three weeks down...a lot to go!

Well, I have made it through my first two weeks of teaching 4th grade! I don't know how else to explain it other than, WOW! It truly has been such a great experience.  Even in this short time, I have learned so many things.  Things about myself, my students, Utah (I teach Utah History in 4th grade), and even things about the life of a teaching, how important it is to plan and be prepared, that it is ok to adjust things as I go through out the day, that recess is still one of my favorite parts of the day, and that every day is an adventure, the best adventure I could every ask for.  

Prior to the first day of school, I sent each of my students a postcard in the mail that I made in photoshop.  They were just a nice note to welcome them to fourth grade and to give them some important dates that were coming up like Open House, Back to School Night, and the First Day of School! After many trials creating these postcards this was the final product! 

On the first day of school we took pictures in an empty picture frame that said "first day - fourth grade".  My students LOVED it! They were able to grab a lollipop or a mustache and stick their face in the frame and smile! I sent these to each parent on the first day.  This is what the picture frame looked like:

Over the first couple of days, I let my students brainstorm what they wanted the rules of the classroom to be.  This was a democratic move that gave them some ownership of the rules and consequences in the classroom.  As we came up as a class different rules we wanted to follow, the white board was soon covered! 

Some of my favorite rules: 

* Don't feel bad if you did something wrong

*Let your attitude rise

*Be happy and don't worry

*Hippos are the best animal (my little girl H* is in LOVE with hippos!)

*No ruff housing (I have turned to this rule multiple times for my boys!)

*HAVE FUN! 

Also during these first couple weeks of school, I have added some more things to the classroom!

I got this Disk Drop Game from oriental trading to match my carnival theme.  My students beg me EVERYDAY to play it! They thing it is so fun! Right now we are using it as a class reward.  If the students ever do something perfectly without me reminding them, we get to play the Disk Drop Game and earn class points! (Right now we are working towards earning 100 class points to get a class pet! Don't get too excited, it will just be a class fish even though my students wanted a snake,  hamster,  guinea pig, dog, cat, and a hippo.  I sadly told them a fish was all I could handle! They can't wait to earn that fish.  They want to take it on field trips and home on the weekends so it can experience life outside our classroom... I don't know how that is all going to play out just yet.  Any way here is our treasured Disk Drop Game. 

Every morning, the students move their "lunch clip" to the meal that they want for lunch or if they brought a home lunch.  After everyone moves their clip, it also tells me who is absent for that day!  At the end of the day I have a class job that is the lunch helper where they get to move all the clips back to the start to be prepared for the next day!

This is my fast finisher wall.  When students finish an assignment, instead of getting up out of their seat, they are supposed to pick something on the wall and work on it until we move on as a class to the next activity. 

This is something that I actually haven't tried but it was shared with me the other day and I thought it was the greatest idea! So here is the deal, if any student says something out of turn without raising their hand I send them here to pick up a pink hand print.  Or if any student is out of their seat when they shouldn't be, I send them here to get a blue footprint.  They write their name and the date on the hand or footprint and place it in the turn in box.  When I go through the turn in box at the end of each day, I will grab all the hands and feet and put them in each students file.  When I am doing conferences with students and/or parents I will be able to show them how many times they are forgetting to raise their hand or stay in their seat.  Sounds like a good idea, so we will see!  

One of the many joys of teaching... after 45 minutes of math time, this is what is turned in to me.  "Miss Stransky, it was too hard." Oh, fourth grade is so tough! 

In science, we are learning about Utah Environments: Deserts, Forests, and Wetlands.  Students were about to make 3D Environments for their projects. All I gave them was paper and told them they got to be creative! I was so impressed with what they came up with.  This is a picture os a wetland with an alligator and some lily pads.  

A desert. 

This on we saw in a Bill Nye video that my students wanted to re create.  The middle white stuff are the mountains.  On the right side is the desert and on the left side is the wetland.  As the moist air comes in from the wetland, gets to the forest on the mountain and eventually gets over to the desert side, their isn't much moisture in the air! 

One of my favorites - an alligator in the swamp of a wetland!

A forest - with both deciduous and coniferous trees and animals. The black animal is tough to see but i think it was a bear. 

This is our fourth grade adventures wall.  Any time any students bring in pictures of themselves in Utah we get to post it on this back cabinet. 

I get so many drawings on my desk every day! Some of my more recent ones are these.  My little H* (mentioned in the rules above) LOVES Hippos.  She drew me this on graph paper! Too cute!

from ? :) my favorite! If only I really had those nice long eyelashes! 

One of my little boys S* was drawing his name like this and I walked by and told him how cool I thought it was so the next day, sure enough, I had my very own! 

Remember this book?? It was one of my favorites growing up and so I decided to read it to my students. We are almost finished with it but we have LOVED it! Every free moment they ask me if I can read out loud to them! I am almost losing my voice from talking so much!

I don't have favorite students... but some that are truly just a joy in the classroom brought in this lovely animal today from recess....

This student reminds me so much of my little brother.  I just look at him and smile because he is so sweet (with a little mischievous side).  When he came up to show me this he told me he caught it just for our class to keep as a class pet.  I quickly turned him right around and headed out the door.  

Good thing I LOVE my job!