Student Teacher Welcome Basket

I'm super excited... my student teacher starts tomorrow! I'm being trained by Virginia Commonwealth University to be apart of their Clinical Faculty. Which basically means their student teachers will teach in my room and I will coach/mentor them. I had my first training yesterday and I'm really excited about this step in my professional career. I've never had a student teacher before and look forward to learning from her as she learns from me.

I was racking my brain on what to do for her and of course I took to Pinterest. I saw a cute ABC Basket where there was an item for each letter of the alphabet. I knew I couldn't pull that off in one day so then I thought about doing the same thing but with the word "WELCOME." So after church I went to Walmart, Target and Bath and Body works for all the items I needed for my basket.

W- water
E- esos lip balm
L- lotion
C- chex mix (thought about chips, cheese its or a cupcake)
O- oreos
M- muffins (thought about M&Ms)
E- extra gum (thought about eclipse gum too)

I Was Born to Make a Difference

At my school we have faculty meetings every month. Each team leader is responsible for the "inspirational message" at a meeting. I saw this TED Talk this summer and knew it would be perfect for my message so I asked for the month of September. I am thoroughly exhausted, cried all the way to work last Friday, had a panic attack after I got to work last Friday, have watched several colleagues break down in tears and I myself am on the edge of a nervous breakdown! But I am reminded, from Dr. Rita Pierson, that I am an educator and I was born to make a difference!

Celebrity of the Week

 

I haven't done "Celebrity of the Week" in a couple of years. I need to start back up because I always had positive feedback from parents about the program. Someone emailed about it since mswinston.com is now retired so I figured I'd blog about it.

 

 

Celebrity Poster- The Wednesday before their week, two students will get a poster to complete over the weekend. On Monday morning they will share their poster during morning meeting with the class.

 

Celebrity Book Pick- On Tuesday our celebrities will share their favorite picture book with the class during morning meeting.

 

Celebrity Share- On Wednesday our celebrities will bring in 3 special items from home to share during morning meeting. Examples include photographs, favorite books, favorite movie or anything else that is important to them. 

 

Fan Mail- On Thursday the class will present our celebrities with a homemade book made of letters that they have written to their classmate.

 

VIP Treatment- On Friday our celebrities will be our line leader and helper for the day. They will also get to sit anywhere they choose during the school day.

 

I've uploaded the documents onto Google Docs at this link

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B3EdWT-xPuMIVXdpank2bjdBYkE&usp=sharing



Favorite Free Items (gathered from Pinterest)

There's a lot of great ideas on Pinterest...some free and some paid. I've found some great things for my classroom for FREE. Here is a couple of my favorites...


Can't wait to use this resource when I teach the Scientific Method.




Great Bucket Filling Packet!

Scientific Method Posters



Daily 5 Posters and Resources, will work with any reading workshop model though.




Great Math Station




Great for morning meeting, printing them out right now so I can laminate them before school tomorrow!



 What free items have you found on Pinterest?

Team Gifts

I still have 15 more days until teachers report back to school. My classroom is finished, my long range plans completed and steady marking things off my to-do list in preparation for a new school year! Thursday is our first team meeting. Very informal, held at someone's house. We'll have a pot luck lunch and discuss school items, we have two new teachers to our team/school so I wanted to meet so they could get some of their questions answered and talk about things such as field trips and homework and what committees we're going to serve on.

I'm excited to share my team gifts with you! I ordered t-shirts from this company http://teachertshirts.spreadshirt.com/ and as always I had to order some cookies from my favorite shop on Etsy http://www.etsy.com/shop/acookiejar?ref=search_shop_redirect. Her shop is on vacation at the moment but you can look at her feedback and sales to see pictures of her work. I've ordered Valentine Owls, Hungry Caterpillar, Apples and now "Candy" themed cookies with a "3" for 3rd grade! I will be ordering again, probably for Christmas. Trust me, it's worth every penny, these are the best cookies you will eat, plus they have disco dust on them to make them sparkle!

The gift tag says "It's a treat to have you on the 3rd grade team!" and I added some Chevron tissue paper since that's my new obsession. Okay, now for some pics... would love your feedback!

 

 

 

 

Team Building

First, I have to share a deco mesh wreath I made for my classroom door. Look at my classroom tour to see the spiral deco mesh wreath I created!

Apple Deco Mesh Wreath for my classroom door

Leadership must be my "theme" this year. I'm team leader, a mentor to a beginning teacher and I've been accepted into the VCU Clinical Faculty Program (VCU will train me to mentor their student teachers in my classroom).

I haven't been team lead in years, 6 years. Now I'm at a different school, on a different grade level, working with different teachers. I really want to focus on building team morale. We're having our first team meeting next Thursday and I'm very excited. I purchased some team gifts and we're going to have a pot luck lunch and talk about some basics before teacher work week begins August 26th. Basically we don't get to work in our rooms until Wednesday afternoon of that week and Meet & Greet is Friday morning, good thing I'm finished!

In the past we've pulled names and that person was responsible for purchasing a birthday cake for the name they pulled. Then at Christmas we do a Secret Santa all week and do a breakfast reveal that Friday. This year I'm thinking of doing more.

First of all we're going to fill out these sheets. Then I'm thinking we'll pull names and that's going to be your "Secret Pal" for the year. Then we'll give gifts/treats at...

-Halloween (1 day)
-Christmas (1 week)
-Spring (1 day)
-Teacher Appreciation Week (1 day)
-End of the Year (1 day)
-Birthdays

Click the link above if you would like to download the sheet. What do you/ have you done on your team to build team morale?

Classroom Tour

I am so happy to report that my classroom is finished! I can now enjoy the rest of my summer vacation...all 24 days left of it!

view from the door

math workshop area: Mountain Math, Math it Up

classroom library

content vocabulary word wall

workstations

spiral deco mesh wreath

my desk

my name sign

guided reading materials

guided reading area

nonfiction text features

reading strategies

reference resources and puncuation

writing area



view from guided reading area

view from corner

view from sink

side view of my spiral deco mesh wreath... can you tell I love my wreath!