Pre-Observation Jitters and Assignment Avoidance

Dear Mom (since you're the only one who reads this blog),

I hope you like the half changes I made to my blog! I uploaded this super cool template I found online, but then when I try to change the font and the size of the title and all that, nothing happens. So now I just have a giant pile of crap sitting at the top of the page. Oh, I told Google alright. You'd think in their giant empire, there has to be someone who can remedy my problem.

I'm trying not to think about it. I would much rather pretend that it's exactly how I'd like it to look instead of continuing to feel my blood boil at the terrible appearance of something I'm trying to fix up and take pride in. I'm a perfectionist and slightly OCD. And I know this simple, stupid problem is going to drive me up a wall and through the ceiling.

Back in high school, I didn't mind messing with html code as much. With my JoBro obsessions, I memorized all the necessary combinations to make awesome MySpace pages and graphics and so on and do forth. However, it has all reverted back to a bunch of mumbo-jumbo that's "all Greek to me!" I figured that figure of speech was appropriate given my current topic of study with my students. If I could only find the spot in the Blog Title section that had the font...or maybe figure out how to make my own graphic and insert it instead. I would take that too. But I don't have time to re-learn right now. I have to get myself ready for tomorrow, which I am finding myself very unmotivated to do.

I have my first observation tomorrow. I'm kind of freaking out. I feel like I have a good lesson planned, but I can never be sure. She also wants me to type up my lesson plan for her...I DON'T WRITE LESSON PLANS!! All I do is sketch out a general skeleton and "play ball!" I like to go with the feel of the room. I may plan some questions in advance because of my end goal for the day, but other than that....so I have some work to do tonight. But I'm going over to Lauren's tonight with Laura (yeah, you read that right) at 7:30, and Kal plays basketball at 9 (if I can make it over there in time).

I have made several changes to my classroom, though, but I still have so much I would like to do. I just don't feel like doing it at the end of the day when I'm exhausted. Ya know? I feel a little better about what my principal will see when she comes to observe me. I have the standards we've covered written in "I Can" statements, posted on my makeshift bulletin board, I have my Wonder Wall up and running. However, tomorrow will be the first day for the Wonder Wall. I'll pull a couple of questions down from the board and we'll work on answering them together. I'm a little worried about how it'll go since I haven't done it before, and the first time I do it will be in front of the principal during an official observation. Perfect. And it's current event day, so she'll have to bear witness to the embarrassingly terrible turn-in rate for homework assignments. Even better. I just hope the kiddos cooperate and do what I ask of them. If only for tomorrow. I do not want to lose this job.

Well, wish me luck! I have a little under half an hour before I want to head over to Lauren's. I should get that lesson plan down...

No Escribo Mucho, Lo Siento.

Well, it's official. I suck at keeping a blog, just like I suck at keeping a journal. Oh well.

I'm almost three months into my first year of "for real" teaching" now. There have been so many great things I wish I would have made note and taken better record of. I made my first impression by stringing up a grid, hovering over students' heads, to teach longitude and latitude. Then we dove in to this awesome unit about Ancient American Civilizations. Having been to the Mayan ruins in Copan, Honduras, I was able to accumulate many pictures and take them on a "tour" of the city, explaining the bulk of Mayan religion to them. We made these awesome interactive notebooks and we had so much fun putting them together! I had a girl tell me yesterday that she loved gluing all the pieces in, but not writing the final letter. Well, too bad. Learning still needs to happen!

So now, they're all working on writing me a letter as if they are from on of the three civilizations, telling me what it's like to be a citizen (or slave, or king/emperor....it's very open really) and comparing and contrasting their civilization to one of the other ones. I have a few of them that have turned in their final letters to me and I'm so excited to get to read them! Some of these kids are so creative. I had to keep reminding them to make sure the stories and descriptions in their letter were based on factual information, that it could have really happened. Historical fiction people!....Hmmmmm, I could really dive into that genre in Social Studies. Why am I just now thinking of this?

I have a to-do list for the basic structure of....my classroom/teaching/learning/walls.

1. Put up a "Wonder Wall".  I want kids to be able to post things they have questions or wonder about while they read and study in and out of the classroom. I'm going to turn one of the panels of the dividing wall into a space for posting these thoughts. We'll randomly pick some from the wall and answer them together! Questioning is an important reading skill.
2. Create a time line. One of the standards that needs to be met in sixth grade is the comprehension of time lines, understanding AD and BC. I want to have a "crooked" timeline, wrapped around the top of the room like a border, that we add to when we learn about something new. I want to reinforce the idea that all of history coincides and overlaps.
3. Writing checklist. I'm not sure exactly how this will look yet, but I want to have a visual reminder of my expectations for student writing. With this, I want to teach the Smart Answer format of written response, which students need to follow when writing on ISTEP.
4. Giant World Atlas. This one, I know how I want it to look, I just can't be sure I can make it work. I would love to have the continents all cut out as large black masses posted somewhere in the room, and we add colored labels to them as we learn about new geographic locations. We've covered the continents, the five oceans, and the cardinal directions. We'll be talking about the Mediterranean and Black Sea when we start the Greeks, and I want to be able to add that stuff in as we talk about it. 

This really makes we wish I would have had the time to do all this stuff before the beginning of the year. I hate that my students this year can't get the best of my ideas from the start. But, better late than never I suppose. I have a lot of work to do. But for now, I need to be at Ruby Tuesday to work a double serving in exactly one hour. And this woman still needs to shower. I'll create later :)