Groovy Educator

  When one of my students has a birthday I give them a cute birthday hat to wear.  The class sings an adorable Happy Birthday song.  It even includes singing Happy Birthday like a cat! Meow, meow, meow...  I ask the student to share his/her plans for his/her special day and then the class takes turns asking questions and giving the birthday kid compliments.  Having the children ask questions is harder than in sounds.  Most of the kids want to share about their own birthday.  There are a multitude of teachable moments on birthday share days!   Last year I had my student of the week bring in show and tell and we write letters to him/her and staple them in a book.  I usually took a grade on this activity since it was purposeful and I could grade different elements of writing:  spacing, spelling, capitalization, format, originality/creativity, etc. Since our district will be implementing Lucy Calkins, I would like to only d...

Last week I went to work in my room.  It was the first time I've been back since closing it out last year.  I wanted to return earlier but the air conditioning was out on my hall most of the summer.   Therefore my room was one of the last ones to be cleaned.  I found out that I have to wait until Monday to go back because the hall floor was stripped and the custodians were going to lay the wax down. Last year before I left I drew a map of the possible room arrangement for this year so I was able to quickly place the furniture.  Well, it wasn't as quick as I'd like... I brought my angel (my new baby) with me.  She is going to be four months old next week and she wanted oodles of attention.  I love her so much so it was harder to focus on work than usual.  I moved a desk then ran over and cooed at her, moved another desk ran back and cooed some more.  By the end of the day I was exhausted and did not accomplish as much as I'm used to....