When I logged on to blog tonight, I have to admit that I was pretty proud of myself that after going for a couple of long spans without posts, I was getting in two in a week!  But I think that last week I must have clicked "save" instead of "publish"...oops!  So tonight it looks like a double-post sort of evening :)

Today we had a teacher workday, which was VERY productive!  Hopefully in the coming week or two, you will be able to see the fruits of today's labor :)  Those filing cabinets I mentioned last week?  Well, they're filling up quite nicely!  I cannot believe the amount of resources that I have been lucky enough to collect: starting in practicum experiences and student teaching in college and now in a classroom of my own, it's amazing how fast the collection grows!

Not too much to report on from the kid-front today (since they weren't in school!), but here are some of the notable things from the past couple days since I've written last!

Back to 21

Remember the excitement of getting a new student?  Well, my class and I were also able to feel the pang of losing a student last week.  One of my student's last day was on Friday, which was really tough.  When you spend almost 40 hours a week with a kiddo, you and the other kiddos get attached!  It was hard to say goodbye, but we made a lovely going-away book, and spent some quality time together as a class on this one's last day.  And, as you could probably predict, we read some great books :)  These were the two we read for saying farewell on Friday:

Quotables

Student 1: "I think I lost my library books, Ms. W."

Student 2: "Did you look in the laundry?"

Student 3: "Did you check the top shelf of your dresser?"

Student 4: "Did you look under your sister's bed?"

Student 1: "I forgot under her bed!  I'll look there tonight!"

Student: "Ms. W, that book gave me a sore throat."

Me: "Really?  How'd it do that?"

Student: "It had a lot of words.  It hurt my throat because there were a lot of big words!"

Student 1: "Ms. W, I can count to 100."

Me: "That's great!  Can you show me?"

Student 1: "One, two, skip a few, 99...100!"

Me: "Haha, that joke was around when I was in elementary school."

Student 1: "Well, then it came back!"

Student 2: "Wait...is that really true, Ms. W?  Was it really around that long ago?!?"

Student: "Ms. W, I'm so excited for my lunch today.  My mom packed me a very special one."

Me: "What did your mom pack you that's so special?"

Student: "My favorite--a peanut butter and banana sandwich!"

Me: "Yum!  I had peanut butter and a banana on an English muffin for breakfast this morning!"

Student: "Really?  You eat those kinds of sandwiches, too??"

(This was almost as good as the day my students found out that I lived in a real apartment instead of at school or in a hotel!)

I'll leave you with a quote that I found in an old notebook I found when I was cleaning my classroom earlier:

"The best teachers teach from the heart, not from the book."  --Unknown

It can be really easy sometimes to just follow the directions of teachers manuals and think that it "does the trick," but I am a true believer that students know exactly where you are teaching from.  When it comes from the heart, it's just better.  Like when your mom makes you a peanut butter and banana sandwich or you read a book good enough to make your throat hurt...it's just better.

This week is off to a great start...can't wait for the kiddos to be back in school tomorrow.  Room 106 is just, well, better, with 22 people instead of only one :)

Love from Room 106,

Allie

Bring on the snow!

(Oops--sorry for the delayed post on this one!)

This morning was our first delayed opening of the year...we got a nice little frozen mix on Sunday night that coated the roads in the county juuust enough for a 2-hour delay.  The nice part was that the county made the call for the delay right before I went to bed, so I got to sleep in a little bit instead of finding out in the morning!  Some highlights of the day:

Math Organization
I always think it is so neat the way kids' minds work.  Today, we continued studying collecting data and showing representations of it, and we surveyed our class for everyone's ages.  (Ms. W did not participate in this survey!)  I knew that the kiddos were going to be stacking cubes together to show their age with the height of a "tower" as we call them, but the only instruction I gave was to "put your tower on the ledge by the board when you're done making it."  After giving that direction, I immediately thought that I needed to be more specific, but decided to let it play out.  Sure enough, just "putting your tower on the ledge" was enough, because this is how my class decided to organize their towers--neat, huh?

We went back as a class and added the labels and numbers afterwards.  Just wanted to share some fun we're having in math!

(Also, at the beginning of our unit on data collection and representation, we read these two books.  They were about sorting and classifying--the 3 Little Firefighters was targeted for a younger audience, with easier patterns and attributes, and Dave's Down-to-Earth Rock Shop was a crowd favorite.  The rocks that were talked about in the book were real, and the class was so interested in them!)

Winter books
Books, books, and more books!  With the "changing" of the seasons (Mother Nature really needs to get a grip on things--there was a wintery mix this weekend, but last weekend it was in the 60s!), here are some treats that my class enjoyed :)  Some great winter reads...

Surprises
What makes for a great surprise?  New furniture!  Now I just need to figure out where to put these new additions :)

The chair is oh-my-heavens comfortable, so that will obviously be going right behind my desk.  And the filing cabinets are on wheels...genius!  I'll keep you posted on their new homes!


Speaking of additions...
We've got a new student in Room 106--I can't believe I haven't mentioned this before!  I will admit that I was nervous to be getting a new addition to our class because we've been the same 22--21 students and me--since September, but everyone (including the teacher :) ) has made a great adjustment.  When I found out that we'd be growing by one, I was nervous about what it would do to the vibe of our class, but a friend reminded me that it wasn't just my class and myself that were going through this change, it was our new student, too--it was just the reminder I needed to make the transition easier!  We're now one big(ger) happy family!  (If only the teacher can keep remembering to make one extra copy!)


Teeny Tidy is back!
Our Desk Fairy visited again this morning, but this time, instead of leaving the class a treat, she left individual treats for students who had clean cubbies.  Her note:

Dear __________,

Thanks for picking up your things,

It means so much to me!

It shows me you are working hard,

To keep your classroom clean.

Since it seems that you have taken the time,

To make sure your belongings are neat.

I thought it would only be the right thing to do,

To leave you some sort of treat.

So, since you left for the weekend

With all off your things put away,

You may move your color to blue,

At the start of this school day.

Keep up the great work all day long,

And maybe I'll be back to visit soon.

Until then, keep working hard--and help your classmates, too!--

To make such a clean classroom!

Happy cleaning!

Love,

Teeny Tidy

Another Tomie de Paola post...
Okay, y'all, I'm giving you a warning here...I'm about to go on another one of my Tomie dePaola kicks.  Not like it's never happened on the blog before, but I thought I'd start with a heads up before someone starts reading and thinks to themselves, "gosh, does this Ms. W ever stop talking about this author?!?"


Sure enough, our curriculum has an author study of Tomie de Paola :)  My class has already heard a number of books by this favorite of mine, so for our author study we did more of a character study in Room 106 and read all of de Paola's Strega Nona books.  After about a week and a half, we read our last Strega book today, so I thought I'd show the final list of what we read.  I'm sad that the series has come to an end, but excited that my class has embraced Strega Nona like I have and have enjoyed some fabulous literature.

Of course we started off with this one--and I am lucky enough to have received a signed copy from a friend for the holidays!  Very exciting for my kiddos to see an autographed book :)

Who could forget Strega Nona's faithful helper, Big Anthony?  Our school library just got a copy of this one, and I swear it is permanently on loan to my class--one student checks it out, and as soon as they check it back in, another student checks it out again!

Perhaps the coolest thing to me, though, was talking to a student's mother at parent/teacher conferences and finding out that this student only asked for one thing for her birthday last week: a Strega Nona book.  I left school after that meeting with such a full heart to think that reading inspires more reading; as someone who grew up as a bookworm--and still is one today!--it is touching to see that love getting spread around a little bit more!

Hope y'all enjoyed these updates...no more ice on the roads, so off to bed this teacher goes!

Love from Room 106,
Allie

If 1st graders ruled the world...

So, I have a confession: I've been a little distracted lately.  And by lately, I mean for the past month or so that I've gone post-less.  I figure that when my mom mentions my blog in our family holiday card and when my brother tweets "can we get another post?" that would be a good time to contribute to the blogging world again.  So...I'm back!  I've decided that I need to make a better effort of writing on MY blog instead of spending so much time on Pinterest and looking at teacher blog after teacher blog after teacher blog after teacher blog :)  (Okay, to be honest, I'm not actually going to stop doing those things, I'm just going to make sure I carve more time out to talk about Room 106!)

But I digress...on to the latest of our first grade adventures!

If 1st graders ruled the world: Martin Luther King Day
This may be my new favorite topic to teach in social studies.  I don't know what it was about talking about MLK or hearing my kiddos talk about what they knew about him and his contributions, but it was fun, enlightening, and uplifting.  When I asked my class what they knew about Martin Luther King, Jr., what his contributions were, and why he is important, these were some of the responses I got:
- "He said it was okay to be different."
- "He dreamed of great things."
- "Martin Luther King wished that we could all drink out of the same water fountain."
- "He would have loved our class...we're all different!"
- "He made this announcement once about things, that things should be change to be more fair.  There were signs that said things for different places, and you had to follow the signs depending on what you looked like, which was bad.  So when he grew up he said that he had a dream, and in his dream, we all get to be friends.  All we had to do was mix 'n fix!*  Mix the people together and it just fixes stuff!"

So precious.  So innocent.  Forget the age restrictions--I vote a 1st grader for our next president :)

*In reading groups, as part of our word study, we "mix 'n fix" words with magnet letters.  The kiddos spell a word that they are given, and when a teacher sees that it's spelled right, they get to "mix" the letters (scramble them) and then "fix" them (put them back in order).  I love that this student used word study terms to describe MLK's contributions!


...more MLK
We did an "I have a dream..." activity where the students made dream clouds for us to hang in our classroom.  (I will admit that I found this on one of my Pinterest/blog searches, but cannot remember where, or I would give that teacher the credit they deserve!)  Here's what we did:

I cut out cloud shapes from post office boxes...priority boxes are free, and I find many uses for them--or parts of them!--to be used in my classroom.  Because they are cardboard, the kiddos can trace them easily.  Then, each student thought of a dream they had.  On one side they wrote "I have a dream," and on the reverse, they wrote what it was...

"I have a dream that we will treat people with respect"

"I have a dream that we will help your family"

"I have a dream that we will be honest"

"I have a dream that we will learn at school"

This isn't the best shot of the finished products, but all the clouds are hanging in the back of the room above my desk.  With all those positive thoughts above my head, I feel like I've got the best seat in the classroom :)

Along with our clouds, we made mini-books about Martin Luther King's life.  The kiddos were shocked to learn that he was married (to Coretta Scott King), that he had four children, and that he won the Nobel Peace Prize.  Their discovery that MLK was a real person was almost as good as their reaction to finding out that teachers don't live at school!

(Side-note: when talking to a parent today, the parent mentioned how excited her daughter had been to come home and tell her all about Martin Luther King, Jr.  She told her mother, "did you know that he had a wife?!?  Yes, he was married!  It was to a woman named Cotton and they had four kids!"  I'm sure Coretta Scott King would be flattered!)


Synonyms
I was giving a reading assessment this morning and and the passage that my student was reading was about animals that are racing.  At the end of the assessment, one of the prompts that I was to ask this child was to show them the word "fast" in the text and ask if they could think of a word that meant the same thing as fast.  This student looked and me and said, "yes, Ms. W, I can think of a word that means the same thing...let's see...lickedy-split!"

All I could do was smile to myself because this is the term that I use when the class is moving slowly and we need to speed things up--the typical scene in Room 106 is that I clap my hands together and say something like, "boys and girls, we've got to get to P.E.!  We need to clean up all of our math tools and get our classroom in order...lickedy-split!"  And then the class turns into vacuum cleaners and BAM! the room is clean.  It's crazy (and flattering) to me that these kiddos are like sponges to everything that is said and done around them :)


Baha Men
Last week, I was asking one of my students about some of his spelling words for the week, and as we were reviewing them, I pointed to various words and asked him to use them in sentences.  I got to the word "who" and asked him if he could figure out how to make a sentence with the word and he looked at me, thought for a second and said, "who...who let the...who let the dogs...out?"  I lost it, y'all.  I got lost in my own little fit of giggles for about three seconds before I realized that the reason I was laughing--the song "Who Let the Dogs Out" by the Baha Men--was written seven years before my kiddos were born.  Yes, y'all, the hit that we all know and love (and can sing all of the words to) came out in 1998...


Just those couple of updates for tonight--many more pictures, books, and lesson updates from the past month to come soon!  Hope that you are able to enjoy the things that my kiddos say and do as much as I adore it :)

I can't believe Hump Day of the week has already passed--Happy Thursday tomorrow!

Love from Room 106,
Allie