You're mine too, Tod

Since my last blog, our classroom's airconditioning has gone out two more times.  Seriously.  Thankfully, it hasn't taken weeks to fix as it did the first time around.  It IS frustrating not knowing whether I can wear boots and a scarf, or if I should stick to a dress and sandals though. :) #girlieteacherprobs

We have been having so much fun at Madison lately!  

On September 26, we had our yearly fundraiser, also known as the Painted Mustang Run.  It is a 5k color run for the kiddos that takes place during school hours.  On the day of the run, we basically shut down school and have a big ol' party!  I was able to go out and participate this year, and I am so glad I did!  I didn't run the 5k, but I DID get to throw color on kiddos as they ran by, which was extremely rewarding and therapeutic!  After the 5k, the party continued with inflatable games, dunk tanks, pizza, snowcones, carnival rides, the works!  My favorite part of the day was being able to just hang out.  Many of my original babies (this year's seventh graders) hung out with me and challenged me to several of the games.  It was such a messy, fun, day!  For pictures, check out this album from  Madison's Facebook page: Painted Mustang Run

Can you guess what color I threw? 

We also had a lot of fun dressing up for Homecoming this week!  Although I was gone for two of the days, I was able to participate in "Crazy Hat Day," "Professional Day," and "Decade Day" with the kids.  Decade Day was probably the most fun, even though this young lady and I accidently had matching hairdos.  Kids like her make my world go 'round! <3

You can find more goofy photos here!  (I am always very cautious about posting pictures of kids on my personal pages, but if the school has them posted, I'll gladly point you to them!)

I know I've said this before, but even though I really really really love my kids from last year, our group this year is just an easier, sweeter, group to work with.  This gives us more opportunity to have fun and try new things in class.  One thing I've started doing is allowing my Pre-AP kiddos to read outside during our MIRP time every so often.  They find a spot, get comfy, and read steadily for the entire 15-20 minutes.  (Last year, 3/4 might have read, while the other 1/4 would have dug holes or thrown dirt and bugs at eachother!)  The last time we had outdoor reading time, the cutest thing happened.  Those who follow my Facebook have already seen this picture, but it's too cute not to share again.  While all of the other students sat up against the building in rows, these buddies wanted to hang out on the grass.  It was a little chilly, so they used eachother to help stay warm.  My heart melted when I saw them!  They stayed together the entire time!

All I could think about was...

These kids make going to work easy!  Can ya tell I like 'em?  I can't wait to see them again on Monday.  Due to a Pre-AP conference, I was gone Thursday and Friday.  Being gone terrifies me because I assume they are going to push every boundary and destroy the room.  I mean, that's what WE did in school!  Not only was I gone, but I was gone for two days in a row.  In my head, that meant that the substitute would end up pulling her hair out, and books would be thrown around the room.  (Ok, so that's extreme.  I DID expect to find negative notes about several students and/or work not completed.)  When I checked out my room yesterday after the conference, I found that all of the assignments were neatly stacked on my desk with labels, the classroom was in order, and no negative notes were written at all!  I'm still in shock.  Let it be known, that on October 3, 2014, Mrs. Combs fell in love with 56 students, and found a substitute for life.  

-Mrs. Combs

TechNO

As far as weeks go, this past week was one of the more difficult school weeks I've had thus far.  First, our air conditioner went out, then my personal AND school computers crashed.  We were a HOT, technology starved mess.  It made me realize just how much I depended on my computer and Smart board!  I ended up getting to the point where I needed to tape signs to my "interactive" board.  Thankfully the librarian let us take over the library one day, and some coworkers lent me fans, so not all was lost.  I'm very grateful to have my personal computer fixed and a loaner school computer ready for use next week!  As for the air conditioner...I don't expect any changes soon. 

As far as teaching goes, I actually did have some fun with kids this week.  We are reading the book Holes, and I've been trying to find ways to make it come alive in our classroom.  Last year I mainly posted signs relating to the book; this year I stepped it up a bit.  I made a tent out of our doorway to give them the feeling of entering Camp Green Lake, and I brought in some water for the kids to roll play with.  In the book, kids dig holes all day in the desert.  Every so often, a camp leader brings the water truck around and fills their canteens.  I purchased cheap cups and a water dispenser from the camping section at Walmart, filled it with water, and assigned one student to be the person in charge.  It was really funny to see how the kids got excited about getting a tiny bit of tap water in their cups.  You would have thought it was soda.  Hey,  whatever works!  The real kicker is that I asked the student in charge to assume the personality of the leader currently giving out water in the book.  Our first character was "Mr. Sir," a temperamental guy who doesn't have much compassion... "You aren't in Girl Scouts anymore!"  I allowed to student in charge to be as stubborn and rude as they wanted.....though none of them did.  I had to step in and be bossy for them. :)

On a side note, the longer I teach, the more tricks I steal from other teachers.  My favorite new trick is used to combat exhausting kids who ask a question every 2 minutes.  After the first few questions,  let them know that all of your "Question answering energy" has been used up.  It will take a little while to build that back up.  Son of a gun...it works!  They will glare...but glares are better than exhausting, rapid fire questions.  I've even made it more specific...."Ah, man! My Jason question answering energy is ALL used up.  Darn!"

Teaching is weird.

-Mrs. Combs

Holes & Clubs

It's crazy to think that we have already been in school for an entire month!  Time has definitely flown by.  We are finally past the procedure learning part of the year and will be diving into our first novel this week!  I'm excited to try to teach Holes with our new schedule.  Having most of my classes for 2 hours in a row is amazing- and I'm sure we will be able to have 2x the fun that we did last year.

I don't have a whole lot to update as of right now- I think having fewer kiddos means I have fewer stories. :(  I WILL be starting up an after school club soon, though, so hopefully some fun posts will come from that experience.  Anyone have ideas for games I can play with them?  I've got Apples to Apples and classroom basketball on mind so far.  Fingers crossed that some of my 2013-14 kids join and come hang out with me. :)

-Mrs. C

Bean dip & Yoohoos

The fact that I've been back at school for 8 days and just now sat down to write a blog might be a little insight into how insane these first weeks have been.

Before I vent about the craziness, I will tell you about how amazing my kids are.  Seriously.  They are everything my last years' kiddos were and more!  Of course, there are always the Johnnys of the class (sorry, bubba, your name is just pretty common :), but even those kiddos are endearing in their own ways...and very, very, small groups.  Ha!

But honestly, they are such a sweet group of kids.  Some of the bad attitudes that I had last year aren't represented in this group.  The whole 6th grade demeanor is just very sweet and kind.  I have found myself as hopelessly attached to this group as my  last.  It IS a fantastic feeling seeing my old kiddos, though.  Sometimes I intentionally walk through the 7th grade hall when classes let out :).  I get a few hugs, high fives, and even 20 second book talks.  Maybe I did something right last year!

Now on to the insane part of my year.  It feels as if I am starting all over.  Last year I taught reading to traditional and Pre-AP classes.  My lessons plans were often the same for each class, making planning a 2 prep event at most.

Although I am slowly but surely getting the hang of it, my plan book is a hot mess.  Not only am I teaching 2 different classes/subjects, I am teaching those objectives to 3 distinctively different levels of students.  Somehow it was decided that we would try to a create lower, more intensive class of students for each English teacher.  What has essentially resulted from this separation is a special education class....in MY care!  While not all of the students are considered to be so, a large majority fall into that category.  It is obvious that the class has to be taught much differently from my Pre-AP classes and traditional classes.  I do have a co-teacher in that class with me, but I am the captain of the ship!  It is by far the most challenging thing I have ever done.  Every single  day I realize something that I need to change about the way I work with them.  Last year, my most difficult class was a challenge mainly because of behavior alone- the struggling kiddos were interspersed with the more traditional students, which leveled out the playing field and helped pull the struggling kids up by example.  Now I'm dealing with zero focus, plenty of behavior issues, and a different learning style.  I will survive, though!  NEXT year I'll be perfect at my job. :)

One of the first things we did in a few of my classes was to create a page designed to help me get to know the students.  There are a lot of activities out there that serve this purpose, but I saw this on a teacher's blog and knew I had to do it!  I gave each kiddo a sheet that said "I am a...." and they had to fill the large 'I' with as many positive things as possible.  The results were pretty neat!  We ended up using them as a brainstorming activity for a writing assignment, so it actually served a double purpose.  Check out these cute papers.  I feel like this assignment made them dig pretty deep.  I really know what is important to them...plus I know who is really silly!

Back to lesson plans :)

-Mrs. Combs

The Phantom Tollbooth: Dodecahedron Activity

This year I will be teaching The Phantom Tollbooth to my Pre-AP classes, and I could not be more excited! I didn't teach it last year because, well, last year was crazy.  I happened to read the book during our MIRP time and LOVED it!  I don't know in which quarter this will happen, but I'm gathering/creating resources already because I'm THAT excited.

One of the characters is not just two faced, he is twelve faced!  Therefore, he is known as the Dodecahedron.

I stumbled onto the following concept on Pinterest and made my own activity for Mr. Dodecahedron.  Can you say cross curricular?  I can see a discussion of the other geometrical affixes happening at some point.  Anyway, here is what I came up with!

(Link to template here)

My example.  The kids will spend more time on theirs than I did on mine :)

Work is so much fun when you can do it at home with coffee and Facebook! Eleven more days until school starts.  Woohoo!

Library Madness

Warning: This could be a very boring blog for non teachers!

After several days looking up information, sorting books, and using a million stickers I am DONE with my classroom library!

Ta dahhh!

First, I entered all of my books into Booksource: Classroom Organizer.  After setting up an account, you can enter your books to create your library catalog.  Some books can be scanned if you have a smartphone, which saves time!  If your classroom has student computers, this website will allow your students to check books in and out just like a legitimate library.  My classroom, unfortunately, will probably never have a spare computer.  I'm mainly using the program to be able to track my book titles, genres, and lexiles. (I plan on eventually writing the lexile score on the inside cover of each book.)

Speaking of lexiles, Lexile.com is an invaluable source for leveling your books.  I would say that 90% of my books were listed on this site.  

Once I entered the books into Booksource, I was able to sort the books into 9 basic genres (General Fiction has 2 bins).  I've heard that it's good to use clear bins so that kiddos can see the covers more easily, but I found these bad boys at Dollar Tree and couldn't resist!  I sorted my books into these 9 genres.  Of course, your library may have a different variety of books and therefore different genres.

General Fiction
Adventure Fiction
Realistic Fiction
Historical Fiction
Science Fiction
Fantasy
Mystery
Classics (I doubt this bin gets much action. Ha!)
Biography/Autobiography

Next, I created labels for the bins.  I've seen where people have posted their versions on TPT, but I doubted that they would have my exact selection.  I created them on Microsoft Word, and printed them on 3 1/2  x 5 Avery labels.  Here's a sample!

After the bins were labeled, I still wanted to keep track of which books belonged to me personally, and which books belonged to the school. I used these same labels, but printed several little strips on each sticker, then cut them apart.

Finally, based on extensive personal experience with sixth graders, I know that they need very clear, easy procedures.  It would be fantastic if they could recognize the genre and simply place it in the correct bin, but something told me they might need a little help.  So I color coded the books and bins.  At first I thought I needed 10 different colors of labels, and spent hours trying to find them online.  Then I realized I was making too difficult.  I ran to Staples and got a pack of basic colored circle stickers.  Even though there are only four colors, I was able to make 10 colors OR color combinations. Check it out:

  

Red = General Fiction A-M

Blue & Red = Historical Fiction

Think they'll figure it out? The hope is that this library will run itself.  Surely they can match the color on the book to the color on the bin. If not, reorganizing the library could be an easy classroom job for some brownie point seeking kiddo.  

Final picture :)

Now I have to actually plan actual lessons.  School starts in 12 days!

-Mrs. Combs

ReadysetGO!

As far as I'm concerned, school is back in session.  Truth be told, the kids won't show up until August 12.  However, now that Kyle and I are back from the beach, I have officially gotten the back to school butterflies!  I spent time in my classroom today, working 1/2 of a million little projects (as usual), and finally settled on just one: my classroom library.

Last year, my library consisted of the Hunger Games and about 50 ridiculously old books just thrown on a shelf with some bookends slapped on the end (where else?).  Until the middle of the year that I realized I hadn't even alphabetized them...and I never did.  Hopefully adding some organization will clear up a few hundred of the "Mrs. Combs, where's that book I read yesterday?" issues.  It drives me crazy thinking about how much time I spent scouring for students' MIRP books.  It's time for change.

Obviously, the school library is always available, so my library doesn't need to be huge.  What it does need is organization and shine (worn out books don't attract readers).  Thanks to my adventure in elementary land, I realized that these kiddos are used to having their books organized in bins.  I was unsure of using bins originally, because I thought they should use a legitimate library system.  I've now decided to let the ACTUAL library give them that exposure, and keep mine simple.

I've got a long way to go before it's all in order, but here's what I have so far!

 Thanks, Dollar Tree!

I can't wait to share the final result!

-Mrs. C