A freebie for my 101 followers!

I have been thinking about blogging, but it seems like time is not on my side! Plus the fact that I wanted to create something super-spectacular for all of my followers since I have 101 followers! I think my creative juices have frozen up with the colder weather! I look at everyone's creations and am in awe of all of the materials that I've downloaded and purchased.

Last week was a tough one for my class. I had 2 students that ran out of the room- and one even ran out of the building. Another student got mad at me for making him finish his work before he could have free time (this is a consequence that is posted in my room). After dealing with his physical aggression for over an hour- yes we had to restrain him- we are trained and allowed to use restraining as a last resort, I was mentally drained. Skip forward to science, where one of my lovely students complained that science is boring and he wasn't going to do it. He had a time out in the alcove in my room, where he then decided to throw his shoes out at me! During the science lesson on plants, I had brought in 2 plants and 5 carnations. We were taking off the leaves of one plant (to see the effects on the plant) I handed each student a leaf so they could see the veins. One student ate his leaf! I reminded all of them of my rule in science- no eating anything during any experiment! We moved on to the carnations, putting each into colored water. I split one of the stems, using scissors (note this was hard to do) and stuck each part of stem into a bottle of colored water. The next day my students were amazed at the flowers change in color, the split flower was half red and half blue! On Friday, 2 of my paraprofessionals had the day off. I do appreciate substitues, but I still have to be with my room the whole time, I can't leave any students alone with a sub! It wasn't too bad of a day. My principal decided to rotate some people around so that I could have another regular staff in my room and one of the subs took that staff's place.

I did make break cards for my students that I'm sharing with all of you. I gave each student their own card (laminated). When they feel that they are getting frustrated, overwhelmed, anxious, or need to have a break (short 1-2 minute walk, sensory break) they show their card to staff. Earlier in the year, each student and staff made a list of 5 coping skills they can use in a school setting (count to 10, walk, stress ball, deep breathing, etc.) Everyone has their coping skills on a laminated card that they can reference when they need it.

Break cards

I did have to change 2 of the pictures, when I uploaded this to Google Docs, the pictures were missing on them and I don't know how to fix it.

October Currently

It's October, so that means that it's time for a new currently from Farley

Fall has arrived in northwestern Ohio! We have had frost and tonight it is to get down to 30 degrees! I've been really good this year with getting my lesson planning and all most of my materials ready for the next week before I leave on Friday! Usually I leave the fun type of material gathering and making for the weekend, like going to the library for extra books or printing off purchased centers and such.

Why do the weekends go so fast? I guess I need to not schedule so much in the weekend, but there isn't time during the week for grocery shopping, cleaning, and laundry! That's why I get behind put off completing some tasks! I need to get busy with printing and laminating my centers for Halloween! I found a book at my library with great pictures. It is a spin off of Twas the Night Before Christmas, the book is Halloween Night, by Marjorie Dennis Murray.

 

I promise I will have another blog post tomorrow. I'm trying to figure out what to give all of my wonderful followers since I'm up to 101 followers!! Bear with me, I still feel like a newbie with blogging! Have a great week!

What I'm Loving Party!

I'm linking up with Megan at I Teach, What's your Super Power? for her What I'm Loving linky party!

 

These are some of the wonderful things I made over the summer that I found through Pinterest and other blogs.

 

 

First, I love my organizational drawers! I keep all of my copies of work, homework, any flat materials that are needed each day. These keep me so organized! I fill them up for the next week on Friday before I leave, so I'm ready to go on Monday morning!

 

I also love, love, love my pencil sharpener! I kept trying to win one over the summer, but finally broke down and bought one! Everyone in my building is so jealous!! My paras even fight over sharpening pencils!

 

 

I also love my homemade dry erase sheets. They are lightweight, colorful, and easy to store!

 

 

I also am loving my water bottles. They keep me hydrated and stay cold (my room has a/c and is on the cold side!

Which brings me to sweaters. Seriously, even though it's 80 degrees outside, my room is a chilly 68 - 70! I wear cardigan sweaters everyday!! It can take me 20 minutes in my sun-warmed car to thaw out!! I have solids and prints in various colors that I wear over my tees! *I don't wear low cut shirts like this model, though- my shirts are plain crew neck!! 

 

Finally, Cooking Light magazine subscription has been a life saver! I've found so many easy and quick recipes that taste delicious! Most of the recipes can be made under 40 minutes!

 

Now, it's your turn to link up with Megan! Let everyone know what you are loving right now! I'm hoping to gain more ideas!!

 

 











Reflections

I've been in school with students for about 3 weeks. Mid-terms are due next Monday! There has been so many changes already in the schedule! First, I decided that I couldn't fit in science and social studies every day, so I'm teaching science one week and social studies the next. I'm hoping my students will be able to retain the information, otherwise I might teach every other day or every other 2 days... My specials are driving me crazy! I have a whole class speech infused lesson on Tuesdays for 30 minutes, then on Fridays, we have OT, sensory time, music class (pull out) and gym! I had gym for the past 3 weeks on Wednesday, but the gym teacher (who also was an aide in my room) was offered a full time position teaching gym in several other schools in the county. He had to change my school's scheduled day for gym to fit the other schools' schedules. So now I'm down one aide- that will be replaced hopefully soon, as I have 3 students who are runners. Last week, I completed my math and reading placement assessments so this week I am starting to form the groups. There really weren't any big surprizes, as I could tell with my informal assessments where the students struggled or excelled.

I've also decided to begin a Daily 5 type of reading style. I think with my students this will help them. I'm still going to meet with groups of students to do a guided reading style of lesson. I will also schedule the rotations for them. We will probably only get through 3 rotations in a day- read to self, word work, and work with teacher. I also will have a work on writing and read to someone to rotate with the word work and work with teacher or read to self. I read to my students everyday after lunch, so I figure that's their listen to reading! They love the Humphrey books!

I also added a positive motivator, besides giving golden tickets for on task and ignoring others, if my students are safe for 3 days, they will get a prize from my prize box. I have various items like fun pencils, erasers, little notepads, toy cars, puzzles, basically anything that I can find that is under $1.00. I'm hoping this will motivate my one students who only has had 2 safe days since the beginning of school! He is a tough kid- and doesn't seem motivated by ANYTHING so far! 

So this week end has been some relaxing, a lot of thinking, researching through different blogs and pinterest (thanks to all of you) and printing, laminating,creating, and buying items for my room!

September Currently and Back in Action!

Sorry I've been neglecting my blog. I'm trying to figure out how to get everything done in a day! I've revamped my lesson plans, schedule, and moved my youngest son back to college. He goes to a college in Virginia, which is about 9 hours away! While I love the scenery around the area with all the mountains, I don't really care for sitting in the car for that long! I took some pictures to compare the landscapes...


 

Flat land in Northwestern Ohio

 

Mountains in Virginia

We moved him back this past week end, so our house is back being quiet and somewhat organized! At least I don't have all of his boxes for college around in his room and the basement!
I also had to rethink things in my classroom. They are in 4th and 5th grades, but are so immature and below grade level in reading and math. I'm hoping that this will be the last week on place value, but will continue to provide practice! We gone over the rules, procedures, made a respect sounds/looks like chart, written up a respect agreement and pledge, came up with positive and negative consequences, but they still continue to talk out and walk around! The biggest complaint today was that I expect them to read and write during the day! Oh well, we don't have any more long week ends until Thanksgiving, so maybe that will help!

I can't believe that it's already the 4th of September! So I've linked up with Farley for September's Currently.

 

I love watching people look through houses and then buy a house! And ever since I've come back from Virginia, my cat Pepper, won't leave me alone! She has to keep close enough to me and have at least a paw on me! I wish that I could have a long week end with nothing to do and no place to go! Doesn't that sound wonderful? I do need to start getting into shape, my lunches at school usually consist of cheese and crackers and a granola bar. I like taking food that I can eat quickly and on the go! Why does it seem like when I take food that requires heating up or utensils, that is when I have a student in crisis and 10 other pressing things to do? Finally, I love, love shoes! I don't buy expensive ones, I buy at Target and Kohl's- the more colorful, the better! Also, after being in a car all week end, I loved the Queen and The Who CDs that we listened to and sang along with!

So I hope to be able to blog more this week and the coming weeks and months! Thanks for sticking with me and have a great day!

 

Week 1 is done!

How does everyone teach and blog? After Wednesday, the first day with students, I was wiped out! I wasn't sure how I would ever function, or stay awake after 8:00 pm! Luckily, the next days went better and I was able to stay up past 10! I did get my room ready in time for the open house on Tuesday night.

This is the view of my room as I come in. I love being able to look at trees and a grassy yard out the window, instead of the parking lot that my room overlooked last year!

The chalkboard with my rules, schedule, precision request procedure, and respect chart.

My wonderful cubbies! I labeled every box, and have since bought a couple of more boxes! I have all of my manipulatives like counters, pattern blocks, linking cubes, flash cards, dice, fidgets, magnetic letters and numbers, and even writing paper in each section. I also have several dictionaries in some of the sections.

View of my room from the front. Student work will be posted on the one board, not sure about the other board.

I added the numbers for around the clock. I just cut out circles and wrote the minutes on the circles.  I'm hoping this will help my students tell and learn how to tell time better.

I realize that my room is a little bare, but I do add things as the year goes by- anchor charts and student work. I like keeping the decorations to a minimum as a lot of my students get easily distracted or over stimulated with too many visuals. I wish I would have remembered to take a picture of my hallway bulletin board and door- I used the pinterest idea for my door of "when you enter this room..."

It was a good week, I'm loving my class! They make me laugh and enjoy teaching. I have 7 boys and 1 girl this year. I will be kept busy with teaching their different levels in math and reading. And hopefully, I'll get my energy back to blog more next week!

  I'm linking up with Karlie over at  We are All Special! for the "before" classroom picture linky party! As I stated in a previous post, my room was used as storage over the summer for 2 other rooms! I forgot to take my camera, to take pictures before all the other furniture and items were moved out so just imagine this corner of items times 3!

At my school, we all help each other out with the moving in and out of classrooms! It goes rather quickly with everyone carrying the desks, chairs, and boxes! The reason we have to move everything into a couple of classrooms every year is that the school actually rents the space from the mental health facility. So the mental health facility uses four of the six classrooms during the summer for more intensive programs. I also had changed classrooms and grades- I lost my wonderful closet that could lock! I had to go through 3 file cabinets full of papers and other things! Some were mimeographed copies of worksheets. You can see the boxes of papers that I took to recycle or shread.

This is the view from my door of the classroom. I love the windows, but wish my room would be a bit bigger! I was amazed that I could get the whole wall in the pic!

The back corner of the room, with my interactive board, alcove (for a quiet place to calm down), sink and observation mirror. In front of the mirror are the 2 bookcases in my room! I have boxes waiting to be unpacked under the board full of books! My old room had 4 large shelves for reading books.

The front corner of the room, showing the door and cubbies for the students. Tomorrow is the last work day for in the rooms, so my paras and I will be arranging the tables and desks, figuring out what to do with the other things, and putting up the bulletin boards. Check back later for the after pictures!

I did manage to get my desk area somewhat organized at least the desk is clean!