A Nightmare for an Elementary Teacher

I just had to share this ridiculous dream I had. No, it wasn't about testing, I didn't forget to show up for school, my lesson didn't go terribly wrong, and my kids did not go wild. It was worse....

The Very Hungry Caterpillar turned evil! He began attacking the city I was living in. He was huge and angry and eating everything and everybody. I have had many action packed dreams before and never considered them nightmares as I wasn't very scared in them. But this one was a nightmare and I was definitely scared. The only way my family, friends and I could escape from the V.H.C. was to get on this futuristic looking train as he would not eat the train. But then he began to try eating the train! If you've ever had an evil hungry caterpillar chasing you trying to eat you, you would understand this was scary stuff!

I have no idea where this dream came from. I haven't read the book in a long time. I did put away the stuffed animal I have in our classroom reading corner yesterday before leaving though....*shudder* I will never be able to look at the adorable Very Hungry Caterpillar the same way again - at least, I will never be able to look at it without laughing. :-)

Just One of Those Days

Today was a bit of a sad day....I had to send a student home for extremely disruptive behavior.  I'm afraid I lost my temper with him a little bit during the whole ordeal. Nothing was getting through to him and he couldn't control his anger. I won't go into details but it was heartbreaking and infuriating all at the same time.

One student was refusing to think well on his math test today. For example, he would come up to me and ask, "I don't know how to do this." The problem was "6 yd = _____ ft." I ask, "How many feet are in a yard?" "Uh...I don't know." "Yes you do. You wrote the answer to that question on your test already." Blank look reply. "So.. how many feet are in a yard?" "I don't know." "You already wrote that on your test! Look at number one..." "But no..I don't get it." "Get what? How many feet are in a yard? You have that answer correct. You have it on your test already." "I don't know." "Then I can't help you, honey." Grr......Oh my little darling...Please think for yourself. I will not do your thinking for you.

I also had students with tummy aches and headaches and coughs galore.

Three of my girls were complaining about sore tummies and legs. I finally figured out that their muscles were just sore from PE. Once they knew the reason they were fine and off running around during recess. Yes, I'm sure it hurts a lot if you can run on it...

During chapel, one of my students stands up and says, "MRS.[which I'm not a Mrs...but it's a habit for her] BENSCOTER, My tooth fell out!!" Thank you for shouting it out during the middle of chapel, dear. I walk her to the back, it is bleeding a lot, she gets a littler nervous about it, but we patch things up nicely and return to chapel.

I also had fun with my students though and we shared laughter frequently throughout the day. So I need to hold on to that aspect of the day over all the other stuff. :-)

Praise the Lord that we wake up each morning to a new day!

Something New...It's a...

VPU! I have a projector hanging from my classroom ceiling now! Very exciting times. :-) I had been using a portable VPU that the office had for teacher's to borrow. I was very thankful for the portable one but now I don't have to put it away at the end of every day! I just plug in my laptop in the morning and I'm all set for the day. Yay!

My students had some interesting questions about it as they have never seen one hung from a ceiling before.

Here are a few of my favorites:

- How did you get it up there?! (Thank you for your confidence in my technological abilities, but I'm not that good. I didn't get it "up there".)
- Did you have to use a ladder?? (If I had been the one to put it up, yes I would have used a ladder because I'm not very tall.)
- Is it going to fall?? (No, it is hung up there very tightly.)

And my favorite, asked as the principal is walking out of our room from fine tuning some details on it:
- Does the principal know you did it?! (First, I did not do it. Second, he was the one who ordered it and had it installed so, yes, he knows.)

Needless to say, it was the talk of the morning! Every time a student walked in the door their already present and highly distracted classmates would run up to them and point at the ceiling.

More power points and review games await!

Guest Speaker #3

I don't recall if I have mentioned our previous Guest Speakers on the blog or not, but I have discovered I love to invite guest speakers to my classroom! More specifically, I love using the school faculty/staff as guest speakers!

I've been using guest speakers as an added little something to our reading units.

For the first guest speaker, I asked our Reading Specialist to come in. She is an avid bird watcher and has such a great wealth of knowledge on birds in our area. This played nicely in to our unit on "City Wildlife."

Our second guest speaker was the Business Manager of the school. He came in for our unit on "Money" to discuss the money/business side of a school.

Our third and most recent guest speaker was our Librarian. She came in for our unit on "Storytelling." She gave the students a brief overview of the history of story telling (written and oral), told a story of her own, and then had the kids finish a story she began for them. It was a great time!

Our next reading unit is actually reading the book "Little Pilgrim's Progress." I might ask our Curriculum Director to speak on this topic from his experience as a missionary which would tie nicely in to the overall theme of Pilgrim's Progress. What I would also love to do is find someone with a full set of knight's armor to show the students what that looks like! That might be an overly ambitious task for my first year as I have yet to meet any knights, perhaps by next year I might run into one. ;-)

Jesus' Footsteps

We have been studying things that Jesus teaches us about ourselves, treating others, and about Himself in our Bible curriculum. I wanted to have a little "review" of the topics we have covered but did not want to make a test as it is a bit difficult to test students on "How does Jesus want us to treat each other?" when the obvious answers would be "kindly, nicely, etc." So, to make it a bit more practical/creative/I needed to change out the giant heart display from February I had the students pick one of the topics we learned about from Jesus' teachings. They then had to illustrate this concept. They could draw a picture, write a poem, write a short story, etc. as long as they illustrated the point we learned.

We then had a few spare moments one Friday and I thought a quick fun activity to do would be to make footsteps to place around their illustrations. The board would then read "Learning to Follow in Jesus' Footsteps." So instead of tracing our bare little feet, I had them take off a shoe, trace their shoe, and then draw the design on the bottom of their shoe. This turned into a challenging activity that really tested their fine motor skills! (How was that for an education lingo tie-in?? - hehe...no pun intended with "tie")

Here is the finished product:

Solar System Wrap Up

It's been a long time since I last posted. Since then many things have happened to name a few: our Jog-A-Thon fundraiser came to a near close and the third quarter ended. Next week is our Spiritual Emphasis week - one thing ends and another begins. Teaching is never dull! (and thank goodness - I would go crazy at a "boring job".)

Anyway, I promised in my last post a picture of our Solar System display. One Friday I had my students create something from space (planets, rockets, stars, etc) and I hung their creations from the ceiling. Then I posted a chart of the Solar System and all their beautiful five-paragraph research papers.

I must say: I love this little corner of our room! It is like creativity has exploded and is falling from the ceiling! However....I must soon take it down....We have finished the Solar System and must begin the Nervous System now (still not sure at the random chapters we do from our science book in third grade....plants, magnets, solar system, nervous system...but oh well). Fun happenings await!

5 Paragraph Research Papers!

My students just completed a huge research project this week. I am very proud of them and the work they did!

We started studying the Solar System in science. I decided to combine English and Science for this unit. Each student picked their top five planets. I then assigned them to a planet to do research on. We had a brainstorming session where students wrote down a list of questions they had about their planet. Next, we went to the library and checked out books for our planets. The research then began! It was a blast watching as my students discovered that books had information and answers to their questions. I think they always thoughts books were nice to look at and take AR quizzes on, but they had never realized they could get information from them. Our classroom was buzzing with little workers eating up the information in the books. I loved how they would get so excited about a fact they found and wanted to share it with everyone. They also learned that encyclopedias are great sources of information.

We finished our book research and I have students find an article about their planet online with their parents over a weekend. They brought in the article and we learned how to write a summary paragraph using that information. This paragraph would become part of our final paper.

Next we learned how to form good topic sentences, good introductory paragraphs, a body of a paper, and a closing paragraph. Through several days of hard writing work, they pulled through with great rough drafts. They edited them by themselves. Then they edited with a partner. And finally, they edited with me. Once that was done a final copy was written!

Students even wrote bibliographies as we talked about the importance of bibliographies in research papers.

The final results are magnificent!!

Here is a picture of a final paper:

This student titled his paper "The Mysteries of Saturn" and wrote 5 wonderful paragraphs. His handwriting is impressive too! :-)

I'll post a picture later of our summary paragraphs displayed on our Solar System wall.

An Award and New Blogs!

I am so thankful for all the comment from my last post about "Scary Division". Not only for the great ideas y'all shared with me, but also for seeing some new blogs! I certainly love finding a new blog to follow, but just haven't had time to do much blogging lately. Thankfully you came to me this past weekend! :-)

I was also given the Lovely Blog Award from two fabulous looking blogs. Thank you to Stacey from 3rd Grade Times and to the Ladies from 3 Teacher Chicks! If you do not follow their blogs now, make sure you head on over there to see what these teachers are doing. 

The rules of the award include passing it on to 15 other bloggers, however....I am not able to do this right now....I have a math review sheet to write before tomorrow...Maybe this weekend I can! For now, you can take a peek at the blogs I follow list and find many fabulous blogs that I enjoy following! :-)