School and the City

...and you are, too! Honestly! Tieks . I am SURE you have heard of them, if you are a teacher that frequents Instagram and educational blogs. (If not, get out from under your rock!) Tieks have a reputation in the online world of educators for being the go-to workday shoes. I have feet issues (Achilles tendonitis), so I was skeptical. I especially have trouble with flats. But I also hadn't found any shoes at all, other than sneakers with orthodic inserts, that were comfortable enough to teach in all day. After weeks of researching, I finally made the decision to go for it. #TreatYoSelf The first pair that I bought was leopard. Maybe I should have picked something a little more boring, but in my humble opinion, leopard is a neutral. Obviously, I was sooo excited to wear them to school! At the end of the day, my feet felt.... well, just fine. I didn't feel like I was walking on clouds or anything, but I didn't have any pain or blisters either. I found that T...

Y'all. I hate pencils. And pencil sharpeners. Some days I daydream about quitting my job and inventing something to replace pencils and becoming a millionaire overnight. Oh wait. Those things already exist. Thanks mechanical pencils and ink pens for shattering my dreams. Unfortunately, I do not prefer mechanical pencils to old-fashioned pencils. Second graders and mechanical pencil lead do not make for a happy ending. I'm that girl that sharpens pencils for her students on my own time after school because I've spent too much time and money buying electric pencil sharpeners that end up in the trash. You can't use this new pencil sharpener, I told them. Only I can touch it , I told them. I am tired of you all breaking pencil sharpeners that I buy with my own money, I told them. You already know how this story ends. Yep, that sharpener broke too, even though the only person who touched it was perfect in every way. Ahem. Then, this pencil sharpener walke...

This year was my fourth time around teaching text features , and I decided that it was an area that I could show improvement. I think text features are a difficult concept for young students to learn because it's typically rote memorization of a lot of funny words that they don't understand the importance of.  This year has been the fastest my students have ever learned the names of text features, and they know how to use them, too.  First of all, I have seen anchor charts on Pinterest where a teacher tears apart a worn-out nonfiction book and uses pieces of it to create a visual reference for text features. I loved the idea of that, but it was a LOT of work and I didn't want to have to do it year after year. I spent an afternoon cutting apart a book and some magazines and gluing pieces on a piece of chart paper. Then I took that baby down the hall to the place where the magic happens: the teacher workroom. Because that's where the laminator i...

We are wrapping up our narrative writing unit. We use Lucy as our writing workshop curriculum, but I like to put my own spin on things.  My class this year doesn't love writing... (and let's be honest, I don't love teaching writing) ...so I try to make it as exciting as possible by making real world connections. Write Like a Detective  We discussed what it takes to be a detective. Students decided that detectives look carefully, take their time, and so on.  I told them that by the time we were through, they would become official certified writing detectives  and that they would get their own official writing magnifying glasses . *Cue excited gasps.* Kids are the best. Throughout the week, I taught them new ways that they could "write like a detective." I used my own writing as mentor texts for this week. Kids love hearing/reading stories about me because I tell them funny or interesting stories about myself. The engagement is grea...

Hi, friends! It's been a while! I am 4 weeks in at my new school, and things are going... well, it's going! As I try to stay afloat and survive the back-to-school chaos in addition to getting acclimated at my new home away from home, I've been trying to stay positive.  A happy teacher is a good teacher.  Well, that may not be exactly true, but you get the idea.  I've been reflecting on a book that I read over the summer, Move Your Bus , written by the truly incredible Ron Clark. I was able to download the book for free with my free Audible trial. I listened to it while I was packing for my move. A lot of the stories in the book were the same stories that Ron Clark told when I went to visit RCA in May , but I still loved the book, especially because it was in his own voice! I plan to add a hardback to my bookshelf soon.  My Biggest Move Your Bus Takeaways: Don't get caught up in negativity. I know we hear this all the time, but it...

Day two is in the books for me. As always, the back to school season has been crazy and I've been running around like a chicken with its head cut off. Hmm. I didn't realize how strange that expression was until I typed it out. Anyways, we had "Sneak Peek" on Thursday of last week. It went well! Almost all of my families showed up. I love meeting the kids ahead of time and putting a face to parents' names. If a family walked in with hands full of supplies, I went ahead and directed them to the buckets in the back of the room. If not, I directed them to the screen. Visual instructions are important for students AND parents! My table this year wasn't as pretty as last year. I didn't have the time to create or print or laminate signs, so whiteboards worked just fine.  Parents signed in (and provided email addresses) and completed the transportation form while my new students found the scavenger hunt paper and began.  I love to do s...

Don't get mad at me - I am NOT wishing my summer away! However, back-to-school does mean teaching my favorite reading unit! (Also, honestly, I have been meaning to blog about this since, oh I don't know, LAST SEPTEMBER.) I'm unsure about what's going to happen at my new school, but with my old team, we were kind of left in charge of our own literacy curriculum so we used the Readers Workshop model by Lucy Calkins. The first unit for second graders is really quick, and then comes my absolute favorite unit, Tackling Trouble! The unit ties in perfectly with the beginning of football season, and you know how I feel about football season... The point of this unit is to teach kids strategies to help them decode tricky words. This is the next level, after students have developed decoding skills and a decent knowledge of phonics. Strategies build students' confidence so that they can approach books like this: Anywaaaaaays, each Lucy minilesson has a ...