OOPS!

I apologize for any confusion with school pictures. I didn't realize that you didn't have to send anything back to school.  The children all look gorgeous and they all brought their beautiful smiles.  Again, sorry for the confusion!

School Picture Day

ATTENTION PARENTS... ATTENTION PARENTS...

Tomorrow September 27th is SCHOOL PICTURE DAY!

Please send back your choice of background.  The choice notice was given to you on Curriculum night. If you do not send anything back, you will be given the default background!

Scholastic Book Orders

This is a reminder that our Scholastic Book orders are available to order online!    Please take advantage of using the online system to browse wonderful deals on meaningful books.  Also, the more orders I get online, the more bonus points I receive to get great things for our classroom.  All you have to do to make an order is:

1. go to scholastic.com
2. get to the book club part
3. enter my classroom password: HD64Z
4. complete your order!

Hopefully you will take advantage of Scholastic's wonderful offers. If you have any questions regarding the book orders, shoot me an email and I will help you through it.  Also, be aware that you can browse all the scholastic catalogues online!  Happy shopping!

Thanks for your support!

Curriculum Night was a success!

So Monday night was curriculum night at Beal School for first grade.  Although this is my 7th time presenting to parents, this night will always be stressful.  Luckily I have a looping classroom so I know most of the parents.  A couple days before curriculum night (the night before.. haha) I decided to make a presentation using our district's new interactive software, Easiteach!  Boy, was this a mistake!  I was sitting on my couch Sunday night, 3 hours into creating an amazing presentation for the parents, and all of a sudden my computer decided to freeze.  Without freaking out (totally freaking out because I had not saved it yet), I restarted my computer with the hope that my presentation would be recovered.
Wouldn't you know it, it was NOWHERE to be found.  This is when I began to sweat (I might have thrown a couple things) and freak out.  So, the presentation was lost and I couldn't get back those 3 hours either.  I finally calmed down and started all over.  I was not going to let Easiteach get the best of me.  So, for the next 3 hours I worked on my presentation once again.  I saved my work and finally went to bed.  The next morning at school, I knew I had a few slides left to finish.  I worked for about another 45 minutes while my student teacher led morning meeting.  I was finally finished, so I saved my work like 5 times just to be sure.  The day went on and it was time to get ready for Curriculum Night.  I plugged everything in and crossed my fingers when I double clicked on my saved file.  Of course,  it wouldn't open!  It would freeze everytime I tried to open it.  So here is when I TRULY start to freak out.  I get up to leave the room to calm down and my student teacher, Melissa,  says she is going to try and play with it.  As I am in Miss Johnson's room venting about all my computer problems, Miss Goulet walks in and says my presentation is up and running! HOLY COW!!!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH MISS GOULET! You saved my sanity!  hahha.  Needless to say, Curriculum Night went very well.  At least I got a great story out of it.  I consider my self a techy, and when technology is working it is more than amazing, but when it doesn't it is like the whole world is ending.  Lucky for me, the whole world did not end and the night was great!  Here are some pics from the night!

Off and running with the Daily 5

I am so lucky that I was given the chance to loop from Kindergarten to First grade with my class.  Not only do I have the best class ever, but it has made the start of the year run so much smoother.  They all know my expectations and with a little practice and review we were able to get into a full Daily 5 already! I am so impressed  by all they can do.  Once again, I have tweaked my Daily 5 check in board.  This is what it looks like this year.  I decided to have all of there options in the pocket chart as visuals so they can verbalize what they will do for each session.  Here is a picture of my new and improved chart!

So far this is working out great!  Here are some more pics of the classroom. I will also post my CAFE wall.  Can't wait to get started teaching the strategies!

More to come. Stay tuned!

I'm Baaackkk!!! Welcome to school year 2011/2012

Hey everyone!  Well it has been a wonderful start to the school year.  The kids and I are off and running so I thought I would start up my blog again.  It has been wonderful starting off the year with a student teacher. Miss Goulet has been fabulous.  We worked for about 3 days on my new room before the school year started.  The teacher who worked in this room retired, so I jumped at the chance to finally have a bigger room.  However, I had to start from scratch with my classroom design.  Luckily for me,  Miss Goulet is one talented lady.  We worked together to move all the furniture to make the best use of all my space.  We painted some old bookcases, spray painted some old shelves, turned some crates into bucket seats, and spruced up a dirty old chair.  I think the room looks quite marvelous, so thank you Miss Goulet for all of your talented abilities so this room could look like it does.  Here are some pictures of my new room.  I hope you love it as much as we do!

              My new bucket seats. I love them!

 Part of my listen to reading section








 

BEFORE!



                                                             AFTER!!!!!



Miss Goulet gave the chair a makeover!
Doesn't it look nice?

There will be more pictures to come so stay tuned!

Bye for now!