Changes

As you can see from the title of my blog, I am no longer teaching first grade :(. I just knew in my heart that God was moving me away from first grade. I have spent the past 11 years teaching first and I was very comfortable in first. With our new move, I interviewed for several positions. The positions were either fourth or fifth grade. I will have to say that God gave me a first shortly before moving. I received a phone call from an intermediate school. This particular school only has fourth and fifth grade. The district created this school to help with the overcrowding in the elementary schools. So the elementary schools are Pre-K to third. The intermediate school is fourth and fifth. Middle school is 6-8 and so on....

I went in to interview and the principal offered me the job before I left! Wow! The school is less than 10 minutes from my house. This would mean that my children would be at three different schools (one in elementary, one with meat the intermediate, and my oldest at the middle school).

I will be teaching an all boys class. I am paired with another teacher. She will be teaching ELA and SS, and I will be teaching math and science. We will each have a class and then swap our classes to teach again. I am excited about this because I LOVE math and science! I could teach this all day long. The frustrating part.....I don't have a laptop. I have a tower computer sitting on my desk. I will be given two I-pads to use also. I love having a laptop to take back and forth and work on flipcharts. I did find the ActivInspire software, so maybe I will be able to download at home. I do not have the curriculum yet. When I went into my classroom to unpack, there were ZERO teacher books and manipulatives in the room. I wanted to take some time to investigate the math curriculum. Talk about being out of my comfort zone! It is driving me crazy!

I decided to NOT have a frog theme this year :( :(. This was a very hard decision, but I wasn't sure if fourth grade boys wold be into frogs. So I went with the superhero theme from Schoolgirl Style. Here are some things that I have been working on this week at home:

                                       This is what my dining room table looks like right now!

 This is my first attempt making a mesh wreath! I started out wrapping the mesh around the wreath. I wasn't happy so I decided to go with the curly look. Well, I had to go back to the store because the mesh wreath would not curl when I took it apart from the wire wreath. The next look was too big to put on my classroom door! I realized that I bought a wire wreath that was way too big! So back to the store to buy a smaller size! The curls needed to be cut so that they were as not as long. I am now struggling with adding ribbon. The ribbon is not big enough to show up. I have a painted purple W to add to the middle. This wreath is becoming too complicated! I will post a finished picture later.

 I recovered my crates that I used in my classroom from last year. The frog fabric is now superheroes. I also had to replace the plastic crates because several were broken.

 I bought this lamp and shade from Dollar General. I used leftover superhero fabric to cover the lamp shade. The Spider-Man lamp belongs to my boys. They have not used it in several years, so I am going to add it to my classroom.

 My baskets in my classroom last year were pink, light green, light blue, and orange. I bought spray paint and changed them to red, yellow, and a darker orange. I left the green baskets alone. I had to buy two cans of each color to paint 12 baskets.  I would recommend just buying baskets rather than spray painting them. I will replace them next year.

I found a fourth grade blog about using a compliment can. I bought a small plastic trashcan from the store. It has a foot pedal. Students write compliments on the sheets of paper, and then place them in the can. Once a week, the papers are distributed to the students. You can see more about the compliment can at http://funkyinfourth.blogspot.com.

Before I left my previous school, my numeracy coach recommended a book for me to read. I bought it as an e-book. I started reading it yesterday, and it is really good. I have been doing guided math the past two years in my class, and I plan on doing it again this year with my fourth grade boys. Check it out!

I am off now to create the Hulk for a bulletin board! I found the idea on Pinterest. We will see how it turns out!