Happy 100th Day!

Tip #1:

When you're in charge of a classroom party, such as 100th's day... organize organize organize! Also, always make sure you know how many parents are coming in to help (if any... which I suggest you have a few- puts less stress on you!) Also, if you're doing your "party" in a centers or stations style, make sure you have something for those who finish early (and there's always at least one) to do while they wait to switch to the next center.

Our class celebrated 100th's day by making crowns, fruit-loop necklaces, a cookie, a super cute pizza with 100 toppings and gum-ball machine with 100 gum-balls (pictures to come), and a class book with things like "What will I look like in 100 years," "If I had $100  I would buy," "I would eat 100," and "My favorite thing about the 1st 100 days of school" pages. All of these things were very cute- but took a lot of prep!

Tip #2:

For our class, it works very well using the ELMO image projector to complete pages (like in our 100 book) together slowly...instead of letting the kids go off on their own and work. This always seems to return higher quality work than if they work on their own! (Also works great for penmanship lessons!)

Happy Friday :)

And So It Begins.

Well, here I go in my attempts to help current and future student teachers- as well as any teachers out there who are taking on an intern for their first time! I am 22 years old and currently student teaching in a kindergarten classroom (which I love).  A lot of my friends always asked why I requested to be in a kinder room- but truth be told- even though it can sometimes feel like controlled chaos, I have always been drawn to helping younger children. 

I have been working with this group of kindergartners since October 2010 when I was assigned there for some pre-student teaching observations and lesson teaching by my school. I was lucky enough to have the teacher in the room take me on as a student teacher! I think it helped a lot being in the room working with the kids twice a week; so that when in January I became the full time student teacher, the kids were already comfortable with me. I am an Elementary Education/ Language Arts major, and actually just passed both of my certifications tests so now I am ready to find a job once I graduate in May!

 I got the idea to start this blog by one of the teachers at the school I'm at. I created a blog for my Cooperating Teacher (CT) so she could share what is happening in her classroom and her lesson plans with other teachers. I was surprised to see how many cute teacher blogs there are out there! Check out a few of my favorites on the side of this page! Thank you to my CT for getting me into the blogging world! I wish I had started this from day 1 in student teaching, but I will make sure I mention things that have already happened and great tips/ lessons I have already learned!

Enjoy, and don't be too stressed out fellow ST's!