Washington Scenery

I've been spending a lot of time outside lately. Just soaking up the sunshine while I can! Already there has been a shift in the weather... the temps are cooler and there is a continual breeze. The native Seattle-ins (or Seattle-ites?) have been telling me that this is the best summer since the 1970s! I'm thankful for the beautiful weather! 

Some pictures of what I've been seeing as I spend time outside. I know some of these will look really similar, but I couldn't decide which ones to share, so you get to look at all of them. :)

These first few are of a sunset on Lake Washington. Lake Washington is to the east of the Puget Sound. These pictures are taken from Waverly Park in Edmonds... which I think is quickly becoming one of my favorite places. 

And the next couple are at a park in Lynnwood. This path is actually a raised path. It's kind of a swampy area all around and underneath the path. Very interesting!

Thinking about going to Mt. Rainier this weekend. We'll see. :)

The Classroom!!!

Yay!!!!! I have spent quite a bit of time in my classroom the past couple of weeks. I'm so thankful that I have had this time to work on it without having to worry about lessons or teaching during the day. It has helped sooooo much!

The room is probably about half the size of my room last year... maybe a pinch smaller. And there is no built in storage in my classroom this year. So I have spent A LOT of time shuffling things around, trying to solve the storage puzzle. I have re-organized cabinets and bookshelves at least two times each and some as many as four or five times. And they'll probably change again once the school year start rolling and I become familiar with what I need access to the most with this group of students and the curriculum that we are using. 

Please join me on a tour of my room. :)

There are three doors in my classroom. This picture is taken from the door that leads outside to the playground. It is the door that the students do all their coming and going through. Almost all of the classrooms have an outside door that the students use in order to reduce congestion in the one short narrow hallway that the school has. The door to the front right of my classroom leads into the 1st grade classroom. The door to the left at the front of the classroom leads right into the office area. Looking across the hall I can see the door that leads to two secondary classrooms and another door that leads to the 5th and 6th grade classrooms. Next door to me (to my left) is the 3rd grade classroom and through the 3rd grade classroom is the 4th grade classroom... kind of like a mirror image of my room and the 1st grade room.

My desk and my aide's desk. I'll have an aide for two hours in the morning. So thankful for her already!

My desk.

Keeping the family close :)

Some of my containers from last year, although they are slightly more beat up after six months of use and a move across the country.

Missing my nieces and nephews so much! I'm keeping them in my line of sight. :-)

More pictures of loved ones.

I'm using my aide's desk as a catch-all space for the next week here. I'm still trying to get myself organized.

Teacher books and binders on the top, library in the corner (almost all my books are still in Indiana... I miss them so much!!!), student mailboxes above the library, still trying to find a functional place for the homework bin, supplies that still need some organizing on the honey colored shelf, and manipulatives in the white cabinet to the left.

At least this cabinet is fairly well organized! It's my math manipulatives for student use and some history timelines.

Easily accessible white boards and clipboards for student work.

I'm using the same pieces for a board I had last year, but I'm using it a little differently this year. Instead of using it as a library check-out system this year I'm going to have the students fill out a little card on what their reading and what they like about the book and then clip it to their assigned T-shirt.

Student work display area with a little space to the right to display a poster for what we are learning in class or perhaps an anchor chart.

The rules board and the objectives frames. I cannot seem to get those frames to hang straight in a row! They keep tilting this way and that. :-(

Class rules... I LOVE how I can actually teach these rules with sound, Biblical reasoning behind them. I have a whole lesson plan written out with verses backing the rules and a good discussion on why we have rules and how we can honor God by following the rules. 

I'm planning on using these to just jot down what the main idea of the lesson is that day or the focus of the week. Not going to be writing formal objectives in these frames this year. (Don't worry, I'll keep writing formal objectives in my lesson plans!) I just want the kids to be able to look at these frames and see the key words and remember what we were talking about.

And THIS, my friends, is the reading curriculum! I'm so excited to be teaching from BOOKS!!! Real, physical books with opportunity for character development, a chance to explore the world that the stories create, to delve into engaging activities that help my students identify with the characters or time periods, to take field trips that go along with the stories...
I'm so excited to teach my students how to LOVE READING for the sake of reading!!!
I'm so excited to have a book that we read together, and to get to be creative in finding ways to make it come to life!
I'm so excited to be the one who gets to pick out the vocabulary that my students don't know and teach them!
I'm so excited to travel and explore these pages with my students!
I'm so thankful... so very, very thankful that I've been given this opportunity to be a teacher who is allowed to be creative.

Math books, science books, and spelling notebooks. Not quite as excited about these as I am about Literature, but I still am excited to have the opportunity to teach these subjects at the students' pace. All this week in the new-teacher meetings guess what they've been stressing?
"Quality... not quantity. Teach a little at a time and teach it well. Don't move on until the STUDENTS are ready! You have the freedom to and are encouraged to divert and help students as they need it. You'll finish when you finish. Set the foundation firmly, and the students will move quickly through the last part of the curriculum.

I'm expecting a lot of rainy days... a lot of indoor recess is my guess. Hopefully this is enough to keep them captivated. :)

The schedule board... the only magnetic board I have in the classroom. I will move the slips around each day, removing and adding in as needed.. We'll see how it works... and if I remember to do it. Hahaha! These types of little tasks tend to slip my mind once the school year gets rolling.

Just the calendar board... pretty basic.

The attendance button board.

The view from the front of the room, standing in the doorway leading to the office area. The windows at the back of the classroom look out on the playground. Fortunately, the entire grammar school shares a recess time so it shouldn't be a noise distraction to have the playground right outside.

Trying to solve some of the storage issues with these too. All sorts of goodies hidden in these containers! :) And then the black boxes on top will be used for Math Groups. Each day for about 20 minutes I am going to try and work with a group of 4 or 5 students to focus on a skill that they are struggling with or just time for reinforcement of the skill we are working on that week. Everyone else will be working on an activity in one of these boxes, just depending on which math group they are in...

And here are the groups. I gave the groups names that had to do something with Egypt, since here at Providence, that is the big 2nd grade thing. We get to do a detailed study on Egypt. Anyways, each box will hold a different activity. Really, the math groups will just be a concentrated review time if the students are working independently from the box activities, and a remedial time if they are meeting with me. They will only have one activity to complete each day, which will hopefully allow them to settle in and do it well, as well as avoiding the wasted time that moving from center to center causes.

This space is really bothering me. Really, it's just office supplies and binders filled with things that I might need, but am not sure about yet since I haven't taught this curriculum before. I need to figure out how to make this little corner more functional.

Up above the board is the historical timeline. We will be focusing on the kingdoms of Upper Egypt, Lower Egypt, and the unification of the Upper and Lower kingdoms this year.

I had to include this picture for my Plymouth friends.
My dear friends, this is ALL the technology that I have to incorporate. And I am perfectly okay with that. I think that I'll be using it a lot, since I'm using so much of my board space for displaying other things. I'm glad to be able to keep it simple. :)

Standing at the back row of desks, looking to the front of the room. I now have 18 students this year. I'm so thankful for the blessing of being here! I'm really looking forward to a great year!!!

Portland Visit

It has been a while since I posted last, but quite honestly, I haven't been doing anything terribly interesting. Not unless you count a play-by-play on what I've eaten for lunches each day and how I spend my days at school as interesting. Personally, I hate reading things when the author has written words that amount to nothing in meaning. So, I just waited until I had something (hopefully!) worthwhile to say. I'm going to share some pictures with you of a visit to Portland that my roommates, Tami and Victoria, and I took last Saturday. One of the most interesting things about visiting Portland was getting a better grasp on the setting of some of the books that I have read. Enjoy!

We started off by getting some lunch from Portland food trucks. This city block of food trucks was the setting for a part of one book I was reading, and it was lovely just how much the actual place matched the imaginary place in my mind!

This guy was playing as we walked into the Saturday market... and was still playing as we walked out a couple hours later. He was quite talented!

 Part of Portland...

Someone told me that Portland is known for its bridges. There certainly were a lot of them!

Not even sure what this is! But it looked urban and cool ;-)

Behold! Powell's Bookstore! It was my favorite part of the whole trip. (Go figure!) I found a really neat planner called the Uncalendar (it's a planner, but you write in the dates for when you use it so you don't end up with a whole bunch of wasted space, and it has tons of room for lists, goals, prioritizing, reminders, doodle boxes, phone numbers... and just about everything else a super organized, OCD person could wish for!), a cookbook called "Cooking for One"... which is just what I needed! I mean, I like stir-fry and eggs but sometimes I would like to have other food too. ;-) I also picked up copies of the Iliad, the Odyssey, and a book on Egypt (I'm working on becoming an expert before I get to teach a detailed unit on it a little later this year.

It certainly was an interesting place to visit!

We stopped at Voodoo Doughnuts. It probably is a tourist trap... but the doughnuts were really good and VERY different! We bought a dozen and then shared them so that we could try as many as we could. My favorite was the Bacon Maple Doughnut (it had real bacon strips on top of the maple-flavored frosting!)

The line for Voodoo Doughnuts...

While we were in line this Monster truck pulled up and started handing out free monsters to whoever wanted one. I'm not a Monster fan, but the crowd was thrilled. The interesting thing is that this kept happening throughout the day with different items... Monster, yogurt, coupons... Portland is apparently a very giving city! Haha ;-)

The bricks on the Voodoo Doughnut were painted gold and, although the picture doesn't show it very well, they had a glitter coating on them too. It was very eye-catching.

All those people waiting in line for a doughnut!!! It was only about a 20 minute wait time though. The workers were very efficient! 

The box.

Good things come in pink boxes!

On our way home after a long day in Portland! And the weirdest thing happened when we were coming into Seattle and started seeing the skyline and driving between the tall buildings... 

...I felt like I was home.

Such a weird feeling... I was NOT expecting that! So it appears that I am adjusting... and maybe even starting to feel at home in this outrageously large city with crazy traffic patterns!