This week we are celebrating College and Career Week. This is a Huntsville City School initiative and we are in our fourth year. This week teaches the students about the importance of being college and career ready. Our activities for this week are as follows:
*March to Success Monday, August 29th To kick off College and Career Week, discuss with your students about ways they can be successful as they “march” towards a successful college and career readiness experience. *Talk it Over Tuesday, August 30th Throughout the school day, share your college and career stories to show students how they can work toward success. Share your story to help them make smart, informed choices! *Wear Your Colors Wednesday, August 31st Everyone will show their school spirit! Teachers, wear the school shirts of your alma mater, and students can wear shirts of the college they hope to attend. *Throw What You Know Thursday, September 1st Discuss with your students about extracurricular activities offered at your college. We will have volunteers from various Greek organizations come and eat lunch with the children. If you were involved in a Greek organization, wear your letters or jersey. *Finish Big Friday/Career Day, September 2nd Career Day! Did you want to be a teacher when you were your students’ age? If not, talk to them about what you wanted to be when you grew up. You can wear an outfit that shows them what you wanted to be. We will also have various speakers coming to talk with your class. I will give you a schedule later next week with more information. Stay tuned for pictures and more information!
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I am so excited to say that I have my very own classroom. This is something that I have wanted since Day 1, and I can hardly believe it happened. This is such a great opportunity for me to do more with my classes, and it solves a lot of the issues I was having in previous years. I have so many ideas for lessons, and I can't wait to get started.
To give you a little information about my room, I have pictures below. The first picture is my bulletin board that is outside of my classroom. This is the one that I will change to announce different events or themes throughout the year. I was not going to have a bulletin board in the office, so I am excited to not only have one now but a much larger one. The one I had in previous years was a 4x4 board, and this is 8x8! Double the space double the room for display! I saw the Inside Out board on Pinterest, and I just had to do that one. The next picture is the white board that is right next to my Activeboard. I will have our "I Can..." statements here for each week. With College and Career Week coming up, my lesson this week is about careers. In K-2 we are reading "Tools at Work" by Matthew Johnson. I like this book because it talks about different jobs and the kids have to guess the tools that the job uses. In 3-5, I am discussing with them about a website to use when researching careers. We use this a ton during the year, so I am demonstrating how to navigate the site. There are also spaces for all of my books. It is so nice to have them displayed and organized for the students. The next few pictures are of the classroom. I have cubbies on one side of the room. I have labeled each one with the teachers' names. This is where students will get their worksheets for the day. They will also turn them in back to their cubby. On each table, I have baskets with pencils, colored pencils, markers, crayons, glue sticks, and scissors. This is an excellent way to keep all of their materials in the center and stay organized. I also have a board behind my desk with community resources as well as information about the school. In the back of my room, I have a white board that has our character word of the month. It also has our trivia question of the week. Each week I am going to ask a question about the teachers that relates to their college experience or a unique job that they had. I will draw for a winner each Monday. The final picture is of my "College and Career Spotlight." I will update this weekly (hopefully) with information about different colleges and careers. This week we are talking about Auburn University (War Eagle!) and Vets. For the college side, I have listed the number of students, the number of majors, the location, and I will also have pictures of teachers and staff that have graduated from that college. On the career side, I have the career cluster, education required, median wage, skills needed, and a picture. I'm hoping to expose the students to more careers this way. I have a project on donors choose (www.donorschoose.org/project/caring-carpet-time/2142705/?rf=link-siteshare-2016-08-teacher-teacher_3763614&challengeid=20817542) that I'm hoping will get funded so I can get some new rugs in my room. That will pull everything together, plus give the kids a comfortable place to sit. If you would like to donate, I would greatly appreciate it. I will be posting more information about College and Career Week, so stay tuned!! I would like to congratulate the following students for being selected for this year's Safety Patrol. These students were selected based on their application, grades, attendance, and behavior. Mrs. Robertson and I know you are going to do a great job!
Aileeney Vorn Brenden Lanford D'Siya Similton Kasady Braxton Andrea Marcos Egypt Johnson Myles McCrary Mackinzzi Washington Sevyn Wade Salaya Bone Zyriah Price Dimend Strong Duty starts the week of August 15th. A big thanks to Sgt. Davis of the Huntsville Police Department for coming out and training our new recruits! Below is a picture of a few of our members holding up their membership cards. It is the first week of guidance lessons, and I am excited to get into the classrooms and meet the new students. For my kindergarten and first grade students, I teach a lesson that I learned during my practicum. I bring with me my pig puppet, Petunia, and have her help me meet the students. We practice coming to the carpet, and we review the expectations for guidance class. I like discussing the procedure because it gives me a chance to go through the routine and demonstrate with the students that my expectations are the same as their teacher's expectations. After I have gone through the roster and made sure I am pronouncing their names correctly, we move on to Petunia. I was in my church's puppet ministry as a kid, so I have some experience with making Petunia look pretty real. It can fool most of the kids. I tell them that Petunia is very shy and scared because she is the only pig that goes to our school and she doesn't have any friends. Usually at this point, one of the kids will say that they want to be her friend, which leads me into the discussion about how we can be friends with people who look different than us. I go over how she has different colored fur and eyes, but we can still be friends with people who are different. It is an excellent opportunity for me to tie in diversity with my students.
This year I did a new activity with my older students. With my second through fifth graders, I used my Counselor's Toolbox. I had wanted to do something like this last year, but I did not know how to go about doing it. I got on Pinterest and found a link to an excellent blog (http://www.elementaryschoolcounseling.org/marissas-blog) that gave me some ideas for my toolbox. I had the students work in groups to determine what each item represented. I have to say it did not go as smoothly as I had hoped. For the second and third grade, they had some trouble working together, but it worked a little better for my older students. I think if I use this lesson in the future, I will show the items to the students and explain them instead of having them work in groups. Below are the items and what each represented. Paper heart= I care for all students. Band-aids= I help students who are hurting. Legos= I help solve problems. Hat= I wear many hats/I have many jobs at school. Happy Face Ball= I help students who are stressed. Mint= I can be a "lifesaver." Kleenex= I help kids who are sad and upset Eraser= I can help fix mistakes Glasses= I help kids see things differently Overall, I am pretty happy with each of these lessons. The older kids worked well together, and the younger students loved meeting Petunia. I am very excited for College and Career Week that is coming up at the end of August and beginning of September. I am hoping to have a Career Day on that Friday. Stay tuned for more updates! Wow! What a great and crazy first week of school! As I look back on all things that our school has done the past week, I am amazed! When I came to school on Wednesday, my office was being used as the workers' storage room, was covered in dust, and I couldn't even walk in the room! You see, our school recently underwent renovations. We have a new gym, stage, building with seven new classrooms, paint, and fixtures, plus much more! I was worried that it wouldn't be ready for the first day, but they pulled it off, and it is amazing!
We had our Open House on August 2nd and we had so many students come out and see our new school. We served over 400 hot dogs! We also had many vendors come out and provide information to our students and families. We are so thankful for out partners, especially Premiere Dental, Toyota, and the Tuskegee Airmen. I was not able to get into my office to set up until the day before school started! I was anxious that I wouldn't be able to be ready for the first week, but I somehow managed to get everything together. As of today, I still have three boxes to unpack and I'm missing some furniture, but it will come together, I just know it. The first three days of school were very hectic. Those days were probably the busiest I have been the first week of school. We had some issues with registration, but a big shout out to our parents for being so patient and working with us. Also, a shout out to our students for being so amazing. Our fire alarm went off Friday morning. Now normally this wouldn't be a problem, but you have to remember it was the third day of school and some of our babies (and new teachers) didn't know the plan. But everyone did a fabulous job working together and we were able to get everyone out of the building in under 2 minutes!! I am very excited to get into the classrooms next week and start my guidance lessons. I will post about my lessons in my next blog! Thanks for checking out my website. Feel free to leave me some feedback and let me know what you think! |
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