What's Up in Room 145

I realized last night as I was laying bed, exhausted, yet still not able to fall asleep for some unexplained reason???? that I hardly ever just post freely. I love linking up with my fellow teaching bloggers, but sometimes I just wanna post about whatever my heart desires! Here's a hodge podge of what's going on in Room 145...

Dancing.
A whole lot of dancing.
Dance Party Friday started officially my third year of teaching. I had an active group who loved to move around. After that year, I have kept it a tradition. If the students as a whole have a good week, we get to watch a few Just Dance songs on Youtube and let out all of our wiggles! They love it, I love it. And it's just plain fun. Plus they love when I do the dances with them. This is our current favorite:

Singing.
Lots and lots of singing.
We're busy 24/7 in our classroom. If I just talked in the same voice all day long, the kids would go crazy, I would go crazy, life just wouldn't be good. I'm not a yeller, so when I want their attention I just sing a tune. No songs in particular. I just sing things like "put your pencils down and look at me" in a "fancy opera voice" and they do it. The best part is that it works! and they compliment me. I hear things like "you should be the music teacher" or "have you ever tried out for American Idol?" I'll sign autographs later people.


We laugh. A lot.
Guys, it's the only way we're going to survive. If you're not having fun while you're teaching, or doing whatever your job is, then what's the point of doing it? I read in funny voices when we are reading, I use crazy examples when trying to teach nouns "Ms. Potter wants to eat a PEANUT BUTTER and SOCK SANDWICH." (It gets the point across). Today's giggles were when I told the kids I was going to be away at training in Columbia for a couple of days in October. One student asked me what they were training me to be. My response: a ninja. Their response:
 (love ya Chloe)

Craziness aside, we do a lot of learning.
I'm amazed by how much they have grown so far this year. I am so excited about using our new Writing Curriculum called "Being A Writer." For years teaching writing has been a real weakness for me. I always wondered: I know what a good writer looks like, but how do I get them there? This year... we are getting there. The program is great. It's set up for four weekly lessons, plenty of brainstorming ideas, partner work, share time, and awesome writing prompts. Yesterday's writing lesson took us on a trip around our school. We sketched some different locations then met in the classroom with partners to share what we found. Our partners helped us to create fictional stories based on our sketches. Perfecto!

Another fun picture this week comes from us watching the Doubles Rap video. They were pumped up for math after singing along to it. Did I mention I love to sing?

Progress Reports are coming out this week. This time is a little high stress because it's the first time they've ever gotten "real grades." No matter what it says on the report, I'm proud of my kiddos. And even though I love my class, I'm happy to report we are 1/8 done with the school year ;)

Have a great week!