At last

Blogging at last....

I've been on a little blogging hiatus because I've been super incredible busy. Let's start with Wednesday. I love to post on Wednesday's because I usually get home a little earlier. Wednesday is a short day where the kids get out an hour early and we have professional development, meetings, or just play catch up. Well we happened to have a boring Marzano (do you know him? he is on my hit list if I had a hit list)  faculty meeting that was made better by PTA having lots of wonderful soups to warm us up with! (They shower us with so many wonderful things it just astonishes me  every time!) After the meeting I went to my room at 3:30 and then didn't leave until 6:00! I know that is pretty crazy but I had to do sub plans, make sure my room was ready, and the million other little things that take up a teachers time. 

Look what my little ones did on Wednesday: 

They LOVE LOVE LOVED making these contraction kids and seeing them posted in the classroom keeps contractions on their mind. They were referring to those kids all day long! :) 

Rewind to Thursday again...I had a sub in my class because I went to a district reading coach meeting which is mostly just professional development and discussion about reading in the county. I was very lucky to go my reading coach suggested I attend one with her since I eventually would love to be a reading coach. Unfortunately my reading coach could not make it cause her little one had to have surgery so I was solo. At first I was a little nervous...I had to act like a reading coach. I pulled it off though! Everyone was super friendly and it was a wonderful day of professional development. I just tell you each session I went to because I'll be blogging about each topic soon. I went to Connecting Reading and Writing (specifically with the Houghton Mifflin series), Common Core State Standards, RTI (Response to Intervention), and Academic Vocabulary with Mary Ellen Vogt. It was crazy to have Mary Ellen Vogt as a presenter because I used to quote her in my graduate school papers and here I was sitting in her presentation! It was such a great experience to go to this meeting. I love good professional development! (Oh and hour lunch breaks at Panera.)

Friday...oh wait it is still Friday! Today was a long day! I had a teacher workday at school which is actually perfect for everything I needed to get done! I have never had to actually work a teacher workday but our principal made us work today unless we had comp time. I got so much organizing, rearranging, and cleaning done today. I'm so glad I went in and didn't use any comp time. My class looks amazing now and is so organized and clean I can't wait to show you! * This would be way too much for this one post and will be it's own post for the Clutter-Free Classroom Project.* 

I also got around to grading my students math mid-terms (everything we have learn in math so far) and I was so happy! 14 students got an S (satisfactory 80-100) and 4 students got an W (working on it) 79-65. I now know who I need to spend some more time with in math and what skills they still haven't mastered. Then I decided to get started on the dreaded report cards and finished entering in all the grades but I haven't started on comments yet. I'll wait until Sunday for comments.

 I also found out today that my kids were wonderful with the sub yesterday according to her note. Then underneath she said *Jeff* (alias-I will never use my kids real names) had to go to see our AP (assistant principal). So I marched up to the AP's office fully expecting he did something ridiculous in class to get sent there. Well he did just not in my class. Jeff ride the bus and on Wednesday afternoon he took scissors home in his backpack and then cut his BFF's hair and his hair. *Angel* was pretty upset that her hair got cut by Jeff while she turned her back to him on the bus. Her mother was even more upset about the hair incident and called our principal. So she had to call them down to the office where Jeff gave a full and truthful account of what happened. He then got suspended from the bus for 3 days. This was not his first offense on the bus. According to AP the hair cut he gave himself and Angel is very noticeable. I was just so shocked that Jeff would do this! Scissors on a bus...cutting hair... someone could have gotten seriously hurt. Needless to say Jeff is in big trouble at home. Just thought this story was a little out of the ordinary and a little funny (since no one got hurt). I can't wait to see these two waltz into class together on Monday.

Happy Weekend! I'll be posting clean classroom pictures soon!