Time? . . .

As a (new to elementary, multi-age) teacher, I feel like I am constantly looking for more time in my day, my night, my weekends and my life!  As much as I plan to be productive and get certain things accomplished each night, it NEVER seems to happen and then I am bogged down and behind again!  I know, teachers say it gets easier...but by the time I'm ready for year 3 at this job, I will be leaving St. Kitts and starting over (who knows where!) again!

Aside from that, the school year is continuing to get great!  My kiddos are getting into the routine, and are quickly getting more and more giggly comfortable with each other in our small community!  The first three weeks are almost totally past, and I feel like we have done SO much, but SO little!  Getting our routines and procedures down, introducing Daily 5 and Math Centers and throwing in as many fun crafty projects as possible has taken all our time!

Thanks to Amy's Great Back to School Unit!

Again Thanks to Amy's Great Back To School Unit!

These adorable All About Me Books are from Lindsey at The Teacher Wife!

Another great activity from Amy at Step Into Second Grade!

In regards to my Daily 5 - I am SO happy with the way it is going and how *AMAZING* my kids are doing!  They are SO proud of themselves each day for building stamina and making their teacher proud!  I deemed them experts at Read to Self today as they hit a solid 17 minutes of stamina and know the Urgency, the I-Chart, the IPICK strategy like the back of their hands!  We are still working diligently on actually implementing the IPICK strategy properly each time we choose a book, but that will take time!  They completed Day 3 of Work on Writing (or WoW as we call it!) today and made it to 7 minutes of stamina, created a list of topics to write about and were excited to start, and sad to stop each time!  WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT?!

Here are some photos of what we've done, maybe I'll find spots on my walls for all of them and can get a picture of them together!

A students Topic List today!

Our Class Topic List

Hard at work during WoW!

I will admit though, I do have a major slight fear of how it will work in our TiNy classroom when everyone is not doing the SAME thing!  Training and practice!

Last week on Friday, we have an Everyday Math Inservice and learned a great deal about implementing the program into our classrooms.  I am still really a bit hesitant about teaching Math in a center format with 3 groups all at different levels, but I am hoping it works out okay!  This week we have been practicing rotating...Yes, JUST ROTATING!  Understanding that when the timer goes off we -
1) Are Silent
2) Clean up
3) Push in chairs and stand silently behind them until told to rotate
4) Rotate quickly and quietly and get RIGHT to work!

We are doing to use the acronym DING (like a timer!)
D - Don't Talk!
I - Immediately clean-up your area
N - No moving until told to rotate
G - Go to your next center and get RIGHT to work!

I only have an hour Math Block (which is actually less by the time we get in from Snack/Recess, get started and then clean up to go out to lunch!) so we have a LOT to fit in!  Luckily, I do have a few blocks where I only have one grade in my room at a time and that will be a HUGE Math re-teach time!

On a happy note...Missoula Children's Theatre is here for the next week and will be teaching the students grade K - 8 the play/musical of Robin Hood and there will be a HUGE performance next week on Thursday.  It is probably one of the most amazing things to see 2 people come in and transform a school of young children into amazing performers in such a short time!  It causes lots of turmoil to our schedule but is such an amazing experience for the kids its totally worth it!

This past week, in all my spare time, I have tried to create a fun and engaging Phonics Program for my kids.  They got really bored with the one I used last year, so I pulled the sound and word pattern outline from that program, and created my own!  I have 5 weeks worth done so far and am pretty excited about it!  This is my first BIG teacherspayteachers created unit and my first big unit I have complied in this format!  It consists of 40 words per week that students can choose from, and also a big activity to support that sound and other optional word work activities.

Check it out here:

Well, I feel like I may have a cold coming on...UGH!...so it's off to sleep for me!  I hope everyone is having a great school year thus far!