Hi.
What a week! Anyone else feeling the same? I could really go for an Arby's orange cream shake!
My recharge this week has been a dark classroom with light praise music playing whenever the kids are out of the room. We've been busy learning as often as we can, though. Take a peek at what we've been up to this week:
We started Spelling this week. Before each Spelling introduction, we remember that in order to be a good speller, you need to hear the sounds. Good spellers know the letters to write for each sound (how to spell the sounds). Then, good spellers make an image of the word in their head.
In Math this week, we worked on doubles and doubles strategies. We also worked with some Math vocabulary, like the words equation and addends. Today, after our AIMSweb Math tests we made an equation chain for the number 10.
Woot! Woot! for Writing Power. Although I've only completed 2 of the writing lessons from that book, I'm already loving it. Earlier this week, we made an invitation in our writing journals to our readers, inviting them to a thinking party. "Come! Think!" Reading is about thinking, after all. We want our readers to laugh when we write about something funny or feel sad if we write about something that makes us sad.
Then, we did a lesson on brainstorming ideas to write about. We talked about how your brain is so small but is so important. Not only does it control everything your body does, it holds all your thoughts, ideas, and memories, too. It's like a pocket. So we drew bean-shaped brains and brainstormed ideas to go in each of our brains' pockets.
Post-Monday, this is basically what my lesson plans become... to-do lists. Anyone else in this same place? Everything is taking WAY longer than planned, so I've been making lists of the most important things that need to get done.
I sure hope things turn around soon. Hopefully, the more normal our routine becomes, the more the kids settle down and our classroom becomes more manageable. I'm not a morning person, so I naturally am able to stay up late, except that I have been so worn out everyday this school year, I can {very unusually} be asleep by 10.
I love this board. It's my best birthday board yet! I hope the kids enjoy it when they come back on Tuesday. I'm just disappointed that it took me until the 13th day of school to get it up. Oh, well.
You'll notice the big space in the top left. I had two new students on Wednesday, and I need to take their pictures still, so January and February are missing.
You should definitely take a moment to share your week, too. I think we can all agree that we thrive on sharing with each other... ideas, encouragement, struggles.
I'm SO thankful for this three-day weekend!
Cheers to that!
