Monday, October 29, 2012

Motivational Monday

Anyone else have a true case of the Monday's today? My peanuts and I really did today. I super love my kiddo's ,but at one point today I thought someone had snuck into my room over the weekend and removed the battery from my clock! While perusing facebook I found a new post from Smiling in 2nd Grade about her linky party: MOTIVATIONAL MONDAY. SO perfect. I am hoping to be inspired for tomorrow ( and the rest of the week) and hope I help to jump start you as well.

Let me start with something funny and lighthearted. Who doesn't feel motivated by these Ryan Gosling pictures. At the very least they make you giggle. :) 


This next one I love because it is all about getting back on the horse or back in the fight so to speak. Yes, there are going to be frustrating moments and times when we get down on ourselves and want to give up. But you can't. You have 22+ peanuts who need you to fight for them. Who need you to be strong for them. You have to be their voice. You have to love them and do the very best job for them that you possibly can because they deserve that. 


And for all those perfectionists out there like me, there is this little gem. :) Also, good to keep in mind when you are working with those struggling students. See how far they have come, not how far they still have to go. 
There you go friends. Some motivation to keep you going this week. :) You can do it! Link up and motivate the rest of us!


Friday, October 12, 2012

Currently ( My First One!)

Ok! My first Currently! I've been wanting to link up and do this since July when I really got into blogging. Unfortunately, I don't have Power Point on my home computer ,which is where I usually do all my blogging from. But since I do at school I decided to struggle through today and figure this thing out! And only 19 minutes later, I have my very first Currently. Now to go link up HERE with Farley and follow the three rules. Happy Friday everyone!





Thursday, October 4, 2012

I'm Alive! and Reveal Part Deux!

Well, as you can see I have not posted since September 16th! Basically what happened, in terms I understand, is something went wrong on my home computer. My husband had to take all the photo's and video's that we had on our computer off and save them to a thumb drive. Then fix something on the computer so that we could actually get on to the internet. There is more to the story but not being the computer geek whiz that the Hubs is I didn't understand half of what he said when he explained it to me. :) Anyhow, I am BACK and ready to do some more revealing! 




These are views in what I consider the front of my room. Mostly because it is what you see when you first walk in the door. I have some close ups of this area below. My Listening and writing station's are in this area, as well as part of my library. Gotta love a basket full of gym shoes. :) 


 This is a close up of my "Meet Mrs. Robinson board". I put out pictures of myself and my family doing things that I/we like to do. In the middle is a Meet The Robinson's movie poster that I got when I was still working at Family Video. Back before I got my " real" job as a teacher I rocked it as a video store clerk. : ) I put my face over top of one of the characters. It is the highlight of the board. Also, don't you love the bulletin board border I have this year. I love the polka dots. I think I am slowly going to replace the ocean with a polka dot theme. :) 

 This is my Where I am Chart. Each student has a seahorse with their name on it. When they are in our room their seahorse stays at the top. When they go somewhere in the school they move their seahorse to a new spot. ( Funny story, two years ago I decided to change it up and use snails and seashells for the tags. But ALL YEAR LONG I called them seahorses. So I went back to those.) 

 I made that chart my first year of teaching. It was obviously pre-pinterest so it is not as cute as I might like. But I love it for sentimental reasons. I have replaced many of my things from my first year throughout my time in 2nd grade, but this one will live on for as long as it can.  


 These are close ups of the area of my room I love the most. I am obsessed with the little nook with the blue Adirondack chairs and the poster. I LOVE IT!!!



This is one more view that I SUPER love. My AR reading progress tracker. Each student has a worm ( clothespin  that moves along the fishing line as they take AR tests. When they get to 100% of their goal I let them read any level they want and also go for extra listening station time. I just LOVE the colors in this picture. It all looks SO pulled together and teacher-y I just love it. 


Next to my reading corner is my carpet area. This has my rolling white board that my hubby brought me from work ( So thoughtful!) and this is where we do most of our directed teaching time. You can see the cute chair that I decorated over the summer as well as my teacher chair. ( My friend Mrs V. found it for me my first year of teaching!) 

 At our school we follow the CHAMPS behavior program. ( CHAMP's is an acronym for CONVERSATION, HELP, ACTIVITY, MOVEMENT, and PARTICIPATION. It really helps to make expectations clear.)  My grade level team and I worked on making different CHAMP's codes for different times in our day. Since we all use them it helps us to be on the same page when we work in each other's classroom's and also just makes us that much more of a cohesive unit. The red is for presentations, the yellow is for direct instruction, the green is for independent work, and the blue is for group work.  

This is our character traits bulletin board. Every month we focus on a different character trait. Last month it was respect and responsibility. This month it is self control. We give awards to the students that demonstrate those character traits. My winners will be going on a fish in the pond. I am pretty excited about my arrangement this year. I am able to have a standards/ I can statement board ( when I take down the Meet Mrs. Robinson board this weekend), a word wall, a board for student work, and a place for our character education. This has not happened before this year. :)

This is a shot of my back wall with my limited cupboard space. Since some classrooms don't have this little gem I will not whine about what I don't have but celebrate what I do. :) A couple close up's of this area follow.

This is a close up of our " Whale" Done Work board. Sometimes I pick what goes on the board and sometimes they get to pick what goes up there. I like to change it out every couple of weeks or so. 

These are my student mailboxes...nothing fancy. I just wanted to show off my seahorse light from IKEA. It was hanging up on the wall but the screw that it was resting on is too big for the hole and the shape of the light is too awkward to keep it up. I need Mr. Robinson to come in and hang it up for me, but we have been so busy he hasn't had a chance. All in good time. 
 Here is a close up on the bookshelf and rainbow trout from the last post. You can see my teacher toolbox here too....Just realizing that they trout kind of looks dead in this picture. I'll have to make sure to prop him up more tomorrow! 


AAAANNNNDDD, I leave you with one last view of my cute-y, cute, cute, reading corner. :) ENJOY! 



 Well, that's all folks....I was noticing that I have hit 77 followers! ( WHAT?!) For only having 1 at the start of the summer that is not a bad haul of people! If I can hit 100 by the end of this month I'll think of something cool to give away as a thank you. :) SO encourage your followers to come check me out. I promise to never be gone this long again ( computer willing!)