Why a Teacher? Linky

Thanks Mrs. Reed for this great linky party.

 

This week's questions:

1.  What made you decide to become a teacher?

I grew up in a family of teachers, professional development happened every night at my dinner table as we heard the latest development in my Momma's classroom. (FYI: Best teacher and Mom I know, Happy Mother's Day!) I always knew I wanted to be a teacher, just refer to my Kindergarten writing that said so; however, in high school I started to question it because when I told people I was going to be a teacher everyone would say "Oh because your mom and sister are" 

Now this is not a bad thing, my mom and sister are the best teachers I know, but I wanted to make sure that this was my choice. So after prayer and reflection I knew this was my path: to mold young minds everyday, teaching about Christ + some first grade standards. 

2. What has been your most rewarding experience as a teacher?

Getting to eat cupcakes on all the birthdays! (jk..well, I am a sweetaholic!)

Last year I had a little boy who came to me not knowing his sounds, needless to say being a first year teacher this made me extremely nervous but God led the way and my little L learned how to read and how to love school. This was a message he wrote me and our reading coach(Mrs. Planz). I still tear up every time I read it. This is why my (35 hour week) turns into 60, because being the best for each student and encouraging them is the reason God made me a teacher. 

 

3. If you were not a teacher, what would you be?

Not really sure, but here is a list of possibilities:

1. baker

2. missionary

3. interior design

4. children's book author/illustrator

5. stay at home mom (when I find prince charming ha)

6. photographer/crafter

Thanks for dropping in! 

9 more school days! 

24 days till I'm back to the Philippines!

~Rachel 

Catching up!

So I was thinking that I have not been blogging enough lately. I originally started this blog so I could document life and my teaching career and blogging 3-4 times a month is not enough. I will start trying to do better, I promise! Today I am catching up on lots of things around the house before I head North for a few days for Thanksgiving. It's also a great day to catch you up on what's been going on in my life!

1. I had to go to professional development two Mondays ago and one of the best parts was the CANDY! Major sweet tooth!

2. My students voted on Election day in our classroom, good news, I won! Look out, Romney and Obama.

3. I had a very busy weekend, last weekend. My Sunday School class had a bon-fire and it was a great time to catch up with everyone while enjoying the beauty of a bonfire. Good friends, good conversations, and SMORES, what could be better?

4. That same weekend my whole family came into town to tailgate for the AUvsGA game. We had a great time hanging out and going to the game together. My sister made these delicious pumpkin spice cookies that were a huge hit. 

That same weekend Jeff and his daughter Josie (Jeff's family started Kids International Ministries in PI) visited our church!!! Our whole group got to hang out with them and their friend Hannah on Monday so I made LB's cookies! They are  delicious!

In other news, NEWSIES was on Dancing with the Stars the other night, so I tuned in to watch them rock the stage. Oh, how I wish I could go back and see them again!!!

I hope everyone has a lovely Saturday!!!
~Rachel

Happy Hearts

So I was thinking that my heart has been moved in many different ways today. It was a great day at school, one of my students who had a B-A-D day yesterday, came in today and acted like a completely different child, she was an ALL-STAR. My stress level dropped a few points and I was soo proud : ). Happy Heart

Yesterday we were discussing 9/11 in my class because I had an American flag on the calendar and my students really had an interest in it, so today we took a few minutes to discuss the events of that day. Some of my students even watched some of the specials on TV about that day the night before. I showed some of my pictures that I took in '07 of the construction.

and then my uncle's pics of the finished reflection pool and Freedom tower this past February.

                                  

My students kept asking questions and why? and when? and so we talked through it and even discussed why it could be called the Freedom tower (land of the FREE). One little girl came up with "The bad guys must have done that awful thing because they don't like God and the USA" 

So we discussed how God told us to love everyone and to do good things, so that could be true. 

I finished by reading this book I found at the book fair last year. It was written by a 1st grade class in MO. I told them of my experience with this day and all of our hearts were sad for the people involved but happy that we could honor them with this day. 

I got home and had a great surprise in my inbox. An email from my K.I.M friends in the PHILIPPINES! Tears poured as I watched this video and missed all my precious students and friends from Cuatro, but my heart was also glad because I knew that they knew that God loved them and even though I couldn't be with them I knew God was with them as they were celebrating being in their NEWly re-done classrooms. I'm still so blessed by this experience in the PI and at my school I try to teach my kids about how to show God's love everyday like these friends showed me!

~Rachel 

Back to Business

Well, I have made it through the first two weeks of school and to say that I was tired was an understatement. EXHAUSTED, would be a better word; however, the long weekend has been just what I needed to rest up and get back into the swing of things. I have lots of pictures and stories to tell so I will apologize for the long post.

Funny saying in the first weeks:

"Miss A, how do you spell 'pecause'?"  Do you mean because? 

"Nope, pecause, like I want to be a doctor pecause"

Ready for Open House!

 Whole Brain Teaching Rules!

 Whole Brain Teaching Methods

 Gifts for the Firsties!

 The boats have the students' names on them. There are also red strings all coming from AL to London, Uganda, & the Philippines! Places people in my family traveled to this summer.

New behavior chart, taken from Cara and tweaked a little for my kiddos. 

 Last year I was given this extra desk, however, it was covered in SpongeBob stickers. Now I'm not a huge fan of the underwater gang, so it got a fresh coat of paint this year!

 New book organization

         

Our favorite first grader!

      
         Eric Carle tissue paper characters

 School is Cool

chilling with our shades on

  Started back this week with Sam, Come Back. We're learning

short 'a' and final 'ck.'

~Miss Anderson 

The Finale

So I was thinking.... that no one told me saying good-bye was going to be so hard. I can not believe that I only have two more days until my first year of teaching is over. Over the past two weeks anytime I have thought about saying good-bye, tears have come to my eyes and I have tried my best to push them away. I have already warned my class that I will probably cry this week and not to worry, I'll be okay.

How can 21 six and seven year olds affect me this way? 

Well, first off, they have brought me so much JOY this year, and have made this year very memorable. Here is why my tears will be flowing these next two days.

1. I have been blessed with a class that loves to talk about the Lord. As mentioned before with one of my friends here, they know that God cares about them and loves them. I loved getting to listen to their conversations about who God is and what He has done for us.

Mark 10:14

"Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom

of God belongs to such as these."

2. I have been blessed to start my days for the past 178 school days with 21 smiling faces greeting me, ready to have a blast. 

3. I have been able to make learning fun, which is what I was most nervous about when I started 178 days ago. I have gained so much confidence in my ability to make activities fun: noun town, Oobleck, SCI FRIs, Native American head dresses, Ocean life Ipad reports, and everything in between. Seeing their smiles and their enthusiasm while working makes all the hard work of cutting out and creating completely worth it.   

4. I have been blessed with 21 fabulous students, who believe in me, encourage me, and laugh at all of my jokes. (Teaching 1st grade is a great confidence booster!)

5. I have been blessed to have been able to instill in my firsties the love of reading. One of my precious friends came up to me at Open House nine months ago and was nervous because he didn't know all of his sounds. With the help of everyone at our school he now LOVES to read to anyone who will listen, wanting to miss his center time to go read to someone.

6. The classroom community in my room is enough to make me tear up each day. Hearing a six year old encourage one of their friends to keep on going and celebrating their successes has been one of the greatest joys this year. 

While writing my good-bye letters, I realized how much I was going to miss this adorable, crazy, rowdy, caring, loving group of kids. It has been a fabulous year with many memories to reflect on. I have been blessed to be in a profession where I can see children mature and grow day by day.

 So wish me luck this week as I have to reluctantly say good-bye to my first class!  

~Rachel 

12 more days to go!

I hope everyone is having a lovely Sunday. I am home for the weekend for one of my best friend's wedding shower. It was nice to go to my home church to day and take a break from the Auburn scene. I hope the Lord has given you many things to be blessed about on this pretty Sunday. I love getting to talk with my firsties about God and I wanted to share a quick part of our week that made my heart smile.  

One of my first grade friends has been having trouble controlling his behavior this year, and this week had not started out well for him. He had been mean to a friend, snipped someone's hair in Art, and just not making good choices. He had to sit out for part of recess one day and so I pulled him over to talk with him. 

Here was the convo:

Me: BC I just love you so much and I want you to make those good choices that I know you know how to do. BC who loves you?

BC: You do, and my mom

Me: Who believes in you?

BC: you do (heart melting so far)

Me: Who cares about you?

BC: God.

(My heart smiled so big, that I just gave him a huge hug and let him go play. If you remember, I ask that you pray for him with me.)

I LOVE when I see God working in the hearts of my 21 friends that I now after 168 days with them feel like my own. 

Here is our week in recap:

We have been learning about butterflies so we made some coffee filter butterflies and glued them to a butterfly poem that I created. 

I randomly bought a coloring book one day, and it has turned out to be a lifesaver. We love coloring the pages and displaying them in our brand new 'gallery.'

We studied commands and exclamations so I created this worksheet where we wrote one of each type of sentence and then drew a picture to match. 

I am LOVING making Anchor Charts lately! Such a great way to review all we have learned!

Here is our butterfly life cycle that we made. We read two books to find our information and then as an incentive I let them color in the pictures that you see on the chart. 

We have been reading The Magic School Bus: Expedition Down Under, so we worked on story maps and summarizing. 

Review on Contraction and Compound Words. 

Last week we worked on the life cycle of a frog and one of my parents sent in some little frogs for us to observe. 

I hope that you see the joy and blessings in each day this week! Happy Sunday!

~Rachel 

Busy Busy Days!

So its been a while, but I am here to fill you in. 

I have had a few mishaps which have made me seem to vanish in blogger land:

1. visited the local ER: interesting night but just ended up being migraines/ anemic

2.  got a 24 hour bug 

3. DIBELS testing

So when not sick, I've been exhausted, but I have caught a new wind and ready to face the last 23 days of the school year! Can you believe it, we are almost done!

I hope everyone had a great Easter! It's such a great way to celebrate the amazing act that God did for us! Oh, How he LOVES us! I loved getting to hear from my kids and what they already knew about this celebration. I spent a great weekend with the fam and some family friends. I heard a great lesson on Peter and how after the crucifixion he went back to the man he was before Christ. If God came back today, where would he find you? Serving Him or serving the world?

 the brother and me Easter morning

We have been studying life cycles and the ow/ou sound so we made these fun activities.

       1. We made bunny contractions and wrote sentences with them!

       2. We made the Pinterest inspired flowers and learned how to label.

       3. We made 'ow' band-aids. The picture wouldn't fit so I did the best I could : )

In Math we studied money, so we brainstormed information we knew about these coins and I made some anchor charts to hang in our room.

At the end of our unit we held a YARD SALE! The kids brought in some change and items to sell! We had a blast counting out exact change for our prizes! It was so funny, some of the students would buy back what their mom sent in!

I had been using Mystery words as a behavior incentive, but we needed a change so I have been drawing pictures on the board and we have colored them in as we make 'whole group' All-Star decisions. Before Easter I used a decorated egg, this week we are working to color in this umbrella. It's very fitting with the rain we have been having!

As always, I will try and keep you updated on a more regular basis. 

~Rachel 

From Adjective to Washington

I should really rename this segment to the Two Week Review, because I always feel like I am catching up on two weeks, but anyway, here we go! Last Friday we had our last Historian Friday before we move back into SCI-FRI: in honor of President's day my lab student presented some information on George Washington. She showed us a Powerpoint while we jotted down important facts on post-its. After, the students were able to take a post-it from the board and write down Washington facts. Then they got to create their own George! 

 Aren't they cute!

Today we read about "Honest Abe" and since it was rainy and we couldn't go out for recess, we got to have Movie Time and watch a movie about our friend Abe. 

Here is a writing about George. 

 Last week our grammar skill was reviewing contractions. I took this fabulous idea from Cara and added a fun spin to put it on my bulletin board. We took our contraction and wrote about them and drew a picture. 

Dr. Apostrophe is ready for surgery!

They loved this one!

I was so impressed with their drawings!

 "I preformed surgery on ___ & ___. After surgery the two words became ____. " 

We have been learning about penguins the last two weeks and for one of our stations did an ABC word order game. My kids LOVE penguins and loved waddling around. 

This week our grammar skill was adjectives, which was a little tough for us: good thing we have two more weeks to prefect our skill. We read this book:

and then we used the activity at the back to make Acrostic Name Adjectives. 

I loved the B is for big with the picture of just a set of legs! 

Well I'm off to prepare for Read Across America Week with some fun Dr. Seuss activities, catch you up next week! 

~Miss Anderson