First Week of School

Well, I think it was the first time someone said to me, "Are you going to update your blog?" So here it is. It was a hectic week before school started and especially on Monday the day before school started. We didn't get a lot of time in our classroom but we got together as a staff and made a Koyuk school vision, goals for attendance, reading, writing, and math, established processes and procedures for attendance, tardy, homework, in school suspension, elegibility for sports, practiced technology.

On the first day of school we had a picnic down at the beach. It was gorgeous day out! I helped plan and organize this community event, which is part of my second job as Solution Team facilitator. We had a scavenger hunt planned along with, caribou, caribou, Eskimo baseball, and a water relay. I was encouraged by our principal to get as many student helpers/leaders as I could. Well, it was amazing to see how willing the students were to take leadership roles, even as young as Kindergarten and first grade. We didn't get to the scavenger hunt or Eskimo baseball because we had to wait for the food for a while (happens every year). The water relay was the hit! It wasn't my idea though. IT was neat to see older kids helping younger kids and seeing them all working together to fill the container with water from the river.

The first week was a blast! There are many things to celebrate. The kids were a joy to be around, awfully quiet though and that is something I don't remember from last year. THey helped each other a lot and me in the classroom doing little jobs, shared, took turns, caught onto the procedure really well. I think my favorite was seeing them "come alive" when we read stories together. They became so talkative! They made great observations about the pictures, had good ideas to questions. Their excitement motivated me! We start learning our sounds next week. We've been working really really hard on practicing procedures in the classroom. There are a lot that need more clarifying and some we have not covered yet; for example, how to sharpen pencils, use some of the materials and where they go.

I'm super excited to start this week in Math. I get to use a new curriculum that I got trained in this summer called Bridges in Mathematics. Last week, I let the kids explore the math manipulatives. This week is still exploring but also discovery lessons on shape attributes, graphing, sorting, counting to 100 using bugs. This whole math curriculum uses fun visuals and manipulatives like geoboards and geobands. I can't wait to see kids discover things on their own instead of me telling them like I have done in the past. The kids this year came in knowing more of their shapes and colors too!

This week is going to be even more busier: IEP meeting, VTC (video conference on Kindergarten testing), Solution Team meeting, and an extra day of school to plan for. It will be interesting. Later, I'll be staring Battle of the Books with Kindergarten students. The students and I read 5 books before January. We act them out, do simple trivia about the books such as, "In which book is there a red sock?" We have some great books like one about owls and that is all I can remember now. Then in January we have a video conference battle between other Kindergarten students about the books we read. IT shouldn't take too much time but any time I can get to plan is precious! Then testing will start in September and usually takes me 2 full days of having a sub. Then also around the same time I will be traveling to Unalakleet for a curriculum instruction meeting. We are going to be discussing in depth different pathways students can take to graduate without lowering the standards. So it should be interesting!

There is school in a nutshell!