Back to School Goals

It is that time of year again! The students will be arriving next Tuesday and the teachers are busy assembling their classrooms. The last few weeks have been a little crazy and I must admit I have been ignoring my blog a little. Thank goodness for the link-up at I {heart} Recess.

Personal: This goal is a double whammy. My husband and I have been running this summer and my cardio has gotten way better. I definitely don't want to lose that progress now that school is back in session so keeping up with exercise is key. The other part of the goal is to try and keep a balance between school and the other aspects of life. I tend to get slightly majorly focused on work and ignore having a social life or keeping up with stuff at home. This year I really want to get better at keeping things balanced by working less.

Organization: I have spent a lot of time this summer getting my classroom cleaned up and organized. Now the trick is for me to keep it that way and make sure I stay in the habit of putting everything in its place. Part of that is keeping up with my marking. The faster I can get things marked, entered in to my marks book, and handed back to students the less paperwork gets piled up in various places in the classroom.

Planning: Our district has a central printing office that takes care of all the teacher's printing. The challenge is they need 72 hours to get everything back to you. My goal this year is to stay on top of planning so I don't get caught unprepared in terms of photocopying.

Professional: Last year I got the chance to attend a conference on differentiation and I am still trying to figure out how to best implement all the strategies I learned. This year I want to continue building on what I know and practice more strategies for differentiating. One of my big plans for doing this is introducing math rotations (thanks to 3rd Grade Thoughts for getting me started) to help meet each student where they are at with my math instruction.

Students: I love the book "Mindset" by Carol Dweck and her take on learning. She has the attitude that every person is good at learning and every person can improve themselves in multiple areas by applying themselves. This is such a great attitude to try and pass on to kids - if something is difficult that means you are growing your brain and learning.

Motto: As a Christian school teacher I love this verse from Proverbs 22. It reminds me there is more to school and teaching than covering curriculum; it is my job to try and instill in students skills and attitudes that will enable them to be life-long learners and continue to grow beyond their years in school.

Summer Time

Wow! I can't believe that summer break is almost over. One more week until teachers go back to school and only two more weeks until the kiddos arrive! It has definitely been a busy summer filled with beautiful weather, tons of weddings and good family time.

 Looking back I also realized how much time I spent at school this summer. I know, I know this is the point where people tell me I'm nuts and that I should just enjoy the summer but I found using summer to accomplish some big classroom tasks to be quite worthwhile.

I started the summer by culling and organizing old resources that had been left in my classroom by previous teachers. It is amazing how much stuff can be collected over time and how much of that stuff was left in cupboards for me to find. There were a few items I found to be useful but there was also a bunch of old resources that made their way into the recycling bin. It is hard to get rid of things but it's also so good to free up storage space.

I also used some time this summer to attempt to get ahead on my unit plans for the first few months of the school year. Being a newer teacher I find I still spend a lot of time getting to know the curriculum and developing unit and lesson plans. I'm hoping the result of giving up some of my summer free time will be fewer weekends spent at school over the course of the school year.

 I definitely enjoy heading into the new year feeling prepared and ready to go but I also don't want to get into the habit of filling my summer with lesson planning. Then again I feel like spending a full two months away from school would leave me feeling disconnected from everything. I guess I won't actually be able to test that theory until I try it though. Okay, I am officially rambling about this topic so I'm going to ask you to join in with your opinions. Does anyone else use summer time for planning? Do you think it is a worthwhile use of your time? Do you find it stops the longer you have been teaching?

I would love to hear your thoughts. It would be nice to know if I am a crazy work-a-holic or if this is just what dedicated teachers do with their "free" time. Talk to you soon!

Gotta Love Accomplishing Goals!

Well it's official, at least three of my summer goals have been accomplished so far!

My husband and I recently returned from a week long trip in Niagara Falls. We had a lot of fun and it was wonderful to have some time to relax. There was so much to see and do and we had a blast checking out all the tourist attractions.

 I love to travel, have fun, and experience new things and I always try to make the most of my time away,  but I think one of my favourite parts of travelling is the chance to come home and get back to my usual routines. So as wonderful as it was to take a holiday it was also great to come home and get back to normal life. Especially since in two weeks we are off again for a week long stay in BC for my brother's wedding.

Anyway, enough about me and my travels, now it's time to get back to the classroom related goals. Just before we left I had the chance to install my sliding bulletin boards and guess what? It worked!! I am beyond happy with how they turned out and best of all it was relatively inexpensive and easy to do. Check out the before and after pictures!

I love, love, love, all the storage in my classroom but I wanted to hide it so I can keep my classroom looking a little more organized and have more space to hang important anchor charts and student work.

So after a little bit of fun (I love the chance to use some power tools) and some work...

Just needs a coat three coats of paint and...

 Ta da! The finished product!!

 The boards are made of a material called "donacona" which is cheaper than cork board, is soft enough for staples and light enough that the rails can hold it up. I purchased some sliding door tracks from the hardware store. After installing the tracks it was pretty easy to install the hardware onto the boards and get them hung up. Thankfully I had my wonderful husband there to help me since it definitely made getting the boards up and into the tracks a little easier.

I can't wait to get some borders and decor stuff on them. Stay tuned for pictures in my upcoming classroom tour!

Finally, I have also managed to create a much more detailed year plan than I have in the past. It took a while but now that it is done I am glad I have it. I put it into a calendar format so I can look from week to week and try to keep myself on track in all the different subjects. I still have to see how it works for this year but it definitely is more organized and specific than my previous year plans. I'm excited to see how it goes.

If you would like the template add a comment and let me know. I would love to hear from you and I am happy to share!

Wow that seems like a lot. Apparently July has been very productive! Let's see how August goes.

Summer Goals

Woohoo!! Summer's here!! I am so excited for summer and have some goals I want to accomplish.

 I know I know, it seems like there are a lot of school items on this list considering it is summer holidays. If there is one thing I have learned about being a new teacher it is to take the time to organize and plan when you have it. So I will be taking some of the time I would have spent doing nothing relaxing and use it to get ahead for September. My hope is by getting myself more organized now I will be able to take more time during the school year to relax and have some down time.

 My summer won't be all work though, my husband and I are running a wedding circuit this summer with 3 friends and 1 brother getting married in the next 2 months. The nice thing is the weddings are spread out basically over the entire country (BC to Ontario) which gives us a chance to play tourist! We are off to Niagara Falls for the first time in our lives!! So excited to take it all in and spend some quality time away from the normal routine with my hubby!

The Final Count Down

Wow! It is hard to believe the last week of school is finally here. The students have been working so incredibly hard to get everything finished before the end of the year. It took some doing but we are done, report cards are finished, and now it is time for some year end fun!

I am really excited about a couple of our year end projects. I recently discovered lap books and decided to try one out for our final Social Studies unit. There are a ton of great resources for lap books on the Home School Share website. The students had a blast creating and filling out all the little tabs, flaps, and pockets. As with most first time projects there is room for improvement but I am happy with how they turned out. Unfortunately we literally finished these in the last days of school and with all the craziness I didn't get any pictures. Stay tuned and I will be sure to take some pics of the next lap books that are created in grade 3.

Our other big year end project has been creating an ABC book entitled Welcome to Grade Three! A big thanks to Christi over at Ms. Fultz's Corner for the idea. I purchased the template from her Teacher Pay Teacher store and the students have had a blast. I had each student complete a letter of the alphabet informing new students of the important things to know about being in grade three. Before students could colour their alphabet page however I photocopied it so it had a black and white picture. Now I have a Welcome to Grade Three colouring book for each student at the beginning of the school year. My plan is to have it waiting on their desk when they arrive.

Pictures arriving soon!

It always amazes me how quickly the end of the year comes. I am sure this last week will fly by and before I know it I will be saying farewell to my current students and getting ready to start preparations for my new students. Bring on the summer!

Butterfly Life Cycles

I have been looking forward to the grade three life cycle unit all year. I got the chance to raise butterflies with my students! I am a little bit of a nature nut and love anything that has to do with being outside or learning about the world around us. Most of the students hadn't really been up close and personal with any insects (other than mosquitoes and flies) which made that much more exciting.

 It was a lot of fun to watch as they grew from caterpillar, to chrysalis, and finally to butterflies. The whole class was excited to see the changes taking place. I had never done this before and couldn't believe how much the caterpillars grew in the first week! Best of all, it was so easy to take care of them which means my students got an awesome learning experience and I didn't have to do a lot of extra work each day.

When the caterpillars arrived the students all got a butterfly journal so they could keep track of the caterpillars progress through pictures and journal entries.

Here are some examples of entries the students completed. It was a lot of fun to have the kids come into class each day and head straight for the caterpillars or butterflies to check for any changes.

 As we watched them grow we read books and did some research to make sure we understood what was happening and to help us predict what might happen next.

I love, love, love using hands on learning whenever I can and our butterfly release party was definitely hands on. The sun was shining today so we headed outside to set our butterflies free. Of course we couldn't let them go without some pictures first.

Doing this was so simple and I am so grateful to have experienced teachers around who can give me the heads up with stuff like this. I had all the kids stick their hands in a bucket of sugar water and then put their hand into the butterfly habitat.

 If they hold still it doesn't take long for one of the butterflies to come looking for a sip of the sweetness. The kids had a blast and we got some awesome pictures!

Thankfully I had some help from another teacher who knows how to handle a camera. For most of the kids this is one of the closest experiences they have had with nature and it made for a great and memorable way to say farewell to our little buddies!

Trying Something New

Welcome to Mrs. V's Grade 3s!

Recently I have been finding myself on more and more teaching blogs. I am loving the chance to explore what other teachers have been doing and learn a little bit more about how they organize and run their classrooms. The more I explored the more I wanted to be a part of sharing my experiences in teaching.

As I sit here trying to write my first post (I've been told the first is the hardest, I certainly hope so) I am sorting through what I want to include on this blog. Here's what I'm thinking:

~ All things classroom related including organization and management strategies.
~ Fun classroom ideas for activities and learning
~ Tips and strategies for new teachers
~ Book suggestions (I love anything to do with children's literature)
~ Math games and activities

I realize that starting a teaching blog in June may seem a bit odd. It is my hope that as I work on some of my summer projects I can get myself into the habit of updating my blog. Being a new teacher my list of classroom projects for the summer is pretty lengthy and includes items like reorganizing my classroom library, developing a system for tracking and assessing learning outcomes, and working on numerous Pinterest-inspired projects. I definitely work best with lists and goals so I hope to put up another post soon with some blog-related goals related to how often I want to try and add new posts. I'm excited to see how it all turns out!