Back in the Saddle

 Long time no write.  Sorry for that.  There has been so much going on at school.  As I've written before our school is in the three year accreditation phase to become an IB PYP school.  Part of that process involves receiving numerous grants and being visit by officials often.  We had one of these such visits a couple of weeks ago.  They just stopped by to make sure we were including all of our necessary inquiry lessons, vocabulary, etc.  Still - anytime someone new is in my classroom it is stressful!  That same week we also had observers from our math curriculum come to see how we were using the math curriculum. If you add the pressure of this time of year and all the benchmarking, whew!  Below are some things that we have either added to the classroom or been working on. 

 Inquiry Center

This inquiry center is something that needs to be in my room to promote inquiry based instruction.  In the "I wonder" cup there are pencils and different colored sticky notes.  During independent work time, students can write questions, thoughts, or ideas on a sticky note.  Twice a week during our school's flex/intervention time, we research the answers to their questions. 

 April/Spring Bulletin Board (Math)

Each flower is a name collection box.  

I got this idea from Reagan  It fit in well with acronyms and our poetry unit.  

Anyway, I have been reading several other blogs, and it seems like it is that time of year when we are losing our student teachers.  My student teacher was INCREDIBLE.  It is weird taking over the reins again after so long.  The program that my student teacher went through allowed her to be in my room all year.  First semester, she was in my room twice a week.  She actually had all of her hours met, so she actually got to pick her hours.  The first week and a half of school she was there all day.  As her classes picked up, though, she started coming on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  Of course second semester, she was there all day.  Due to the fact that she was in my classroom so much first semester, though, she was able to takeover my class very early second semester.  She started taking over classes the second week of January when we returned.  So, the last real time that I was in full takeover was around Christmas or before the winter break.  It definitely feels like the night before the first day of school again.  :D  

While I am excited, I am also very stressed.  We have 26 days of school left and in those 26 days I still have several conferences to attend, AIMS web, math and reading progress monitoring, DRAs, report cards, planning for next year, etc.  It's been a long time since I've even had to make copies and lesson plan on my own.  *frazzled*

Here's hoping that I can make it through this week without collapsing!