As we celebrated our first Spirit Day of the 2015-2015 school year we had an opportunity to share our college aspirations. I was warmed by the amount of children who had their college already picked! Sure this might change but the vision is there. They traveled to the colleges I attended in Scotland, England and Texas and visited the campus of their choice all through Google Earth. This week has been a great week with lots of thoughtful conversations and continued community building. I learned about how excited my students were to have an Uncle in town, visit Dallas, have a sleepover with a classmate and put up their Halloween decorations. We were even lucky enough to have a students brother visit to read with us today. We continue to seamlessly integrate technology into our learning process. The students now know to expect notifications from Google Classroom and word soon spreads we we are on the same page quickly and quietly. Today we introduced Friday Fit Rotations and there was great excitement. We have 5 centers on Friday during FIT: 1 - Scratch 2 - Coding Apps 3 - Building 4 - MakerSpace 5 - Puzzles We are continuing to learn to live in each others space and I think we are starting to thrive there. We have highs and lows, frustrations and celebrations, we laugh a lot and share our smiles. #thecloverclassroomrocks
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Of course today was only one day in a week full of learning and laughing. We continue to enjoy GoNoodle and have racked up 150 minutes of GoNoodle brain breaks since the school year began. We continue to enjoy Nearpod during our math time and started our virtual classroom through Google Classroom. I am now able to send your child resources, announcements and assignments immediately accessible from their iPads. We continue with Hopscotch for coding and the students love it! Over the next few weeks we will be digging deeper into programming with accounts in Tynker and Scratch. Our morning meetings continue to give me a great insight in to your child and I love to hear about their celebrations and their struggles. A good friend reminded me this week to 'Live a Great Story'. So far this year the Clover classroom are truly embracing that ideal. This week has been packed full of fun experiences. Tuesday was Dot Day and on Monday the children were excited to make their mark on the t-shirt I would wear the next day. I even was renamed 'Mrs. Dot'! I was also blessed with seeing some 'American Dolls' close-up! Thank you to Hadley for bringing her dolls to me. I grew up with a Sindy doll in Belfast and these dolls blew my mind. WOW! Tuesday was an exciting day at Cedar Creek with teachers, parents and students alike all engaged in talking about how we can make our mark in the world.
I kind of looked like this at 8:30pm on Friday night. It was a fabulous week with my school kiddos and my, soon-to-be-9 year old, but my toddler.... This week we continued to build routines and introduce and model centers. We adjusted to our new schedule and our first four day week of the year. It rained, YAY, and the heat and humidity blazed, BOO. As the weekend approached and cooler temperatures were forecast, our morning meetings were full of stories about what fun we were going to have this weekend. College football, ranches, sleepovers.... we had EVERYTHING! I hope your children had a wonderful weekend and enjoyed the glorious days. See you tomorrow!
This week has just flown by. I had planned to blog more frequently but now think once a week will be my goal! We have really been enjoying getting to know each other. We posed two essential questions this week: What is a community? How do we know we are part of one? What is a 'true' friend and how do we know? I am a Twitter stalker and found this quote a few days before the start of school and it was a timely reminder that curriculum cannot come before relationship building. I have learned so much about them and they about me. I know they told you the breadstick story, right? I'm curious if they remember the reason for me telling them that! We have dipped in to some math (yay for Place Value!) and began to express ourselves as writer's and actors! We have clocked up 31 minutes on GoNoodle and have played 'Taxi' and 'The Professor'. Today we talked about our brains and sang a 'Dendrite Song'. We talked about Amygdala and I got a response from a child that is so important for teachers to remember. When asked what triggers a flight response in class a young lady said, "When the teacher calls on a student when she knows they haven't been listening." So, so true.... We began our Science 'Outfitted for Science' fashion show and had a special visit from Mrs. Tillman, our Instructional Partner at CCE who talked choosing books that were 'the right fit'. I love this class, their smiles, their chatter and their ENERGY! And... GOODNIGHT! It was another great day in the Clover Classroom. We started off with googly eye creations and had our second class meeting of the year. We had mostly 1s but some higher numbers: something I try to talk with students about as the day progresses. We wrote for a while about our dream house and enjoyed our first P.E. lesson of the year. I even got to play some 'Back It Up'! After lunch we had our first library day and that was FUN! I got to learn about all the books and got to 'check out' my student selections. We ended the day with some math and had our first glimpse of presenting in front of our peers. These third graders ROCK! Oh and let's not forget #gonoodle My first day as a third grade teacher at Cedar Creek Elementary started at 2:45am. Maybe that's why I forgot my phone and my iPad so have NO pictures to post. #disappointed
After being totally overwhelmed at assembly this morning we headed back to the classroom. Most of the day was spent getting to know each other, talking about expectations, open seating, recess, cafeteria etc. etc. I tried hard not to sound like the Charlie Brown teacher on day 1! We started our 2015-2016 class in GoNoodle and the students graced me with participating in my 'Rollercoaster' moves. I had so much fun learning about them and happy to have a class that is 'like me' on so many levels. Some have traveled, some have sisters, some have dogs and ALL have a sense of wonderment about our world. It's going to be a great year. #thankyou #cce3clover1 COMPLETION! Not that a classroom is ever truly complete but I feel like I am nearing my end of 'to dos' for Friday morning and I can now start to personalize and energize the space. I decided to go with some standing tables, some sitting tables and some kneeling tables alongside some comfy chairs and a couple of stools. Now for the curriculum preparation, right? Today was a rough day, I felt I took 1 step forward and 2 steps back... I'm really trying to get stay true to my vision and it's hard. I am determined that tables will not take over the room but it's hard to break from that tradition where every students needs their own 'spot'. I agree with that on some levels but think their 'spot' can change...
Tomorrow is another day. |
AuthorJanet Couvillion Archives
August 2016
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