My 2013-2014 Plan

I have finally managed to get my 2013-2014 plan uploaded to my Google Drive with the formatting I had in place.  This is just my plan -- not all the accompanying lesson plans.  At least at the moment.

I was taking lessons from books like Funbrarian and Library Sparks.

 

My cyber-safety lessons are required by the county.  There are 2 45-minute lessons for each grade to partake of each year.  They come from CommonSenseMedia.org, and I've created prezis that go through them just to simplify things for myself.  

I also have a SmartBoard that I use for a lot of the lessons I'll teach, like ABC order. 

I try to pace myself on the researching, so I don't have everyone working on big projects at the same time. And all this, of course, will fall prey to my schedule.  This year I had to spend most of my morning (until 10 am!!) working on Guided Reading and Acceleration groups.  And then in the afternoons I taught Character Ed lessons.

But anyway, this is what I currently have in mind for the coming school year:  2013-2014 Plan

Ungifted

I just finished Tuesdays at the Castle, but found I had a very hard time coming up with questions.  It's hard to write about a character that's a castle without giving away which book...  So I have to go back through that one and come up with some more before I share.

So anyway...  Today I'll share the Battle of the Books questions I compiled as I read Ungifted by Gordon Korman.

This was such a fun book to read.  I think the kids will really enjoy the story of this middle school boy who gets into so much trouble, without even trying.  The messes he gets into are hilarious!

Here is a book trailer I found online at the Book Trailers at HMS blog:

Hope you enjoy, and happy reading!!

Summer Vacation

Yesterday was my first day off -- FINALLY.  After working all weekend at Lowes, I have to admit...  I really spent most of the day not doing anything.  I did one load of laundry.  I took apart the vacuum and cleaned it out, then proceeded to vac only 2 rooms of my house before losing interest...  And I've spent far too much time on Pinterest lately.

I can use the heat as an excuse.  My a/c is broken and we're waiting for parts to come in.  Thankfully it's been in the 80s this week.  We were sweltering last week when we had a couple days in the 90s (97, in fact!).  Unfortunately, it's going to be climbing back up there again next week, so fingers crossed that whatever part he needs comes in soon!!

At any rate...  I think I did 2 or 3 weeks of Kindergarten lesson plans so far.  I haven't touched any of my EBOB books since last Thursday at school...  I do have the year pretty well mapped out, however.  I tried to look at what I wanted to do and tied back in with what the teachers do in their classrooms.  For example, when 3rd grade teachers traditionally study Native Americans, I have 3rd grade scheduled to research Native American Games.  My new issue, of course, is that I created my timeline in Word, and it isn't converting into Google Docs very well so I can share it easily.  I'll probably end up just making it a PDF for download.

It's hard to actually "plan" things for the library.  Did I explain this already?  I have a completely "flex" schedule -- no one has a set day/time to come to the media center.  They sign up on a week-by-week basis.  The problem I have is that my school is VERY program-rich.  In addition to EC and ESL pull-outs we have Sonday (a reading program), Fast ForWord (another reading program), Guided Reading (which is not done in the classroom here, it's small-group pull-outs where the teacher has a group, her assistant has a group, a specialist has a group, and/or a part-time tutor has a group), Acceleration (which is similar to remediation, only in reverse -- we teach the skill a week ahead of time so when the teacher teaches it the following week, it's not new information anymore), Read to Succeed, Reading Academy...  Then we have our special areas...  PE twice a week, Music, Art, and Guidance.  Plus we have Math Lab and Literacy Lab.  We have mandatory Character Education taught every day, followed by Math Matinee...  And I teach Character Ed, Guided Reading, and Acceleration classes, plus I had 13 mentees this year (usually every teacher is assigned 1 student, but since I have a flexible schedule...).  It's hard to make time for teachers.  And first grade hogs the best days/times.

But with our budget cuts, we are hoping (again, fingers crossed!!) that we'll lose a lot of this "extra" stuff and the kids will spend more time in their classrooms.  We know EC is taking a huge hit this year to their budget. The rumor mill says that we're losing a school that was nothing but EC students and that they're all going to be coming to my school next year.  All I know is that she warned the teachers that many will be moving to other classrooms.

But at any rate...  I was trying to keep up with individual classes, but some never come so they'd be stuck on beginning of the year material all year.  My plan for this year is to have my timeline and be able to tell the teachers that THIS is what I'm doing this week.  Sign up if you'd like your class to participate.  Otherwise, it's on you to make sure the kids know this information.  Maybe then they'll come.  Especially when I have whole units planned.

I suppose I have wasted enough time this morning.  I should probably get something accomplished.  Back to work!  After all, that's what summer vacation is for!

Belly Up

It's my last day of school (a workday) until next year -- YAY!!!   We actually have one more workday tomorrow, but I took leave because my daughter and I have a court subpoena to testify against that woman that attacked my child in school.  I don't think I wrote about that... 

But anyway, I thought I'd share the work I've been doing.  I've read 3 of the Elementary Battle of the Books selections thus far.  I'll share my questions in case anyone else needs to use them.  They're just Google Docs I'll share the link to.

Today's book:  Belly Up by Stuart Gibbs. 

 

This book is hilarious!  The kids are going to love it!  I am going to booktalk this one to get them interested in being on the team.  What 9 year old kid will choose NOT to read a book filled with hippo poo, exploding carcasses, danger, adventure, and a mystery to solve??
Here is the link to my questions:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/12dfvu76J_NRbnhZfxXWMqZ-75TgvJMkIicS0TzpQRYM/edit?usp=sharing

Hope this helps!   I decided that instead of wasting my time reading and having the kids write lousy questions, I'd start off with a database of my OWN questions.  Since the books often repeat, once I have the questions saved, I'll never have to write more.  I can just add any good ones the kids come up with. 

So that's today's book.  I'll post another soon!

And they're off!!

The last day of school has finally come....  and gone.  :)

Pre-K graduation was adorable, as always.  4th Grade's graduation was nice.  The only mar on it was the fight out in front of the school, but that was Pre-K parents.  Someone was blocked in and highly upset about it.  My principal had to interrupt the 4th grade program to ask a couple of our male staff members to head out front to break it up.  She also had to ask a couple parents to move their vehicles.

The parents at my school have real issues with their parking.  They're forever parking in the drop off lane and block it, or they'll double park in the parking lot and block people in, instead of parking in one of the available spaces.  Today there may not have been spaces, thus the blocking in, but normally there are spaces available, they're just being lazy!  This is a daily thing, and we have parents coming to blows in the parking lot at least once a month over it.

But after all that, we sent the rest of the children home at 1, and were permitted to leave to head home ourselves at 1:30.  It's so nice to be home by 2:00 on a Friday -- I actually have some time to relax before I head to work for Job #2.  Usually I rush home to hop into a pair of jeans and run right back out the door to be there by 5.

So for next week...  I'll be checking in the teachers' equipment and signing their checklists...  But, more importantly, I hope to get some more of my lessons done for next year so I don't have to drag all that stuff home with me.  A church group that reads with our kids gave me a $25 gift certificate to B&N, so I'll try to order some of the books I'd like for the lessons...  Like a copy of The Librarian from the Black Lagoon.

If only we didn't have Tropical Storm Andrea to contend with -- today would be a glorious day.  :)

179 down, 1-1/2 to go...

This has been a VERY busy week.  We started off with a rain-delay on our Field Day/Fun Day events.  I was involved with the actual Field Day festivities, so I didn't really pay too much attention to who was or wasn't having their Fun Day...  (Fun Day are the non-competitive games.)

Kindergarten missed their Monday morning fun, but we did manage to get through all of first grade and most of the 3rd grade events before the rain got to be too much and we had to call it quits.  I spent the rest of Monday working inside the school.  I can't honestly recall what I was doing, but I was out and about in the school working on something.  LOL, I'm so ready for summer vacation!!

Tuesday we started off with Kindergarten Field Day make-up, then we finished the last 3 events the 3rd grade had missed on Monday.  In the meantime, the rest of the school was beginning their Inflatable City fun.  We finished just in time to go help with the school-wide BBQ.  After that, I had to go take pictures of classes for an end-of-the-year slideshow for the teachers.

Wednesday I finished the pictures, then hurried outside to help with 2nd and 4th grade's field day adventures.  I was amazed...  After like 16 years of this, one particular teacher still has no clue how to set up her class for any of the games.  For instance, there are 7 kids on the tug-of-war team.  Her paper had lines for 7 names.  It said "7 boys" (and in another spot there was a girls' team of 7).  She wrote down 5 names.  She lined up 9 kids.  I told her she needed 7.  She looked at them.  She counted.  She looked at her names on her sheet.  She counted her names.  She counted her kids again.  She looked at me blankly and said, "I just don't know what to do."  Smh.  I picked the 2 smallest kids and told them to go sit down.  Really??  How hard was that?

After field day, I helped with the slide show, and we watched enjoyed the K-2 talent show.  Knowing in my heart of hearts that there was absolutely no way the 3-4 talent show could possibly be any more...  stimulating...  heartwarming....  entertaining, I went down to a friend's room to work with her on the slideshow we'd been taking all the pictures for.

We worked on that right up until the bell.

Tomorrow is the awards assemblies, then they'll practice for the 4th grade graduation.  I should have a day in my office to hide from the teacher I mentioned earlier who wants me to help her with a grad school paper (and she's driving me nuts!) and get some more of my lesson plans done for next year hopefully.

Then Friday I'll spend in the graduation ceremony...  And that will be an early release day!  YAY!!  And we're allowed to go home when the kids are gone.  Happy  (belated) Teacher Appreciation Day to us!!  This is our present since all we had money for this year was a keychain (mine broke within 2 days of putting it on my keys).

I'm loving the last week of school, but I still can't wait for it to be over!!  Off to bed for now, though.  :)