Ah-mazing!!!

I was lucky enough to attend the Texas 1st Grade Teacher's Conference in Austin and AH-MAZING is all I have to say. We all know writing sub plans are a pain, but they were so worth it to attend this conference! I was able to attend two jam-packed days of presentations by some of my favorite bloggers. I feel like I have done well this year in 1st grade, but the past two days have inspired me to do even better!

Sunday night I got to have dinner with Reagan and Kristen. We had so much fun and I brought some of my teammates along too! I stole the picture from Reagan because I did not get one on my phone.

On Monday I attended four great sessions. I went to one about Comprehension Strategies, one about integrating Non-Fiction writing into the classroom on a daily basis, then I went to Deanna's session on Math MAGIC (math tubs), and I finished the day by attending one on technology in the classroom. I would hands down say that my favorite of the day was Deanna's. 

I have quickly discovered how much I love teaching math in 1st grade and this was exactly what I needed to hear. I really like how Deanna described her math block. This is something that I do not feel like I do a good job of right now. I often catch myself just teaching whole group and I would really like to implement math tubs into our math time as well. I am going to start with something small at first and I am going to add her fluency component to the beginning of my math block. During this time we will spend five minutes or so working on facts, ten frames, subtilizing, etc. I think that even though this seems so simple it will make a huge difference. This is something I definitely want to start from day one next school year. I also really liked the idea of her Think Math journal prompts. These are prompts that give students an answer and then they must come up with different combinations to make the number along with a story problem. I am thinking that this would be great as a warm-up at first for my math lessons and then eventually transition this to a rotation during our math time. 

We finished Monday night with a nice little get-together at Papasito's just down from the hotel. How can you go wrong with Mexican food in Texas? It was so much fun to finally get to meet some of my favorite bloggers and catch up with old "friends" too. There were four others who went to the conference with me from my team and I was so excited to have them meet my bloggy friends. :)

Bottom Row: Jennifer, me, Katie, Rachelle, Alyssa, Lisa (teammate of mine), and Kim (teammate of mine)

Top Row: Ari, April, Reagan, Crystal, Kristen, Stephanie (teammate of mine), and Heather (teammate of mine)

Tuesday was by far my favorite day of the conference because I got to hear both Reagan and Rachelle present all day. I probably looked like a stalker because I stayed in the same room all day and only listened to them, but they were just so good!!!

First up was Reagan and she presented on Hands-On TEKS Aligned Math Tubs for the Classroom. I have always loved Reagan's blog, even before I knew I would be teaching 1st grade this year. She just helped me to know it is what I had to do, not just what I wanted to do. At first I was not a big fan of teaching math. However, it has quickly become one of my favorite times of my day. Reagan did such an awesome job of explaining to us different ways that we could set up our Math Tubs. I previously tried math tubs in my classroom this school year back in November, but I got frustrated and decided that I did not want to do them anymore. With 21 kids I found it difficult to make them work. I had to have so many different tubs in order to make my groups small enough. I really like the fact that Reagan implements different rotations such as Teacher Time at the table, Math Journals, Math with Technology, and Math Tubs. This is something that I really want to make happen next year, but I think it will be key that I start it from the beginning. I think I am going to just spend the rest of the year loading up on different math tubs and getting them put together and then implement starting in the fall.

A picture of Rachelle, Katie, and me. We spent the whole day together. :)

Next I listened to Rachelle present about Guided Reading. Guided Reading is something that I feel like I am pretty good at but I have always known that I could be doing more with my students. I also will go ahead and admit it that I do a sorry job of documenting what we are doing during guided reading. I am not exactly sure why it is, but I do know that it needs to change immediately. I loved some of the ideas that Rachelle shared with us. I especially liked how she organized her small group resources in a binder in clear sheet protectors. This makes it easy to pull them out for students to use. You can either have copies already made or simply hand them a dry erase marker to use on the sheet protector. I am hoping to get something similar together for my classroom in the next few weeks. Rachelle has tons of guided reading resources on her blog that are free. Be sure and check them out!

After lunch Rachelle continued presenting, but this time it was about classroom management. She and Natalie have all sorts of posts on their blog about behavior too. For the most part I feel like I do a good job of managing the behavior in my classroom, but at the same time I am always looking for new ways to engage my students and keep them on their toes. Currently in my classroom we use a clip stick that has four colors on it. I also incorporate some Whole Brain Teaching strategies too like the Scoreboard as a whole class management tool. One of the things I really want to implement that Rachelle talked about were her Fast Finisher folders that she has for her students. I hate when my students come up to me and ask what they can do now that they are finished. My answer generally is always get out a book or work on unfinished work. I am looking forward to mixing it up some and giving them different options. Another great behavior tool that she talked about was Team Bieber vs. Team Skywalker. She has students pick which team they would like to be on. They work to earn tallies for their team. The team with the most points at the end of the day gets to listen to their song at the end of the day. My class is currently obsessed with Frozen so I think we could have team Elsa and team Olaf. :) Just trust me, check out her blog because you will find so many great ideas!

The final session that I attended during the two days was another one of Rachelle's, but this one was about creating independent journal writers in your classroom. If you are looking for some journals to implement in your classroom she has a really great pack on TpT. We have a dedicated Writer's Workshop time on my campus and we spend anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour doing it. Rachelle begins her day with their journals and she explained to us that they spend about 30 minutes or so on them. While sitting in the presentation I thought that this would be perfect for my class too. Rachelle mentioned to us that she conferences with each student daily when they bring their journal to her table to be checked once that have completed it. One of the things I struggle with during my writing time is conferencing with my students. I really like the idea of being able to meet with them all each and every day. She also allows for share time at the end of journals each day. I really want to start devoting my Writer's Workshop block to more mini-lessons a little less time to write since we will be doing it in the morning as well. I have so much to think about, but I have got to find the time to make some changes in my classroom.

The conference was so amazing and I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to attend. I was able to take away so many new ideas that I cannot wait to implement in my classroom. Here is to hoping it will not be the last time I attend the Texas 1st Grade Teacher's Conference!

Writer's Workshop...I'm in Love!

It is hard to believe that we are already into week 4 of our school year. This is actually the first full week that I am in the classroom. I technically was week 1, but that does not really count. It feels so good to be getting into a routine and to see the students remember our procedures and such for our classroom. 

On my campus 1st grade is in their 2nd year of implementing Writer's Workshop. I knew that I wanted to wait to start it until I was going to be in the classroom for a long time without interruption. That happened on Tuesday. I decided that my kiddos were ready for the introduction of Writer's Workshop. 

We began the introduction by talking about the fact that everyone has a story to tell. I had several students tell me that they were not good writers yet, and I was excited to hear that. I wanted them to realize that we don't have to use words to tell our stories. I started the lesson by telling them a story about when I went to Disney World as an excited 9 year old girl. They were engrossed in my story and dying to hear more about it. They could not wait to tell me their stories too! 

Next we talked about what they were thinking about while I was telling my story. They told me that they were making a picture in their head and I thought my heart was going to skip a beat! It was the perfect lead into the next part. I wanted them to understand that we can tell a story with our pictures too and that sometimes we do not need words. We made an anchor chart of things that good artists do such as color in the lines, use colors that make sense, and to not leave any white space on their pages. 

Then it was time for them to practice. We talked about the different details that they needed to add to their pictures to help tell their story. I could not believe how quiet and involved they were creating their stories. Here are a few pictures from yesterday which was the first time we "wrote" our stories. 

Today I gave students the opportunity to share their story if they were interested. Some of course were hesitant, but overall they wanted to share. It was awesome to see them so excited to tell their classmates about their story that they "wrote." I hope that their excitement for writing will continue throughout the year! 

What We've Been Up To

I know...I am the world's worst blogger.

School has just been absolutely crazy! I am sure most of you can relate. The adjustment from having 60 kids to 105 has been insane, and the amount of grading is crazy. This year might make me move grade levels, well at least the thought of maybe only having 40 kids sounds appealing right now. 

Anyways, I just wanted to share a few of the things that we have been up to lately in room 117. During the first 6 weeks of school we covered Poetry and Non-Fiction. One of the things that we did was write some personal narratives. I had no idea how difficult this was going to be. My students either forgot how to write over the summer, or they have never really learned. It was pretty much like pulling teeth just to get them to write one page single spaced. By one page all I mean is the front!!! We did take some pretty cool notes in our Interactive Notebooks though. I made them on a large post it note to display in the room, and the kids copied them into their notebooks. I got a lot of my inspiration from some of the wonderful work of Jennifer Runde!

The leads anchor chart turned out to a huge help because so many of my friends were stumped on how to start their personal narrative. I can only hope that our next writing assignment will be a little easier for us to complete. 

I also wanted to share my new motto with you all. I don't remember where I originally found this, but it hits home with me. I have really been struggling with collaborative planning with my other 6th grade teacher, and this just reminded me why we are doing it. 

Interactive Student Notebook...finally!

I finally managed to remember to snap some photos of my Interactive Students Notebook (ISN) today while I was up at school making copies and getting ready for the week. Several of you have asked questions about how I use them in my classroom, so hopefully this will answer most of them. :)

I first decided to implement Interactive Notebooks in the middle of the fall semester during my first year of teaching. I knew what I was doing was not working and I was not loving the binder that was requested on the school supply list. During one of my Saturday grad school classes last fall, we were lucky enough to have a presentation from one of the ladies that worked at the Dinah Zike Academy. (If you didn't already know, Dinah is pretty much the queen of foldables!) I know this was exactly what my 6th graders needed, so I went with it an ran. Last fall it was a big learning process, but I felt great about how my notebooks went in the spring. Now I think I finally have the hang of it and love how the ISN is evolving in my classroom. 

This school year we completely did away with a binder in 6th grade and most of our learning is placed into our ISN that lives in the classroom. The only time my students are allowed to take the ISN home is when they need to study notes or activities out of it that we are going to be tested on. I just know that if I allowed my students to keep their notebooks in their backpacks or lockers, they would not make it to class every day.

So now what you have been waiting for, pictures and details about the ISN and how it works in my classroom.

 The first thing that you will find when you open up an ISN from room 117 is the Table of Contents. It is hard to believe, but we are already on page 2 for the year. The first page is glued all the way down to the notebook page, but then each one after that is only glued down where it says Table of Contents which allows us the ability to look underneath it in the future to see what all we have done.

 Next is an individual word wall. Sorry that it is sideways. There is a box for each letter, A-Z, and this is a place in the ISN where students can write words that they misspell when we are writing.
I think it is so important for students to have a place to keep up with things like this.

The next few pages are composed of some essentials that live in our ISN all year long. These are things like a reading log, reading interest survey, a book waiting list, genre overview, writing survey, and a reading response letter format.In my classroom starting the 2nd 6 weeks, students will be expected to write a reading response letter each Friday based on their independent reading book. This is one of my favorite things that we do in our notebook because I love seeing how my students connect with their books.

 Since we do not keep a binder, we take all of our notes inside of our ISN. Here is an example of one of the first things that we did this school year. We were learning about different word parts such as root, base word, prefix, suffix, and affix. I really liked how this particular note taking strategy worked out, and we will be doing them in a table form like this many more times this school year.

These notes booklets are something new that I am trying this year and so far so great! It does not take much for notes to get boring so I have started to create my notes in the form of books that we can put together and then glue into our notebooks. I have already made some more for our plot notes as well as notes that we will be taking on questioning. I am hoping that these will be something that I can share in my TpT shop.

I am a huge fan of teaching roots, prefixes, and suffixes to my 6th graders. One way that I have been doing this is by using Teach Root Words All Year Long from Fancy Free in Fourth Grade. I have loved it and so have my kiddos. Most of the time we will use this as a warm-up, but I love placing them in our ISN so we can reference them throughout the year.

We also use lots of foldables in our notebooks. This one came from the fabulous Dinah Zike and one of her many books that she has published.

I absolutely love chunking the content for my students through the use of foldables. I have been amazed at the results I have gotten from using these.

I am hoping to start doing a weekly post that shares with you all what we did in our notebooks that week or at least blogging about that once a month. Hopefully that answered some of the questions that you all had, but if you still have one, be sure and ask it!

Three on Thursday

So many random things to share about this evening. 

one. Our Grammar Boot Camp has been going great. I really did not teach as much grammar as I would have liked throughout the year, but we are making up for it now. Last week and this week we have been doing irregular verbs. We took some really great notes in our notebooks from the anchor charts that we made together. I really like how they turned out and we have been using these while we have been working. 

Tomorrow we are going to start working on simple, compound, and complex sentences. Luckily, I know they did compound sentences some in 5th grade, but who knows what they will remember. 

Two. I finally broke down and splurged on a laminator that is all mine! Luckily we can use the one at school without any stipulations, but it will be so nice to have one at home this summer. I had been researching them for a while, but I finally decided on the middle of the road Purple Cow laminator. 

Isn't it just great?!?!?! I also stocked up on laminating pouches, cardstock, and colored ink for my printer because I have all of my purchases from the Teacher Appreciation Sale on TpT. I got some great math things that I cannot wait to use tomorrow. 

Three. Tomorrow our soon to be 6th graders are coming for a campus tour. That means that the end of my first year is so close, but the next school year is also not that far away. I am excited because one of my mentor teachers moved up to 5th grade so I will get to see her tomorrow and several of the kids from the 4th grade class that I student taught in. I am really hoping that I will get to have several of them again next year! 

Hope you have a wonderful last day of the school week tomorrow! If you are in Texas, stay dry!

Conversation Heart Writing

Today in class we did a writing activity using Conversation Hearts. My 6th graders loved it and I was very pleased with their writing. Here are some pictures from our day today!

Daily 5 Stations

Today was the first day that we did our Daily 5 stations in class and I am so pleased with how it went! I am currently using 5 stations (read to self, read to someone, work on writing, work on words, and meet with the teacher). I will be sharing more about this later this week with you all. 

Sorry about the poor quality of pictures, but you've got to love the iPhone! :)

When students are meeting with me this week, we are doing an activity that goes along with out persuasive unit that we are currently doing. We read a short article together about the driving age and whether teenagers should drive at 16 or 18 years old. While reading, we highlighted and marked on it when we found techniques that the author used to try and persuade us. 

When we finished, this is what our article looked like. 

We did some things on the article like...

Once we finished reading and marking the article, we then worked together to write a persuasive paragraph together using the OREO technique. OREO stands for Opinion, Reason, Explanation, and Opinion. I even had some Oreos that we used for this activity and the students loved eating them! Later this week, students will be responsible for writing their own persuasive paragraphs using the same strategy. The article they will use for that is about bullies. 

My librarian actually gave me this article and it was from an old Scholastic Scope magazine. I am really wanting to budget for it next year. Do you use any of the Scholastic magazines in your classroom? There are 3 of them in my opinion that would be great for my 6th graders. If you don't use Scholastic magazines, but use something else, what is it?

We have also been making lots of anchor charts together in class too. Here are the two that we made last week. 

Hope everyone has a terrific Tuesday!

Persuasive Resources

After today I only have a half day left between me and Christmas break! I am so excited to have 2 weeks off. Luckily, I have nothing planned during the break and I think I am most excited about that. 

When we come back to school in January, I have decided that I am going to be using the Language Arts C-SCOPE curriculum for my class. My district has currently adopted the math and science curriculum, but the Language Arts and Social Studies is also available to us. I know I have blogged about the lack of scope and sequence before, and I am actually really loving what CSCOPE has to offer. So many teachers in the district have been complaining about it because you have to do a lot of supplementing. However, I think that when you have nothing to go from, it has some good bones to work with to make it great for your students.I loving using picture books as mentor texts, and was wondering what books you love to use to teach persuasion. My kids will be identifying different techniques used in reading and they will also be writing their own persuasive essays.

Along with the new curriculum, I am excited to get stations going again in my classroom. I have really missed doing them this past 6 weeks, but with what I was teaching, it just wasn't conducive. I have been thinking about how I am going to make it work, and I think I am most excited about my stations board. I am going to get it all finished over the break and will be sure to share with you all.

I am also looking at purchasing the 6+1 traits writing crate from Scholastic. Have you ever used this for writing instruction in your classroom? The new math teacher who taught 5th grade self-contained last year was telling me about it and that she loved it. I might also see if I can budget for it for next year, but I would love to have it this school year. What do you use to teach writing in your class? 

After today I am finished giving tests. Since my classes are double blocked, we have been testing during the first 2 hours, and during the second 2 hours we have been watching The Polar Express and I made them hot chocolate too. Even though my kids have seen the movie a bunch, they still love it!

The Writing Process

Over the past few weeks, I have been completely rewriting the curriculum that I am going to be using during the 2nd semester.I am really excited about how it is turning out and am excited to be doing a true reading and writing workshop with my kids. I have been wanting to do quite a bit of writing this next semester because I do not feel that I have done enough of it with my kids. One of the things I wanted to make was a board where the students could move their names as they go through the writing process. I decided to do something on my new locking cabinet with it and I love how it turned out. (Sorry for the poor quality of pictures)

 I have a card for each of the 5 steps that we are using. I of course had to make them cute!

Here is a better picture of the whole thing. On the blank door is where there individual name magnets will go. The cabinet is also by the round table that I have where they will meet for the work on writing station. I really love how it turned out. 

I also got one of the sweetest gifts ever yesterday at school. My last class goes to their electives in between the 2 class periods that I have them. Yesterday, I am out in the hallway monitoring students in between 6th and 7th period. One of my students is walking into the classroom with some of his art work that he completed this semester in art. He stops and tells me, "Miss Klohn, I think I want you to have this picture that I made in art." I love it and it already has a spot on my wall in my classroom. As soon as I hung up the picture on the left in the picture below, another student wanted me to hang his up too. 

It is simple things like this that make being a teacher so worth while.

Our Reader's Notebooks

Today we had a 6th grade Language Arts teacher planning day. I was really excited about it, but I am bummed at the lack of things we actually got planned today altogether. I wish I could have just had a whole day to plan alone because I know I could have at least gotten a 6 weeks taken care of. I was actually excited to dive into the C-SCOPE materials because I have really struggled with not having a real scope and sequence to use this year. Well, I know what I am going to be doing over the Christmas break! 

I know that I have blogged about our reader's notebooks a few other times, but I just love them. I am so glad that I decided to bite the bullet and get lots of spiral notebooks when they were on sale during back to school time. It was such a good investment! The learning that has taken place in our notebooks is just amazing!!! I think I am going to ask my students to all bring a composition book for the spring semester because they just hold up so much better. Here is a picture tour of some of the things we have been doing in our notebooks lately. 

Sorry for the bad quality, they are from the phone. For some reason, I also cannot get the ones to rotate correctly in blogger. :(

What a Week!

I made it through the week but it sure was a crazy one! 

I introduced our Spooky Story mini unit to my 2 regular classes on Monday and they were so excited about it! We brainstormed lots of Halloween words and did a graphic organizer to help us get started. I also read them a few picture books that were spooky stories. We worked on them some every day and most of the students wrapped them up on Friday. I wrote one too which was lots of fun. I modeled with my own story each day with them. We are going to publish our stories on Monday on some fun Halloween paper and watch Halloweentown while we are doing so. I cannot wait to read all of their stories. 

On Thursday I had my evaluation for PDAS. I was not too nervous about it because the observations that my professors used in Student Teaching were basically the same thing. My AP walks in because he was the one doing my observation and I had already started my lesson. He is in there for about 10 minutes, and calls me over. Of course my first thought is that he hates it, but instead he tells me that there is a parole officer sitting in his office right now and he is the only admin on campus. He asked if I minded if her just used what he saw for my observation because he was very pleased with it. I said of course and was actually kind of excited about it. He told me that I rock and they have received so many compliments about me from parents and he was very pleased with what I was doing for a first year teacher.During my conference period I went and hung out in the counseling for a few minutes while I waited for the laminator to heat up. While I was in there, the secretary in the counseling center told me she needed to talk to me. Once again I was freaking out. She told me that the principal was bragging about me the other day. She told her that I had far exceeded her expectations that she had for me especially for a first year teacher. That made me feel pretty good inside.

Then yesterday, we had our Sheltered Instruction lady come observe in our rooms again. This is the same lady who I blogged about a few weeks ago who made me feel like a complete idiot and that I was a sorry teacher. Well, she did not come to my classroom until about 3pm. Yes, 3pm on a Friday, last period, and the kids were crazy because we had gotten a cold front the evening before. I had the windows open in my classroom because it was warm. As she walks into my room, I notice one of my kids throw something out of the window. I was so mad!!! He just wanted to climb through the window to go and pick it up, but I told him that he must walk out the door to go and get it. While he is walking around to get it, one of my other students climbs through the window to go and get it. I was so frustrated with them. On the bright side though, the observer thought it was pretty funny and could totally relate to it because she once taught 6th grade. Her and I talked for about 10 minutes and she told me that I was the best on the campus at using the sheltered instruction strategies in my classroom. She also mentioned that she has never seen a first year teacher that is as together as I am. I took those both as huge compliments and realized that maybe last time she only came across rude because she wanted me to excel.

I will be back later this weekend to share what I have planned for next week. Well, that is if my computer does not die. My laptop charger broke this morning. :(

It is going to be a busy one!

This coming week is going to be a crazy one for me because I have...

Progress Reports due on Monday at noon

a Manifest ARD Monday during conference period

a meeting with a potential student and parent Monday after school who want to hear about the Pre AP classes

working the middle school volleyball games at 5 and 6 Monday evening

sign painting practice for cheerleading Tuesday afternoon

my PDAS observation Thursday during 2nd period

middle school football game Thursday night

Grad school class homework

but I think that is all. :)

Teaching sure is crazy, but that is exactly what I signed up for. Even as busy as I am every day of the week, I cannot imagine doing anything else with my life.

 I am super excited about the things that my students are doing in class this week. My Pre AP kids are going to begin filming their news casts for their mini research projects that correspond with our book The Giver that we just completed in class this 6 weeks. I knew I wanted to do something different with them, and the kids have loved it so far. The had to have a rough draft of their scripts to me on Friday and they were amazing! I cannot wait to see all of the finished projects next week! My 2 regular classes are going to be doing a fun spooky writing assignment this week that I cannot wait to do with them. I hope that their stories will turn out as great as I am picturing in my mind. We are also going to have several mini-lessons this week to prepare them for our book clubs that we will hopefully be starting on Halloween.

 I also got an e-mail from our school librarian about a teacher in Michigan who she worked with last year. She is wanting to do some type of project together with us and Mrs. Z picked my students and I to partner with this teacher. I am so excited about it and cannot wait to see how it turns out. Have you ever done something like this before with a teacher in another state? Any good tips for me?

This past week I also got my first donation for my Donors Choose Project. I am so excited, but I still have a long way to go. Fingers crossed that I am able to get it funded. You can find my project here.  Have you ever done a Donors Choose Project? 

Who knows when I will make it back to the blog this week, but hopefully I will be able to. I am planning on taking my camera to school this week to get some pictures of a few of the anchor charts that we have made as well as my revamped classroom library. 

Well I had That Sub...

Yes, you all know which one I am talking about. The horrible one. 

First she was late, about an hour late. Then she did not even follow my lesson plans. This sub did not leave me a note either about the day! The kids had nothing but bad things to say about her too. Hopefully I will not have her in my room ever again. 

I also got an email today from the elementary principal where I student taught for 4th grade, and I have an interview in May! I am so excited, but nervous all at the same time. It is for a 3rd grade position which I think would be great. I have fingers crossed, and I am also still hoping to hear something about the possibility of just staying in 6th grade. I am just excited to even be getting an interview though. 

Speaking of 6th grade, I am still loving it! I am not enjoying the 45 research papers that I have to have graded by Friday though. Oh wait, did I mention the 45 book report projects I have to look at too? Or the 12 parts for a Biography Project for 20 kids in my regular class? I am not a fan of the end of the 6 weeks. I just hope I can make it out alive. 

I also found out today that we are going to be going on a field trip the first week in May. We are taking the entire grade level to Sea World. I am not too sure what to think about this quite yet. The kids are already complaining because all of the rides will be closed and just the exhibits and shows will be going on. I think it will be fun, but it sounds like it is going to be a logistical nightmare. I am trying to stay positive, but we will see.

Resume Help and Center Update

I am beginning to apply for jobs, but am not too sure about my resume. What categories do administrators want to see? As tough as it is going to be to get a job here in Texas this year, I want to make sure that they are really impressed with my resume and cover letter. If anyone wants to look at mine and critique it for me I would love that or if you have a really great format for yours that you think would help me would be great too. You can e-mail me at k.e.klohn@gmail.com or if you are interested just leave me your e-mail and I will send it to you. If you are a Texas teacher, I am sure you are familiar with the Texas Association of School Administrators job search, I pretty much stalk it every day!

Monday was day one of using centers during our ELA block and it has been such a hit. The kids love it and I also think that they have been able to get more out of the content because of the small groups. I am most excited for my center tomorrow because we are going to do the conversation hearts writing activity that I posted last week. I hope they really like it and are creative with their quotations. I am ready for the writing TAKS to be over though so that we can not work so much on writing and can dedicate more time to the center activities. 

Something else that has been pretty exciting this week in 4th grade, is that our class was selected to write for the local newspaper for the upcoming Texas Public Schools Week. One 4th grade and one 5th grade class was selected. We were given 2 topics for the kids to write about that are really pretty fun. The topic we have been working on the past two days was "What do you think school will be like in the year 2050?" They were so creative and I am hoping that if they are in the paper I can share some of them with you all. They wrote about things like inventing exploding homework in science class, anti-gravity classrooms where if you get in trouble the teacher just turns on the gravity switch and you fall to the floor, and robot teachers. I am pretty sure none of that will happen, but it has been fun seeing what their imaginations think of. The topic that we are starting tomorrow is for them to plan a day at school where their parents join them. The newspaper lady is coming on Thursday to take pictures of them too. 

Hope that everyone survived Valentine's Day on Monday! I cannot wait to plan my own Valentine's party next year!