Work on President's Day??

Yes, that is correct! We had to work on President's Day. The district gave us off Friday, for Rodeo Day, and we had to go to school today! Oh well, still a 3 day weekend, and my what a beautiful weekend it was! 80 degrees and bright sunshine everyday! Tiffany and I had a relaxing weekend of laying out and lesson planning! I am still trying to think of when I want to start my unit. I am teaching every subject but writing, and need to figure out when would be a good time to begin a unit, since we are in the middle of units now, and I also can't decide what subject I want to focus my unit on. I love math, but science is usually a good subject to do units in, however we are still in the middle of the Force and Motion unit and we will be on that for another 15 or so days. After that, its the Human Body(doesn't sound too interesting)--I guess since this is an internship, I might as well go for the more difficult topic and learn from it! So as of now, that is my plan of action! I need to start researching what to teach second graders about the Human Body...I have my work cut out for me!

Today in school we did an awesome force and motion game called The Lid Skid! Its exactly what it sounds like, you need a lid and a yard stick! You measure one meter, put down a piece of tape as a marker, measure two meters, put another tape and then four meters! Everyone starts at the same line. You have to push the lid to the first tape line (1 meter) then go back to the starting line, and push to the second tape line (2 meters) and finally the last tape line (4 meters) we then talked about force and what kind of force you gave to the lid to get it to go to the first line, second and last! The kids had a blast trying to see who could get the lid the closest to the line! Overall i think it was successful and meaningful for the students!

After that science fun, they asked, "Miss. Lang can we play tug of war again!" because on Friday at the end of the day, I allowed them to play tug of war to experience pull! Again, they loved it because to them its like playing a game, but once we came back inside the discussion about pull and force was so good and everyone was trying to talk at once they were so excited! So if the students have a good week, I may allow them to play again! =) A little incentive to do well never hurts!

The rest of the week is pretty normal. In math we started talking about centimeters. We already covered inches, feet and yards. The kids also love Ticket Into Math which I created to start each math class! If I forget to start math class without a ticket into math problem, they always remind me! I hope that means they like it!

Well, off to watch some TV with the family and Tiff! Have a fabulous day!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Well the perks to being a teacher....all of the chocolate hearts your students give you! I got WAY too many, but it is the thought that counts and we had a great Valentine's Day! My students are getting into the swing of me teaching most of the day and understand the expectations I have for them. The thing my students enjoy most during our day, are definitely the spelling word chants (we stand up and spread out all over the room and do movements to our spelling words. so far their favorite is "blast off" for each spelling word!) They also love the jumping jacks we do randomly to get some of their "wiggles" out! During the day if they start to get restless they ask "Miss.Lang, it think we need to do jumping jacks!" Our days are going a lot smoother with adding some activity to the schedule to get the kids up and moving!

The best part of my day today was the read aloud that I did this morning. I read the book, Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse. Reason for choosing this book was to show the students that they may not always agree with the rules or decisions a teacher makes, but in the end the teacher will do what is best for the students and still be there for them and care about them no matther what! The students really enjoyed the read aloud and are looking forward to what I will be reading tomorrow! On Wednesday I will be reading 'Have you Filled a Bucket Today' I hope this will be another reminder to the students how they need to treat others. I am hoping between my mentor teacher and I we can collect enough 'buckets' to give one to each student. I think they will love to have the reminder of the bucket throughout the day, and it will help them work well with others in the classroom.

This week is a four day week for us, Friday is Rodeo Day. That will definitely be a new experience for me, and I hope the students will teach me something this week and help me better understand Rodeo Day!

Marvelous Monday!

Oh yes, what a marvelous Monday I had! Students were extra wound up today, due to the super bowl last night, and added to that, today was the 100th day of school!! We ended up having a great day! We started a new chapter in math today on measurement so we were able to have some fun comparing two or more objects! We used words like short, shorter and shortest and long, longer, longest! We were comparing the size of our desks to other objects in our classroom. The students responded well to the hands on activity and did really well. Also during math class, our "ticket into math" for the day was, if you could have 100 of anything what would it be and why? (because of the 100th day of school!) I got some very interesting responses, but we had so much fun sharing! Some students responded, I would want 100 dollars so I could be rich, others wished for Lego's or scooter-(not sure why one child would need 100 scooters but I went with it!) so said candy or cupcakes to eat, so overall I think they really enjoyed thinking about the question!

Also later this week, we will be starting a new unit in science, Force and Motion! I am really excited about this unit because there are SO many hands on activities to do with the students to help them understand force and motion, so hopefully I will have a positive outcome teaching this later in the week. It is also the first time I am teaching science so that's double the pressure!

My mentor teacher and I are getting along great! She loves all of the ideas I have and is so willing to let me try anything! I also told her last week that I decided to stay at Celebration for 12 weeks and she jumped up and down and gave me a huge hug! She was so happy to hear that and cant wait for me to teach the full day! I am still loving my teaching experience down here and I am learning a lot along the way!!

So this past weekend....fabulous (minus the weather!) Friday, Tiffany, Shannon and I went to Columbia, a restaurant in downtown celebration and got this 1902 salad that everyone we met told us we must try, so we did! Thoughts??......wasn't the best salad we have ever eaten, but definitely a good salad! They bring this huge bowl out to your table and mix the dressing ingredients right there in front of you and then stir it with these huge tongs, that was pretty neat!

Saturday Tiff and I woke up at 8:30 (yes our body clock is starting to be on school mode again...we can't sleep in past that if we tried!) we ate a nice breakfast and then went ORANGE PICKING!!!! SO FUN, one of the items on our Florida Bucket List that Christina had us create! It was so fun we got a huge bag and filled it to the brim with oranges and tangerines! YUMMY!

Miss Tiffany showing off and loving the all of the oranges!

On Saturday night the Ganley's, Shannon, Tiffany and I went to a restaurant in Disney! I forget the name of it, but it was great! The entire cast of Cinderella was there and we got our picture taken with all of them, including prince charming! =) Dinner was great, it was buffet style which means we all ate WAY too much. After dinner we took a monorail ride around Disney and we got off just in time to catch the fireworks, again (from a different view this time, it was so amazing!) I must say the fireworks every night are by far my favorite part of our weekends!

Yes, please look at the dessert above! There were two of those brought to our table of 9 people, after we had already eaten at the buffet! Let's just say that one of those would have been enough, but we never pass up ice cream! After Disney, Christina took us girls to the outlet mall =) This was fun, except for the little drizzles of rain that were going on the whole time! Sunday was the normal Church and relax day, which was much needed!

Hopefully here's to another great week in the classroom!!!

Dove Dark Chocolate Message of the Day: Take advantage of every free moment you have! (and yes, I will be doing that!)

another photo!

Disney Fireworks!

Photos!

Epcot =)

This is Celebration k-8 school!

You really can't tell from this photo how beautiful the campus is! You just have to experience it for yourself =)

Terrific Tuesday!

Hello!!!
Alright, what a great start to my week. The weather has been in the low 70 and sunny yesterday and today, my students are working so hard and following the new rules I put into place last week!

When I first started observing in my classroom, I noticed that my students did not have many consequences to their behaviors, and as I have been taught at Ashland, students need consequences! Now they are only 7 and 8 so the consequences must be reasonable, so when your card gets flipped to yellow, you owe me 10 minutes of your 20 minutes of recess...pretty reasonable I think! So far I have only had 4 students owe me recess in two days, hopefully by the end of the week we are down to none =) (one can only hope for perfect students!) I am teaching spelling, reading and math and the students are responding very well to me teaching them! They are involved and love to participate in discussions! When I notice my students are getting a little.."sleepy" shall we say, we do a quick stand up, spread out, and ten jumping jacks on my count, and sit back down quietly and keep working! They LOVE IT!!

Today was mine (and Tiffany's) first experience with the new teachers salad bar...all I can say is...AMAZING! After Tiffany went through the line to make her salad, let's just say they had to restock! She sure does love her veggies!!! I personally loved the tuna salad and spinach with yellow peppers and carrots part! My salad was great and tomorrow is salad bar too...lunch is the new high point to my Tuesday's and Wednesday's!! Another high point to Wednesday's...EARLY RELEASE! Why has Ohio not caught onto such a wonderful thing =)

Next week I will continue teaching the same subjects and then pick up science and eventually writing. The writing series Florida uses is very different than what I am used to in Ohio, so that will take some getting used to!

I really cannot put into words how blessed and thankful I am to have this opportunity. I am definitely learning a lot and strengthening myself as an individual and as a teacher!