Fall 2014: Back to Blogging

After a tough year and a half of dealing with serious medical issues of my own and dealing with the death of my mother, I am finally ready to get back to this blog.

I am still teaching 1st grade and I am excited to focus on educational projects again!

I am in the same classroom I have been in for the past few years. However, this Summer I spent some time going through my classroom and changing out my "Jungle" theme that I kept for 3 years. Instead of going with a certain theme, I went with the colors turquoise, lime green and white. I do have a few "Hawaiian" themed items in the room also. I went crazy with the Hawaiian theme outside my door and in the bathroom, but I wanted to keep the classroom more calming for the children.

Here are some pictures:

This year, my school is doing something new for us. I am paired up with the teacher across the hall. She teaches Reading to both of our classes and I teach Math and Writing to our classes. It is going very well so far. It is so nice not to have to plan everything. I am able to delve deeper into Math and Writing and I feel like I am doing a better job teaching each subject. 

I thought that I may not like teaching the same things twice in one day, but it really has been like two totally different classes. Each class has their own overall "personality" and one of the classes seems to understand the Math Concepts quicker as a whole so that class ends up being a day or two ahead in each Math Unit. One of the classes behaves very well at Centers, so they are able to do them each day while I pull groups. The other class sometimes behaves well at Centers so I do more Whole (or almost Whole) Group activities. I still let the children who are behaving go to their Math Centers and the others all work with me. I have not been bored at all. I am actually loving it!