what we've been up to

Well today, my 4th grade friends took their writing TAKS test. I am so glad that it is now over with. Since I am not a certified teacher yet, I could not even be in the room so I spent the day in first grade. I love first grade, but after being with the older kids for the past month, it was totally different. I had to remember that they need to hear the directions 10,000 times and that you have to hold their hand a lot. The teacher that I was paired with for today, even let me teach the grammar lesson. We were learning about adjectives, so I decided to have students partner up and make an adjective flower for the adjective garden. We put our nouns in the middle, and then put adjectives describing our noun on the petals. I wish I had gotten a picture of the entire garden, but I did get one of my flower that I made as an example. 

With my 4th graders yesterday, we did a day of language fun. Mrs. I and I created a packet of fun review pages and we also talked some about idioms. I had them choose a few to illustrate for their Idiom book. Here are a few examples including mine. 

Tomorrow starts my 6 weeks of full teaching. I am a little nervous, but so excited all at the same time. I hope that the students like the changes that I have made. I am most excited about my plans for Social Studies. I promise to share as it comes up.

Dr. Seuss Giveaway

Have you seen the amazing giveaway that Donna from Kinderglynn

and 

Erica Bohrer's First Grade

are teaming up for? They are giving away Donna's entire Dr. Seuss unit which is over 100 pages long. I don't think you are going to want to miss out on this!

I Just Want a Job!

After talking with the principal yesterday, I have been working on my resume and letter of intent that I will submit with my applications. I understand that I am really going to have to sell myself with my resume and letter of intent. For you all who have applied for jobs recently, what do you suggest for length, is longer than a page acceptable? Do you list your references on the resume? With the job market being so tough this year, I am really wanting to make a good impression with this. I am hoping that the principal will look at both and tell me what he thinks too.

This evening was the 4th grade production that the music teacher puts on every year. They did Annie and it was so cute. The kids were all so excited that I made it back in time for the play and I am sure they will still be talking about it tomorrow. I wish I would have gotten some pictures because they all looked so cute! 

Hope you all have a wonderful Friday, it is for sure my favorite day of the week...I wonder why?!?

First Observation...Check!

Today was my first observation by my field supervisor and I was very pleased with how it went. I got 112 of 120 possible points and fell right into the middle of the Proficient category which is the highest that you can get. Honestly, I was a little surprised that I scored so high just because I did not think that she would do that on the first one. The things that I got counted off for were not big ones either, and one was because one of my friends unfortunately did not take her medicine this morning and she was a little out of control and I had to do lots of redirecting with her. 

When I am teaching I do lots of think-pair-shares and also having the students give me a thumbs up if they agree and a thumbs down if they disagree. One of the statements that I asked them was false so they were supposed to have their thumb down. I noticed one of my brighter students had his thumb sideways and I was a little confused so I called on him to share his thoughts with us. I had to giggle though when he said that the statement was false but he refused to give me a thumbs down because he is an Aggie and they do not do that. It was too cute! 

Another one of the really good kid moments from my lesson was when we were talking about organisms and that an organism is a living thing. As part of this, I asked the students to tell us their favorite organism. One of my boys informed me that Baby Jesus was his favorite organism. I just had to smile because Baby Jesus would be considered an organism and I just loved the answer. 

My observation form is a carbon copy and one is for me, one for my field supervisor, one for my mentor teacher, and then one copy also goes to the principal. After school I went down to the office to give the principal his copy and we ended up chatting for a while. We did a little mini interview and he gave me some advice about my resume and also some sample interview questions. He also told me that I am guaranteed an interview for any open positions on the campus, but that I would not necessarily just be given the job. I really respect him for that and am glad to know that I will at least get an interview. With the job market being so tough this year, he told me that I really need to sell myself. I'm hoping that my interview will go well whenever it might be. I need to get working on my resume now so that he can help me with it. 

Hope everyone's week has been wonderful, here is to it almost being Friday!

Inherited Traits

Tomorrow is my first observation by my field supervisor and I am nervous, but feel very prepared. Lucky for me, the 4th grade teachers have completely rewritten the CScope curriculum and created power points for all of the science lessons. Since there is not really any text support in CScope you pretty much have to do something like this. If you use CScope in your district, how do you all supplement the material?

For my lesson tomorrow, I decided that I wanted to create a few things for the kids to do to make it a little more interactive. In part of the lesson, the students sketch two organisms and then have to figure out if they are related or not. I made a simple graphic organizer for them to use for that and I also created a notes page that they can add to throughout the unit. It will make students list different examples of the traits as well as writing the definition for the three types of traits that we are going to focus on. The lesson plan that I have to create for my field supervisor requires an extension so I created what I thought would be a fun home-school assignment that the students can do that won't take too long either. Not too sure how many of you all could use these resources, but I thought somebody might be interested in them. 

Are We Related? Worksheet

Inherited, Learned, or Instinctive Worksheet

Inherited Traits Extension Activity

Inherited Traits Letter Home for Extension Activity

Inherited Traits Vocabulary Concentration Cards

I still cannot figure out how to do the screenshot when I am using Google Docs, does anyone know of a tutorial that I can use for that? I am thinking about just putting it on Teachers Pay Teachers and just make them free. If you sell on TpT, how do you like it? I am considering setting up an account to sell some things that I have created and will be creating in the future.

A Little Blog Love!

First off, have you seen the amazing giveaway that Erica is having over on her blog? She is giving away not one, but two signed copies of her book Reading Response Activity Sheets for Young Learners that has been published by Scholastic. It ends at midnight tonight so hurry on up and enter over at her blog! 

My very sweet friend, Mrs. Claborn, also awarded me with the Stylish Blogger award! I have known her for several years now because of camp, and hope that I can be as a great of a teacher as her one day! 

The Rules

1. Thank and link back to the person who awarded you this award. 

2. Share 7 things about yourself.

3. Award 5 great recently discovered bloggers

4. Contact those bloggers and tell them about the award

So 7 things about Miss Klohn...

1. I am absolutely loving my student teaching in a 4th grade inclusion classroom. It for sure has had its challenges since there are 5 SPED kids in the class, but all of the rewards and a-ha moments for sure out weigh the bad. Plus, have I mentioned just how amazing my mentor teacher is...she rocks!

2. I am really scared about finding a job for the fall with all of this budget mess with education in Texas. I know that God will provide and there will be one for me, but I would really like to start here in Fredericksburg. We will see though.

3. I have pretty much known my entire life that I wanted to be a teacher. I really believe that teaching is one of those things that you just know you are supposed to do. 

4. I am slightly obsessed with children's books, and currently own over 300 already for my future classroom. Yes, a tad too many but I want my students to have lots of choices to pick from. I have actually already labeled them all with their AR levels and quiz numbers too. Just need a classroom library to put them all in now. 

5. I am considering taking the 4-8 generalist test just to make myself more marketable...what are your thoughts? I am also planning on taking the ESL supplement too in June. 

6. I cannot go near a teacher store because I always find something to buy. I just love all of the fun borders and letters for my bulletin boards. My thought has been if I by those things here and there now, I will not be spending so much money when I have my first classroom. 

7. I want to have a theme for my classroom, but am not sure if I would want to do a sports theme or Hollywood. Do you have a theme in your room, if so, what is it? 

I am giving the Stylish Blogger Award to these wonderful teachers...

Hadar

One Extra Degree

Second Grade is Splendid

The Caffeinated Teacher

Miss Knight

Hope you are having a fabulous weekend and maybe even get to enjoy the long weekend! We have teacher inservice on Monday, boo!

I Love my 4th Graders!

I got some really great pictures of my kiddos this week and I can share them now with you all after getting some signed releases. A reporter from the newspaper was also there today to capture some to use in the paper for Texas Public Schools Week. I cannot wait to see all of their writing in the paper. 

I just love this picture. It really captures the kids personalities so well! 

The kids had early release today to allow for parent conferences, but we did not have any so it turned into a nice afternoon. We have inservice on Monday and luckily we do not have to go to the CScope math training. We are hoping to get some serious planning knocked out during the day. We will see how that goes though.

I have my first official observation set up with my field supervisor for next Wednesday. I am nervous, but am pretty confident that I will do just fine. I am excited because it means one step closer to graduation!