Saturday, March 29, 2014

Five for Fraturday

I have a deepened respect for all you full-time teachers who blog. I just finished my first full week of teaching and most my energy was spent keeping my own head on straight. I am extremely lucky and grateful that my school has a new teacher mentoring program or I don't know what I would do! 

Okay, okay, I don't mean to sound melodramatic. Over all , I am loving my new position and adore my students. Most of my kiddos are adjusting really well and have been comfortable with me being their new teacher. I am still working on getting to know them beyond what their files have told me. I definitely have a lot of learning to do but if the rest of the year is like their week, then I will be just fine. 


My students are absolutely loving our current author study on David Shannon. The previous teacher started with the Oh David books and I continued this week with some other favorites including A Bad Case of Stripes, Too Many Toys, and Jangles

This coming week we are going to be making David emotion masks. I created a template of his head, ears and nose for students to cut out and then glue down. We will be working on identifying and naming emotions so I will ask each student to name the emotion they draw on David and then a para will write it on the back. 

I've also created a David's emotions mini poster for some of our lower kiddos. 



I am so excited to debut my new blog title and new blog design. I was really impressed with the awesome names that people submitted. I had a number of favorites that made it a little difficult to choose a single winner. Check back in a few days to see if your name was picked!

Tuesday our school had our first annual Dance-A-Thon. Each class took 15 minute rotations dancing in our auditorium. I've been talking with my paras  about incorporating a music time into our weekly schedule and after the awesome display of dance moves at the Dance-A-Thon, I know I have to! I could not believe some of my kiddos who were bustin' a move to Kidz Bop hits as well as some classics (helllooo Chicken Dance!). Our class managed to raise nearly $200 for our school which I thought was pretty impressive for preschoolers!


This might sound a little trivial but I wanted to share that I wrote my first IEP on Friday. And by my first, I mean my first official IEP for an actual student and not a case study done during school. A student of mine, whom I never actually met, withdrew this week and I was quickly assigned a new student. I completed their IEP yesterday and I will get to lead my first IEP meeting as a teacher this coming week. 

If any of your Twitter account a recently spammed by my Twitter, I apologize. I received one of those hacker tweets disguised as a tweet from a friend and my account was "compromised" according to Twitter. I have since changed my password but wanted to give a heads up to the rest of you. In retrospect I should have realized it was a hack when it asked me to log in even though I rarely ever log out.

Enjoy your weekend! Hopefully it is dry where you're at!



5 comments:

  1. Hey Kayla. I know you're super busy, but I wanted to let you know that I nominated you for a Sunshine Blogger Award. Please check it out:

    http://www.pinkwatermelons.blogspot.com/

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    1. Thank you so much Susan for the nomination! I recently completed a Sunshine Blogger post so I don't wanna post one again too soon but I am very grateful for the nomination.

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  2. Kayla,

    Ha! I'm not the only one that thinks your blog is great! I was stopping by to tell you that I nominated you for the Liebster Award. Both awards take some time, so if you decide to accept, maybe you could combine them! I'm cheering you on from SC as you being your teaching journey! Stay positive and know that you can't do it all. Make sure you take time for you and your life outside of school. Head on over to my blog to read the details on the award.

    :) Ash
    The Rolly Chair

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    1. I have been so busy, I have not had the chance to thank you for the nomination! Also to thank you for the kind words. It's always encouraging to hear from others. :)

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  3. Do you have a copy of the David Masks? I teach preschool and this would be perfect for teaching emotions.

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