*** If you offend easily, please don’t read this post and reply with a nasty comment.***
Ok, let me explain that title. Let me begin by saying that one of my sisters is a professional hair braiders who regularly braids Phillise’s hair. Phillise’s hair is freshly done, so she thinks she is too cute. Apparently, according to her, she’s too cute to play a slave for her Black History Month performance. She, being the little girl that she is (with freshly braided hair, I might add), thought she couldn’t possibly look like a slave.
“Mom,” she said with her cute little self, “How am I going to look like a slave when I am soooo cute?”
“Really!,” I said.
I tell ya’, kids say the darndest things!
Well, I only have about a week before I have to make a decision regarding which Math program to adopt for our school this Fall. These are the programs I was deciding on:
programs are so complete. They have everything you could need. EnVision has an online component that makes it the frontrunner right now. I’m going to stay after school tomorrow & look them both over before I have to make my presentation to the other teachers. Wish me luck!
Dear Readers,
I am trying to gather some ideas for Dr. Seuss’ birthday. I’ve been looking & am just not satisfied with what I’ve found. Do you have any ideas you can share with me? I’d greatly appreciate them. Thanks in advance.
It’s Alive! I wanted to say to my students as we walked into the San Juan Capistrano mission today. My students could not contain themselves as they excitedly looked around. For those of you who’ve never been to San Juan Capistrano, I have to tell you that it’s breathtaking. So much so that it almost made me cry. I felt like I’d stepped back in time as I imagined what it felt like to live there more than two hundred years ago. How hard life was for the People (Indians). I felt a real connection to the place. I loved it and want to visit it again with Phillise in the summer. So, let’s get back to my students.
Thursday, during computer lab time, I extended our Social Studies lesson and whetted my student’s appetite to learn more about the Civil War, the Mason-Dixon Line, & Yankees. Before we went to the computer lab, I told the 5th grade students that I would show them some Bugs Bunny cartoons.
It has been such a lazy weekend. I think it’s because I know I don’t have work tomorrow. That didn’t stop me from working though. In fact, it actually made me work harder. Since I teach two grades, I am always planning. It seems like I never have enough time. So, color me happy knowing that I have an extra day off. The extra time sent me into overdrive. I’ve completed all the stories for my 3rd theme in Reading- That’s Amazing! I’m getting ready to start on it for 5th grade. That way, I don’t have to worry about Reading for at least 3 more weeks. I also completed 4th grade Social Studies on Friday afternoon. I stayed at school until 6 o’clock doing it. I didn’t want to, but it’s okay, because it will save me a couple of days after school next week. Now that I am ahead again, I will work little by little. I do not like being behind. It just sort of snuck up on me.
I was just over @ Edutopia.com and found a pretty nice article. The article, about assessment, was entitled, “What You Can Do in 5 minutes, 5 Weeks, and 5 Months”. It was pretty informative. I’m going to take a few of those suggestions and run with them. If you would like to read it, here’s the link: 
Mind Your Manner B.B. Wolf (2007), written by Judy Sierra and illustrated by J. Otto Seibold is a fractured fairy tale of sorts. The title character, Big Bad Wolf (B.B. Wolf for short, is retired and now lives in Villain Villa Senior Center. He is up to his neck in bills. He’s fed up. His day brightens once he receives an invitation for tea. He decides to go with his best friend, Alligator.
Hello Dear Readers. As my title states, I am simply exhausted. I couldn’t really understand it until I really looked at my day. I do SO much work. Teaching two grades is more than a notion. Not only do I teach six subjects to 4th grade, but I teach six subjects to 5th grade. In addition to that, I have to make all the tests because I have no supplemental materials. They weren’t ordered last year for whatever reason. Not matter the reason, I do not have supplemental materials for any of 4th grade. No, that’s not entirely true. For Reading, I have an annotated teacher’s edition that I have to white out to make copies. Other than that, nope, I don’t have it.
I have say that I am quite proud of myself. Why, you ask? Well, I was going through the Reading program’s accompanying workbook and came across a workbook page I thought might be a little bit sophisticated for my students. I vacillated on whether or not to give it as a workbook page for my students, when suddenly I had a fantastic idea.
Look at these pictures and what do you see? You see kids playing, right? Okay, now hold on 
to that thought as I proceed with my post and as usual, I will bring it back around.
what I was surprised about was the amount of work I needed to do to teach two separate grades. Even though I taught four grades at my last school, it’s not like I was really teaching four grades because they were mostly on the same level. I was basically teaching the students how to read and a little math. So teaching two grades- and really teaching all subjects- is totally different. It’s a LOT of work. But, I digress. Let me get back to the lecture at home because it’s time to take this post home. What I began the post with was the pictures of children playing. They’re from all different places: Palestine, an African village, and some other unknown place. But, where they’re from is not the important part. The important part is what they are doing. They are playing. It doesn’t matter that some are playing in the dirt or in a beautiful grass field. The thing is that they’re playing. That’s what kids do. Kids are the same no matter where they live. It doesn’t matter how rich, how poor or where they’re from. My mistake was thinking the location and/or the socio-economic status of my students would make a big difference in the amount of work and motivation I had to put in. I was wrong. It did not matter. I had to put in just as much work in this school as I had to put into my last school. So, I said all that to say that it really doesn’t matter where the kids are from because kids are kids no matter where you go. Underneath it all, we are all the same.
Long ago in the north
I’ve used writing journals since I started teaching. When I began, my purpose was to get my special education students to begin to write (which they weren’t used to doing). It helped them get into a routine and get set to start working. It was also a way to buy myself some time so that I could see who brought the homework, pass out the homework stars, and take roll.
I came up with the title last night as I was talking to my friend, Nikki about her situation at work. I know that’s an unusual title, but just wait a minute and as usual, I will bring it around.
***WARNING- I am going to use the words “super” & “excited” a lot in this post. Read at your own risk!*** 🙂
That’s right. You read it right, I TOOK my mojo back.You know how sometimes you just lose your mojo, then, just as suddenly, it comes back. Well, it wasn’t happening to me. I felt like it was running from me. It did not seem to want to come back. I’ve been so tired, uninspired, behind on work. Ya’ know, just a general slacker!
