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Friday, January 27, 2012
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Utilizing Parent Helpers
Fortunately at our school we have many parents who love helping (or sometimes spying) in the classroom. Because I teach older kiddos, I really don’t need much parent help with centers or reading groups.
I know that I will always have a group of mommies begging to help out in some way or another, so this is how I appease them. At our Back to School Night meeting during the first week of school, I put out a sign up sheet with the following categories I need help with. These are the categories:
- Photographer (2 needed): Parents needed to be our paparazzi for special events like assemblies, class parties, etc.
- Scholastic Book Order Coordinator: Parent needed to assist in placing online book orders, and sorting orders when shipments arrive.
- Party Planner (4 needed): Parents needed to help plan parties for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentines Day, and 49er Day
- Enrichment Assistant: Parents needed to accompany our class to an enrichment class to assist the teacher. Enrichment classes are art, library, P.E., music, and computers.
- Paper Filer: Parent needed to come on Fridays at 10:00 am to help file students’ work into their folders.
Visit the following sites for more ways to use parent helpers.
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Public Vs Private School
Click the link to read my thoughts on public vs private schools
http://theresourcefulteacher.com/index.php/everyday-events/24-the-differences-between-public-and-private-schools
http://theresourcefulteacher.com/index.php/everyday-events/24-the-differences-between-public-and-private-schools
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Let's Play a Game!
Sometimes we like to play a game called “Stump the Teacher.” The point of the game is to see if the kids can find a word in the dictionary that I can’t spell. If they “stump the teacher,” they get a reward ticket. If not, someone else gets a chance.
Sometimes I get a little nervous when playing this game because you never know what “interesting” words the kids are going to find.
Sometimes I get a little nervous when playing this game because you never know what “interesting” words the kids are going to find.
So the kids gave me words like circumlocution, deliberation, procurator, and nominee. We had time for one more word and I called on the last student. She looked down at her dictionary, took a second to use the pronunciation key to help her out, and said, “Spell masochism.”
Inside my head I started screaming, “oh my gosh.” This sweet, innocent girl had NO idea what this word means, nor did she read the definition (thank God). So I wrote it quickly on the board (I spelled it correctly, yay me), then quickly erased it and said, “OK, that’s all the time we have for this activity, let’s move on.”
We won’t be playing that game anymore.
Inside my head I started screaming, “oh my gosh.” This sweet, innocent girl had NO idea what this word means, nor did she read the definition (thank God). So I wrote it quickly on the board (I spelled it correctly, yay me), then quickly erased it and said, “OK, that’s all the time we have for this activity, let’s move on.”
We won’t be playing that game anymore.
Friday, January 13, 2012
Tickets - Reward System
How do you reward your students for positive behavior? (Please don’t say candy). There’s many ways I’ve found effective, but one I’m using this year is the ticket system. Students earn tickets and can save them up to buy things from the teacher store.
Here is a sample list of items students may purchase:
- Sitting in the teacher’s chair for an hour
- A “no homework” pass good for one homework assignment
- Extra 5 minutes of recess
- Special helper of the day
- Sit next to a buddy all day
See Tickets Part 2 for ways students can earn or lose tickets. Click Here
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
The Perks of Private School
On my last blog I talked about the differences between public school and private school. Today I want to discuss what I enjoy most about working at a private school.
One of the aspects about our school that I love so much is that we have been able to keep our enrichment courses. We refer to library, computers, P.E., art, and music as “enrichment courses.” These courses are “pull-out” classes where the students leave my classroom and are taught these subjects by a different teacher. They visit these classes once a week for 30 - 45 minutes, depending on the class. I know a lot of other schools in our area who have not been able to hold on to these programs (both private and public). We have been blessed during this rough economy to still be able to provide these resources (and more) in our program.
I almost hate to add this because I know that I will have a lot of eye-rolls or straight-up jealousy, but I have an assistant. Don’t kill me please!!! It’s just one of the perks of my job (I’ll talk about the down-sides in another post). I share my assistant with the other 4th grade teacher. Our assistant helps us with things like grading papers or putting up bulletin boards. She also calls a parent if a child gets sick and I’m in the middle of lesson, or she may get a bag of ice for another hypochondriac child who’s finger would fall off unless ice is applied.
Lastly, I love the freedom I have in my class to teach what I want to teach, and how I want to teach it. We do have pacing guides to stick with so it’s not like I can teach ANYTHING I want, but I do have the freedom to do things like add a unit to Science that wasn’t in the book, or take an entire day and work on various centers I’ve created. I also have the freedom to discuss my beliefs with the kids since we are a Christian school. One of my very most favorite aspects of teaching in a private school watching my kiddos grow and mature in their faith.
In my next blog I will discuss some of the downsides to teaching in a private school, so all you teachers who yelled when you read that I have an assistant, you’re going to want to stay tuned!!! Click here to read about the downsides to teaching at a private school.
One of the aspects about our school that I love so much is that we have been able to keep our enrichment courses. We refer to library, computers, P.E., art, and music as “enrichment courses.” These courses are “pull-out” classes where the students leave my classroom and are taught these subjects by a different teacher. They visit these classes once a week for 30 - 45 minutes, depending on the class. I know a lot of other schools in our area who have not been able to hold on to these programs (both private and public). We have been blessed during this rough economy to still be able to provide these resources (and more) in our program.
I almost hate to add this because I know that I will have a lot of eye-rolls or straight-up jealousy, but I have an assistant. Don’t kill me please!!! It’s just one of the perks of my job (I’ll talk about the down-sides in another post). I share my assistant with the other 4th grade teacher. Our assistant helps us with things like grading papers or putting up bulletin boards. She also calls a parent if a child gets sick and I’m in the middle of lesson, or she may get a bag of ice for another hypochondriac child who’s finger would fall off unless ice is applied.
Lastly, I love the freedom I have in my class to teach what I want to teach, and how I want to teach it. We do have pacing guides to stick with so it’s not like I can teach ANYTHING I want, but I do have the freedom to do things like add a unit to Science that wasn’t in the book, or take an entire day and work on various centers I’ve created. I also have the freedom to discuss my beliefs with the kids since we are a Christian school. One of my very most favorite aspects of teaching in a private school watching my kiddos grow and mature in their faith.
In my next blog I will discuss some of the downsides to teaching in a private school, so all you teachers who yelled when you read that I have an assistant, you’re going to want to stay tuned!!! Click here to read about the downsides to teaching at a private school.
Monday, January 9, 2012
Monday, January 2, 2012
Accreditation
Is anyone else currently going through the accreditation process? Our school has been WASC Accredited, but they always give us areas of improvements that we need to fix before they return in a couple years.
One of the areas they want us to improve is our curriculum guides (also known as course maps). At our last visitation four years ago, they told us we needed to create course maps in every grade level. So all of us teachers scrambled together, took an entire school year, and developed our course maps. When they revisited us two years ago, they told us we need to add more content to our existing course maps like state or national standards and the ESLER’s.
Is anyone else going through this same process?
One of the areas they want us to improve is our curriculum guides (also known as course maps). At our last visitation four years ago, they told us we needed to create course maps in every grade level. So all of us teachers scrambled together, took an entire school year, and developed our course maps. When they revisited us two years ago, they told us we need to add more content to our existing course maps like state or national standards and the ESLER’s.
Is anyone else going through this same process?
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