It's over

Here I sit.... in a nearby coffee shop.  Reflecting on the day's events.  I spent my entire Tuesday in my classroom cleaning and packing every item, organizing each un-filed paper, moving all the furniture to one side of the room (which exposed many a dust particle).  Done! Alas, only to find:  my classroom is going to be the very room I teach summer school in this year.  <insert heart sinking here>  I should be elated since it will be easy to reorganize my room while working in it this summer.  But because my room was not assigned for summer school yet, I had purposefully cleared it all out and made it virtually impossible to teach in.

Well, not to dwell on the past (it's over).  I will be going in later this week to, yet again, rearrange my room so it will be manageable this summer to teach in.  It's hard to envision it at the moment, but I keep daydreaming about the day it will be my Dream Classroom.  IT WILL HAPPEN.

Period.

May Day

There's a certain chemistry that surrounds campus on this day every year.  There's so much that goes into May Day- a lot of planning, even more communication, and lots and lots of practice!  Students are prepared for a performance.  Parents, families, and friends are all welcome to enjoy the event.  Many times students (and sometimes teachers) will receive leis as an honor of achievement and recognition.  I love the performances, the community, and culture of this day. However, what a whirlwind!  I am relieved to say this day is over.

Here are some pictures from today.  The students look awesome (and so cute)!  Please excuse the order.  It's not in sequence.

The fifth grade girls (my first class ever)

May Day Queen & King!

Students getting ready

We sat next to third grade :)  My old keiki!

Kindergarteners

Royal Court.  They represent all the islands.

Middle School across the field

Middle School boys

Stage where the Royal Court is seated

gift bearers from every grade level bringing leis to the Queen & King

My old students (4th graders now!) performing their hula dance

My old students (5th graders!) setting up for their dance

What a great day!  I cannot wait for next year already :)

TWO DAYS

Not only will it be Friday in two days, but it also marks the very last day of school.  I always get nostalgic around these times... hence the keepsake video.

Today was the last full day for students.  Tomorrow is a short day, and Friday is a half day!  "What is the difference between a 'short day' and a 'half day'?" you might ask:  on short days students have lunch and on half days students leave before lunch is over.  So REALLY- it feels like the last day was today.  The entire day tomorrow will be consumed with May Day and Friday is our class reflection/Celebration-of-the-School-Year day.  I'm excited for families to come to our class party Friday.

As for May Day tomorrow...  That is another entry in and of itself.  I can't wait!  The entire school comes together and performs.  Kamaile has grades pre-k all the way to 11th grade; so saying the whole school is performing is quite the event!  I will be posting photos tomorrow.  It is my favorite day of the year!

Other than that, not much has been going on. I had another adult in my room the past 3 days and we managed to pack up the entire classroom library putting books in their respectable genres and clean the classroom.  My whole room is practically boxed up.  Despite that fact, we are still boxing items here and there.  I am happy to say my to-do list is thinning out.

More to come tomorrow!

Spring Cleaning

The title is an understatement.  My classroom is getting a make-over thanks to inspiration from Reagan Tunstall.  This woman is seriously my idol!!!!!!!!!!!  I am obsessed with every lesson she shares.  Plus, her classroom is amazing.  These blogs are igniting my creative spark in teaching.  I feel like I did when I first started this profession.  I feed off this stuff!

The process to get there is a struggle.  I am cleaning out everything.  Reorganizing is a teacher's biggest feat. I'm looking forward to moving all the furniture around to get a fresh new look.  I also plan on getting little ottomans for my classroom, more pillows, a real mailbox (right now I have one made out of a milk carton... not durable enough!), big bins from Target's lawn and garden section, lamps, and hopefully finding another area rug for my room.  Over the summer I will be laminating, labeling, and planning for the next batch of kids.  I love having more time to do everything over the break.  I want to make a leveled library in addition to my already themed library.  Grouping my leveled readers are also going to need to happen.  OOOOO and I have this idea to get Hawaiian fabric to create a theme in my classroom.

SO. MUCH. TO. DO!

For now... this is what I'm working with...

I might have made a mess.

Break's over!  

Theme VS Purpose

A reading strategy that performance results proved tricky for second graders is distinguishing the difference between author's purpose and the theme of a story.  My team collaborated teaching strategies to help students better understand.  We all love thinking maps so much, so we created a visual aid that we can post in the classroom and add to it as we read different stories.

My co-teacher and I hung them up side-by-side as a one stop place for students to view.  This way, they can visually see the difference between the two concepts.  They love it!

In other news... it's ALOHA FRIDAY!  :)  Have a fantastic weekend,

Class Keep-Sake

Tomorrow marks one week until the school year ends!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The last week always flies by with so much to do.  The last thing I want to forget is the most important thing to remember:  my students and all the great memories they made in second grade.  I started this idea my first year teaching.  I love creating a keep-sake for my students to remember their year with peers and me.  Thanks to iMovie, I created a movie with video clips and pictures synced with music.  It was so fun to create- I hope my class will enjoy watching it!  I will possibly upload later if I figure out how... :)

I am sharing this on the last day of school during our final class celebration.  Families are all invited to watch the video and students will get a copy to take home with them.  What a great way to share memories and reflect on the year with families!

THE AFTERMATH

~d-o-u-g-h-n-u-t-s~

Although not the healthiest, an awesome treat to celebrate the end of a culminating event.  I appreciate my team of teachers so much and thought it would be a nice surprise to start the day this morning!

Last night was our grade level family night.  What an event!  I felt like I was moving at high-speed the entire time.  If I taught something, it was sense of urgency- ha!  Overall, I felt that it was fun, motivating, and successful.  It is always great to have families come together at school to interact in learning.  Trust me, we had our difficulties:  the SMART board was not liking my computer so we had to switch it out, the library, though big, was still a tight space for all of the families that came (that is also a good thing that we had such a turn-out that it wasn't big enough!)- but we problem solved quickly and did our best!  and most importantly:  the kids had fun and were learning!!!!!  That's my favorite.  Here are some pictures from last night.

The Library

Mrs. Hanvey's Grammar/Conventions Center

Ms. Patton's Positive Behavior System Center

My Writing Center

Another View

Grand Prize Winners from my class- 6 books in a variety of levels, play-dough, Wikki Stix, Star Student pencils, pencil sharpener, a writing journal, and a poetry journal.

Grade 2 teachers handing out awards to students

As the school year comes to an end, the to-do list for teachers grows increasingly longer with tighter deadlines to meet.  It can be very stressful and easy to get carried away with the responsibilities.  The light to the end of the tunnel is getting closer and closer.  I can almost taste the relief!  Can't wait :)

Reading Toolkit- 'Ohana Night

Good morning world!

Today is a very exciting day!  My grade level is hosting our students' families after school for our literacy skills night.  We are calling it our "Reading Toolkit".  Basically the idea is for families to walk away with useful "tools" they can use at home over the summer for continuous practice.  Each teacher will lead a center/group to teach a literacy component.  There will be 6 centers:  Comprehension (thinking strategies), Comprehension (visual strategies- graphic organizers), Writing, Grammar/Conventions, Phonics/Word Work, and Positive Enforcement Strategies.

Front of Reader's Toolkit

 Back of reader's toolkit includes usernames and passwords for each website

Directions for parents to use at home.

Invitation for family night.

I will lead the Writing Workshop.  There are so many skills of writing that I want to cover, but there is a 10 minute window...  I decided to focus on the kinds of opportunities students have to write, ways to graph the amounts of time they write each day, stages of writing so students/parents can track improvement, as well as useful tips for writing.  Parents will start out by sitting in my center and getting a clipboard with paper/pencil.  I will use 2 minutes for families to work with their child on brainstorming different ways they can use writing in every day life.  This will be my segue to talk about the opportunities to write.  I will go on to introduce the graphs, stages of writing, and so on- parents can take home these sheets in their toolkit.

Another "tool" parents will learn about are our online resources.  We have 3 main sites that families can use at home:  ixl.com, pearsonsuccess.net (Reading Street Curriculum), and myON.com.  IXL is a math website that has interactive activities using the Common Core Standards for all grade levels with a self-monitoring system that is great for parents, students, and teachers to track growth.  myON is a website students can use to listen to reading.  There is a summer reading program through the site nationwide that gives away prizes to students who use it the most.  Last but definitely not least, is our Reading Street core reading program that allows students to practice vocabulary words with interactive activities, concept videos with amazing words, word work practice games, reading strategies, decodable readers, AND our reading stories student can follow along on the site.  It is probably the best thing EVER.  The kids love the songs that are on the site that sing about our concepts and amazing words.  There are even songs for grammar called "Grammar Jammer" that teaches students about grammar.  Can you tell I love this website???  Here are a few snapshots of what the student view looks like on the website.  Each student has their own username and password to access on their own from anywhere there's internet.

This is what students see when they log in.  They can explore by pressing "to do" or they can open the student edition of the basal reader and look page by page of the book's content.

This is what the "to do" tab looks like.  It has all the teacher's assignments that I added on my own homepage.

 If students wish to explore, they can do the interactive activities for ANY unit for ANY story.  It will have concept videos, decodable readers, the story for that week, vocabulary words, grammar activities, amazing words, and reading strategies.

 This is what the weekly outline looks like for every story.

A closer look at the vocabulary interactive activities.  It also has the definitions and a way to listen to each one.

This is a very user friendly site!  Love that my kids have a way to use the core curriculum at home and parents can also monitor what their child is learning in school.  Such an awesome resource!!!!!!!!!


At the end we are giving away 2 prizes/class that have 6 books from Scholastic, pencils, and journals.  We are also going to have awards for every student in the skill that they are strongest in.

I will share how the night goes later!












PS- I decided to change my signature.  Too fun!

Learning and Loving

This profile thing is really getting me obsessed.  I just learned how to create a signature to really customize my site.  I'm working on the template- I borrowed this one from a site that I liked.  I have a feeling I will be playing with it more in the very near future!

Introducing... ME!

Hello fellow bloggers!  I am so excited to start this blog I don't even know where to begin.  I guess I will start by introducing myself.

I am a second grade teacher at Kamaile Academy.  Kamaile is located on the west side of Oahu, Hawaii.  We are in a town called Waianae.  The 2013-2014 school year will mark my fifth year teaching second grade at Kamaile.  I am originally from Edwardsburg, Michigan.  I went to school at Saint Mary's college in Notre Dame, Indiana close to where I grew up.  My students learn about college and strive to prepare for it.  We celebrate on College Day every Wednesday by singing our Kamaile Cheer and the Notre Dame fight song.  They are so cute!


I was inspired to create this blog when I stumbled upon a couple master teachers who have blogs of their own.  I was searching for ideas for my grade level's summer "Reading Toolkit" 'Ohana Night coming up.  I was immediately blown away with ideas that would apply to the workshop I will be leading on writing- thanks to the blogs I looked at.  I decided to come up with a blog to log my professional ideas/development as a teacher.  Maybe I will also be able to help other teachers.  If not, this will still be a useful tool for my own projects, lessons, family communication, and reflections.

When I graduated college and moved to this beautiful place I created a blog to track my growth as a teacher and a new independent person in this big world.  Additionally, I created a website for my class.  As time went on, I became too busy to blog my daily life in my personal blog, and parents weren't really utilizing the class website, so I slowly stopped both.  With this blog, I plan on combining the two to create an easy stop for families to follow what we do in school and how they can help support their child's learning at home.

Stay tuned!