Friday, August 12, 2011

Back to School

The air is getting cooler! It was 86 yesterday. The smell of freshly sharpened pencils is in the air, number lines and bulletin boards are hanging, and Little Bird has a new lunch pail, backpack, and a few little outfits for her first foray into preschool.

I think it’s actually really neat that she will be going to the same preschool my brothers and I attended when we were little.  She will have tons of outdoor and gym playtime as well as structured thematic units and will go to music every Wednesday. 

Little Bird will go to preschool three days a week, which is wonderful as she is showing a higher and higher interest in playing with other children.  She particularly seems to enjoy handing her little cousin blocks to play with and picking them up when he throws them, so I’m willing to bet she ends up being the motherly one in her class…when she isn’t jumping off the cabinets and scaring the hell out of her teachers.

Speaking of scaring the hell out of teachers, my classroom is almost ready for my new crop of 60 bright eyed fifth graders.  I added a few new “tricks” this year.  For example, I’ve eliminated the chance that a student might forget to use a red pen to grade instead of a pencil and accidently change their answers by attaching big flowers to the ends of a class set of grading pens.  If you aren’t grading with a sunflower…I WILL KNOW!

Second, I’ve put a strip of blue duct tape around all of my person supplies like pens, pencils, dry erase markers, and sharpees.  I have no qualms with loaning out my materials to students, but they often forget they borrowed it and then I have nothing left to use at school – so I’m hoping the blue strip reminds them to return it!

Also, a Twitter board went up!  We have interesting articles from Tween Tribune, an online magazine for 9-12 year olds posted in the hall with a folder of post-its mounted next to it.  Students can write their thoughts and post them, almost like comments, onto our board to get them interacting with one another through the bulletin boards in our room. 

Check here for my favorite article!

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