I say SCHOOL, not WORK

 There are many, many rewarding aspects of my job, day in and day out.   I can't speak for other teachers out there, but I personally struggle in day to day conversations to say "I'm going to have to stay at work late tomorrow,"  or "I'm going to bring this table into work,"--whatever the general conversation regarding my job is, I find it hard to say the word "work".  Instead, I find myself saying "school".  I had a recent conversation with a friend of mine who called me out on this one day, and asked why I say "school" instead of "work", because really, it is my work, my job.  I had to think about that for a second and told her that I think it is because my job doesn't feel like work.  Don't get me wrong, it is work, it takes work to keep things new, fun, exciting, hands on, all while needing to hit all the standards for the all of the different levels your students may be at, those aspects are not always easy.  However, when I walk into that classroom, and I'm greeted by those bright, shining faces everyday, it does not feel like work.  I'm not at "work", I'm at school, and my students are part of my second family.  Together, we embrace each day as a day to be our best, support each other in our academic progress, and be a team.  At what other job do you get to sing, dance, play tag at recess, roller skate (or in my case attempt to  :)) with the class in PE, get pictures and notes daily from them, start my day with several hugs, & see so much growth in your students throughout the school year?  THIS, my friend, is why I don't say "work". :)

Since I last blogged, it has been really exciting to see the writing and reading of the class just take off.  This week, I sent home our Monday Morning Journals so parents could see the writing improvements their child has made since September.  I am always amazed when I look at these.  These journals start with the students remembering something they did over the weekend that they would like to share.  I write their sentence for them until approx. October.  Then, I make them choose 1 word to pick out from their sentence and write.  For example, if they say "I had a soccer game", I have them try to sound out the word soccer.  A few weeks later, we build short sentences in their journals with sight words (popcorn words) they have been given.  It may look something like, "I like to _______." This progresses and progresses throughout the year and in the 2nd semester, we add in a greater stress for the mechanics to writing--such as finger spacing, lowercase letters, details, etc.  Right now, I have several students writing 3 full sentences at each journal entry.  All students have progressed and it is amazing to see, so I wanted to share those with the parents as well.  The parents wrote back nice words of praise for this progress and I read those to the students on Friday.  They beamed--and they should--I'm so proud of all their hard work!

Part of our writing progress is due to learning to break those big words up into syllables and then spell each syllable.  It is less overwhelming.  Here we are practicing our syllable counting/clapping in one of our centers.  

Part of our Language Arts lately has been working on digraphs (ch,th,sh) and finding word chunks.  We practiced --ing words and made headbands "King of _Ing" words, then wrote different _ing words on the headbands themselves.  

Mrs. Dugan made some fun slime for a center and we put digraph pictures in it.  They had to pull out the card and find it on the sheet, filling in the ch/th/sh.  

In math, we are working on measurement.  We measured length with blocks, and the height of all the classmates with yarn.  Come and see how tall KB is by looking at the chart right outside our door.  :)

It looks as if I am cutting this child's hair-- :)  I promise I am not, I am cutting the yarn showing how tall he is.  

Here we are working on our number crosses.  Using the hundred's chart as a resource to filling in those missing numbers.

In Religion, we have been focusing on Lent, and forgiveness.  We are getting ready to start our Holy Week study this coming week.  

These leaves flap up with God the Father, God the Son, & God the Holy Spirit on the inside, with our illustrations of each also on the inside.

We have since covered our Lent poster with specific ideas of things we can be doing to help us grow during this Lenten Season.

Thanks for stopping by to see what we have been up to.  'Til next time...