Welcome Back to The Real World!!

I feel like it has been forever since I have been on here after taking the summer off!!! And to be honest I have barely been back in school, my school district didn't start back until the friday after Labor Day,  the we had of for Rosh Hashana, and  this week we have off for Yom Kippur. I feel like it has been a whirl wind couple of weeks. As soon as I got back to school however I realized it was going to be both a good and overwhelming year. We have a new principal who is absolutely wonderful and has already turned the climate of the school around. I also found out I am going to have a bunch of new lovies on my caseload, but after the last two weeks I am ready!!! I did add/change a couple things in my classroom this year so i thought I would share......

First two really cool Instagrams I took on my way to work today...

Aren't the clouds over Philadelphia beautiful?

For some reason the gate at school just caught my eye

Ok here we go Classroom 2012...

My new teacher organization station. every drawer has a different intervention program that I teach and I have numerous binders for organization

Two new boards this year first up

The word of the week board...my students really need help with sight words and this allows them to practice one word all week. All of the activities come out of the book "The Best Sight Word Book Ever" Key Education Publishing

And Number of the Day to simply keep my kids on their toes with their math work

New to our SCHOOL this year the 5 A's & B's . These are constant and posted in every classroom, hallway, and Office of the school

My cute Long Vowel Posters I have a lot of students with goals revolving around these E is missing

 

Homework turn in 

Our 5 A's and B's defined

My new teacher board check out the yellow fabric hand picked by my little munchkin

Now clock minute markers

The Front of my classroom

My new work wall after every week , the word of the week gets put up

My teacher area

Math and Literacy Games

Class Library

Computers (Sorry about the pic quality)

The door area

Sign on the front of my classroom door

My new tool box made over the summer LOVE IT!!

My new beautiful Teacher Bag Thank you mommy.

(My Mother's Day Present from my mom last year I just waited to use it till this year)

Finally in First: My Mega Giveaway

Hello all sorry it has been a while but I wanted to let you in on an awesome giveaway I just found!!!Finally in First is having a mega giveaway that gives us 30 ways to win and all the items are sooooo cool. Follow me over there and enter!!

VERY IMPORTANT PLEASE READ!!

If you could link this on your pages and get my word out I would appreciate it. I don't know how to create a linky party but I would love for you all just to link a picture showing your support for public education.


The air is damp with the morning dew that has blanketed the city the night before, and all is quiet as morning traffic just starts to make its way on the streets of Philadelphia.It is 7:45 in the morning and most people are on their way to work, but our Philadelphia School District teachers have already been at the schools for 20 minutes preparing to show their support. Over the next ten minutes in front of schools all across the city, the sidewalks of our schools are being flooded by teachers and staff painting our city red for a good cause. Around their necks hang signs reading “Save Our Schools!”, and urging passing cars to honk their horns and show their support for our children and our schools.

Earlier this month we were told that our district plans to close or convert 64 schools within the next seven years,40 by the end of the 2012-2013 school year! It is not any new news that our school district is in a major bidget shortfall, but the question becomes is privatizing public education the way to go? If charter schools replace our public education, and have the right to pick and choose the students that come in to their schools, where do the kids go that no charter school wants? Is it fair to take their education away from them? I know that I do not know where most of you are from but I am asking you to one friay simply wear red to school and know in your heart and your mind that you are supporting a district that works very hard to teach our children, and that like you we want these underdogs to succeed. Spread the work to your fellow teachers, and if you are from the Philadelphia area and you see the floods of red shirts and signs on the sidewalk every Friday honk your horns and show your support.    If you are willing I would love to see pictures of your red tshirts your support not just for our district but all education in the United States. If someone would like to help with a picture linky Id appreciate it. Thank You for taking the time to read!! Love you all!

Oh My Goodness!!

I just realized how incredibly long it has been since I posted on my blog!! OH NO!!!! I am incredibly sorry as I have seen there has been some activity in terms of people coming to the blog to check in, AND I PROMISE THAT THIS AFTERNOON I WILL POST A REAL POST.

Classroom Library Linky Party

I am taking part in the Classroom Library Linky Party over on  Literacy and Laughter's page so come on over and check it out! She is asking to see what our classroom libraries look like to get some ideas for her own room! So here is my classroom library I hope you enjoy it!

This is My whole classroom library! I have a ton of books and I often switch out the books in my book bins on the bigger shelving unit. I have a small classroom so I had o work with what I had!

My seating and a bean bag for my students. I am a learning support teacher so I have small groups throughout the day. I have a chart that rotates the students through days of who gets to sit on the bean bag which day.

These are my main book bins. I have interchangeable labels for when I switch the books out. Right now I have Animals, Friends and Family, Math  and Science, Story Books, Transportation, and Social Studies. I am about to change a couple of the bins one being poetry books for poetry month!

I have this great organizational system on top of my main shelving that holds 12 magazine files containing different reading file folder games. These are also switched out weekly.

This is my leveled reader bin each bin is broken up into the different reading levels. In the bottom bins there are sight word books, readers theater books, chapter books, and word family books.

This is my absolutely awesome big book rack holding all of my big books 75 of them!!!

On the wall over my leveled readers is my "Heart Words" these are our different leveled sight words for the students t reference while in the library center.

My great ABC, Numbers, Rhyming word, and Measurement rug. The students use this rug for reading time, read aloud time and I also have a listening center that is brought out on occasion and they sit here to listen to the story!

We use this area as a check out area ( There is a library self check out chart on the other side of the leveled cart) , a read aloud area, a quiet reading area, and a poetry area. It was so easy to organize, all my baskets came form my local dollar tree, the game center, leveled reading cart and big book holder all got donated through donors choose, the bean bag i brought from home, and my rocker came from a local yard sale for $1!! I love it and I added a plant to make it homey.

Back From Spring Break

Ok teachers we are in the home stretch of the year now lets hear a big yippee!!! Today is our first day back from spring break and while I thought my kids would be off the wall they are actually doing pretty well, a little tired but ok. Guess what I got the great news that I get to stay at my school that I am at next year!!! This is great news because I was a special assignment this year and it was up in the air where I would be next year so another yippee. I just had to shout it from the roof tops because I am so excited!
This is just my welcome back for today keep an eye out for some of the awesome stuff that I have planned for my class. It is going to be a great next couple of months!!
How was your spring breaks? Did you do anything interesting? Do you have anything special planned for your students in the last couple months of school?

A little personal tid bit with a bit of drama

First I would like to introduce you all to my amazing son he will be 2 soon and I like to show him off because I am a proud mommy and he is what makes me a better person which in turn makes me a better teacher. Don't mind the get up he thought he was cool with his "Daddy gear" on.

Now for my traumatic ordeal from last night, and I promise it will give you a little insight to my teaching day today. Little man here had a massive fever all day yesterday , so we have him some Tylenol last night and put him to bed. At 12:30 am he woke up coughing with this horrible seal cough, so I called his doctor who said it sounded like croup, proceeded to tell me what to do and said if his breathing gets bad to bring him to the ER. So guess what at 12:45 am we made our way to the ER because little mans breathing got really fast and well me being me it really got to me. He was an angel while there took his medicine played with the amazing nurse that was there , and all around started to feel better it seemed, so at 2:30 we got sent home. We got him comfy in bed snoring like a baby literally and by 3:00am we were in bed asleep. At 4:15 my poor baby was up crying so mommy made her way down comforted him and got him back to sleep, by this time it was 4:45 and I was back in bed, in what seemed like no time my alarm went off for work it was 6:20. So this is where I tell you how much I love my students because my little butt got out of bed after a combined 2 hours or so and started driving to work, not smart as i could feel my eyes closing over and over. BUT my day was made complete because when I walked into my learning support room all those smiling faces were in such a good mood I couldn't help but wake up and teach! And just a little FYI my son is home doing well getting himself better with daddy today. Thank you for letting me get that story out because I think I just needed to tell someone.