, in order to preserve my sanity I have done zero grading this past week and instead have focused my efforts on my creative talents!  We recently read a book about dependability.  Remember those old "Standin' Tall" books about various topics?  Well, we listened to it on tape!  I love this book and the way its read and sung on the tape.  My only problem with the book is that the incredible illustrations are all in black and white!  Who does that??  So, I fixed it! :)  I began coloring in the illustrations in my personal copy and when it took me nearly two hours just to do the characters in the first page, I decided that I would leave the background black and white and just color the characters in the picture.  Here's some of my favorite pages:

 Professor "Un" and his henchmen

 Oh no!  Professor Un has locked Reggie & Katrina out in space!

Don't worry!  Captain Dependable will help to save the day!

Fun, right?  RIGHT!  For those who know me, they know that my stress reliever and all time favorite past time is reading, followed closely by COLORING!  This has been such a fun project!  I really enjoyed thinking about the perspectives, lighting, shading, etc.  What a good chance to develop my artistic skills.

But, wait?  There's still one more day to Spring Break.  How, you might ask, will you manage another day with this project completed?  Well, let me tell you!  My awesome fantastic, incredible, fun, amazing, perfect team and I have started working on getting our books together for next year.  We were looking at the cursive book today and are reworking what pages we want in it for next year and looked at some of the pictures on the pages.  After much laughter, we realized that while some of them are adorable, some of them are just weird.  Now my team knows my love for art and turned to me.  "Becka, would you fix these pictures and make a cute cover?"  Do I even need to tell you my answer?????  I came home and immediately started working on them.  The cover's not quite finished, it still needs the title but you can see the cute turtle I used.  We found this on one of the pages that we would not be using in the book but LOVED the turtle so I thought it would work well on our cover!

 The original monkey's weird, right?  

 Does that look like an x-ray?  I really struggled with that one!

Here's our cover turtle.  It'll say:  "Racing into Cursive!"

Apparently, I'm not the only one who's been feeling crafty.  I had one of my girls come in with her mom yesterday morning and brought me a gift.  She had painted this adorable little mug for me...and of course its an owl!  :)

Before I sign off, here's a little chuckle I had the other day:  Our classes were getting ready to switch (the morning class was going to Chinese and my afternoon class was just leaving and coming to me) which normally involves quite a bit of chaos.  This day was no different and as the morning class filed out, I caught a bit of one boy's thinking process.  I'm not sure where this thought came from because we had not been talking about the topic AT ALL that day and he wasn't having a conversation to anyone, he just was talking to himself.  I heard him say, "I don't think it was fair that Cinderella went to the ball."  He said nothing else, and just grabbed his backpack and tote tray and walked out.  I know we're not supposed to have favorites, but I seriously think he is mine this year!  He's the cutest kid, so full of energy, enthusiasm, cheer, and is so completely RANDOM!! :)  

Halloween

We had such a blast on Halloween and luckily it was a short day for us! The next day was a grading day for the end of term and I'm so glad we got to send them home early. My team and I decided to do a theme as a grade for our costumes. We were all characters from Peter Pan so the day before we had a reading party for those who had enough reading minutes and we watched the movie. Here's our awesome costumes:

We had Tinkerbell, Tiger Lily, Peter Pan, Peter's Shadow, and Captain Hook

Happy Halloween from Southland's 3rd Grade!!

Glasses

I have to say that I always think it's funny when I wear glasses for the first time in a school year.  :)  Today, my students acted like I was a completely different person!  They were absolutely stunned that I had glasses and...I don't know how else to explain their reaction.  I even had one girl come up to me first thing and with all seriousness said, "Miss Wiser, did you know you are so beautiful?!"  Needless to say, she definitely made my day!  And in case you care, here's a picture of my outfit for today:

First Week

It's been a great start to the year so far.  I love my kiddos and we are having a ball!  Just wanted to share a few reasons why I love my job:

Monday morning before school started, I was standing outside showing my kids where to line up when a parent from two years ago (my intern year) came to say hi.  She told me that she was talking with her son Trevor that morning about the coming year (as a sixth grader!!).  She asked if he was excited for a fantastic new year.  His answer was this: "I think it will be a good year but nothing could beat the year with Miss Wiser."  When she told me, I nearly started crying!  That totally made my day and I love hearing that my students enjoy being in my class.  I love having them and getting to know each one individually so to hear that I've made such a difference just makes me so happy.

The last three days I've seen so many past students and it's been so fun.  I run into them all over the school and they all say hi and some give me the biggest hugs.  I feel like such a celebrity when I'm with the other third grade teachers and all these kids come to say hi to me!  It's just such a rewarding feeling.

And last story for today.  I went to lunch with a team member this afternoon and as we waited for our food, I met one of my parents for this year.  She said her little boy is already loving this year and she's so excited for him to be in my class.  I'm not sure what I did to make an impression in the first three days but somehow he thinks its already going to be a great year.

The other day I realized that nearly half of our third grade belongs in one of my two Chinese classes (about 50 out of 110)!  That's a lot of kids!!  There may be ups and downs to teaching in the dual immersion program but one of the things I love most is being able to meet so many interesting kids.  They are so adorable and make it all worthwhile. (P.S.  I think I have all their names down already too!  What a miracle!)

Here's to hoping tomorrow's Back To School Night is a success! And pictures from my first day.

New Year...New Adventures!

Well, I'm about a week and a half away from the first day.  Still can't get in my classroom until Monday but at least I can get some things ready before that.  (We have a year-round school in our district who's building is being worked on over the summer, so they are occupying our school until the end of this week.)

I'm sticking with the OWL theme just because I LOVE it and may also be too lazy to change it...but I do have a few things I will be adding to my room this year.  And of course, these ideas are from Pinterest!

The first is for pencils.  You know how your kids are always breaking or losing their pencils.  Well, this  clever teacher decided to use a straw dispenser for new pencils.  You fill it up and any time a student needs a new pencil, they just go and grab one from the box.  Genius!  I bought one online a few weeks ago.  It finally got here and I pulled out my Cricut to cut out vinyl letters for the front.  I saw a few people had also lined the inside with cute scrapbook paper.  I may have to do that too.  Anyway, here's what I've got for now:

OK guys, I'm SOOOOOOO excited about this next idea!  I don't know where the original idea came from.  I got this from a friend's pin but it doesn't link it to a sight.  Ready?....

I'm not done yet, but basically, the idea behind the ReadBox is that the display shows several books that the students might want to try.  I printed off a couple book cover images that I will put up on the red background.  Some of these are in my library but others are just to get ideas of what to read.  I also went to my local library and they had pamphlets recommending books on various interest levels.  I grabbed a few of those and will have them located next to our ReadBox display.  I'm really hoping that my students will get excited about this and find some new things to read.  I'm tired of everyone ready the "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" series.  While they are funny and easy...they are TOO EASY!  My kids need more of a challenge and I'm hoping that this will help pump them up.  If you want to use this in your room, feel free to download the "screen" and use it however you'd like!  I'll make sure to post pictures of the finished project next week when it's all set up!

**UPDATE:
Here's the finished ReadBox.  My kids LOVE it!

A Week Later

It's been a crazy, fun week!  We had everything from running laps, pajama parties, pizza parties, game/mim-golfing parties, and lots of laughter mixed with a few tears.  We even made s'mores in a solar oven (made from a pizza box) to finish up our heat and light unit.  It got SUPER messy!

This afternoon, I updated our bulletin board out front.  We have our fun pictures mixed with running for Boston.  The pictures are an upgraded version of what I did last year.  We talked about what we would like to be when we grow up.  I wrote that down on a whiteboard for them to hold.  They then got to hold it, put on some fun glasses, and took a picture!  The title was going to be "Our Future's So Bright We Have to Wear Shades."  Then we wanted to add in the Running for Boston totals.  Here's what we've got know.

Our total for the week includes the miles that we got from a few other classes.  I just got a few more miles that we can add to it.  We're at 392.25 this week!  Almost 400!!  These kids are incredible.

We also had our art contest for the design on our fliers.  This is what we came up with:

Only 12 more days until Summer Break but I'm sure going to enjoy them!!  :)

 

"Most Inspiring Students" Award Goes To...

...Liliana, David, and Hawke!  These three are in my morning class.  Today, I had us go out and run one lap before they could start recess.  During recess, these three kids kept running!  They ran 6 laps, or a mile and a half each.  Then we came in and they announced that they wanted to start a running club during recess.  Monday through Thursday during both morning and lunch recess, they plan on running as long as they can.  Well, I think this in and of itself is pretty awesome.  However...

...we stepped it up a little bit.  I told them that I had heard of a group that was attempting to finish running the miles that were left unfinished in the Boston Marathon.  All those runners who were unable to finish because of the bombing left a total of over 8,000 miles uncompleted.  (Visit this facebook page for more details).  As soon as they heard about this, they wanted to know how many miles they had run and if they could add it to her project.  So we added them up.  They ran a total of 9.25 miles this morning.  But...

...It doesn't stop there.  My kids are seriously amazing. Liliana, David, and Hawke decided that they wanted to keep track of how many miles they ran during the week with their running club so we could contribute to the Run for Boston project.  We spent the next 45 minutes forgetting about the lesson I had planned and worked together as a class to figure out how we could make this work.  We set up a system of tallying our laps as we ran and are even having an art contest to see what picture would best work on our poster.  We want to get the whole school involved if we can.  It's going to be a lot of work, but they are so excited about this new project.  I've never seen them so excited and work together so well.  We found a way to start today during our lunch recess and my kids got the word out to the other third grade students.  We had SO MANY join us in our run.  They took care of everything by themselves today and it went off so well!!!!  After just today's running we have a combined total of 66.5 miles run!  These third graders are truly amazing!!

This has also helped wrap up the Leader in Me program that we've been introducing this year.  We are trying to encourage the students to step up and become leaders in the class, school, and community.  During our discussion, we were amazed to find that we were using all 7 Habits at once and we felt so good about it!  

Here are some pictures I took as I came out at the end of lunch to see how things were going. They were all so happy to help show their support.  Today was such a great and inspiring day!  I am so proud to know and teach these incredible children.

(David is in the orange shirt)

(Hawke is in the light orange shirt with the awesome hair!)

(Hawke again in the orange, Liliana is bringing up the next group in the blue shirt)

(Liliana in the lead)