Moving In

Today I spent a bunch of time in my classroom cleaning, organizing, and putting away. I was delighted to find that I get a huge storage closet, and I discovered some awesome presents of posters on my desk this morning as well. I'm also rediscovering the concept of begging, borrowing, and stealing...err...treasure hunting as a teacher. I scored some stacking trays today that the 4th grade teacher didn't want, and the principal is going to look for a stool for me. It seems that once again, just as with Parkview, I have hardly any furniture. (Although, it's not quite as bad as Parkview.)

I prepared my library corner for the most part. I'm really looking forward to the outside reading program I created. Basically the kids will have time during the week for free choice silent reading, and once a week we will have a voluntary book talk. The only requirement here is that nobody is distracting anyone else. However, for every 200 pages recorded in their reading logs, they'll get a small prize/trinket. Of course I'm going to have a chart to show everyone's progress. At the end of each 9 weeks, those kids which have at least made it to the 600 page club will get to participate in a pizza & sundae party. Yum! I'm hoping this will encourage more reading and make reading fun, not just something you have to do for school.

I discovered I have basically no teacher editions for 6th grade when the principal thought she did, and I also discovered that I will have 6 kids for sure, 3 in 5th and 3 in 6th. That will be a really nice number, especially since I thought we would only have 3 or 4 last week. I also met the 4th grade teacher who is new and one of the kindergarten teachers who is also new, very cool, and my age. :) I'm hoping we'll be great friends.

At home I finished up a packet I will hand the kids of our procedures & rules as well as a couple of other paperwork items. I don't quite have all of our procedures yet since the principal isn't really sure how we'll do dismissal or lunch. If you haven't guessed the grade school switched floors with the preschool/daycare, so everyone's a bit confused and reorganizing.

In my last post, I mentioned educational philosophers whom I was impressed with. I forgot to mention my all time favorite of Howard Gardner who gave us the multiple intelligence theory. Basically Gardener has realized that since we aren't all alike, we don't think or learn alike. (no kidding) I've always tried to incorporate all of the intelligences in every unit I've ever planned, to keep things interesting, to reach every student, and to stretch every student in their thinking.

I had to add that little bit that I forgot. Tomorrow my mom will be helping me move furniture, and then we're going shopping!