Well, this week started off on quite the interesting note. My older brother and his wife have two little ones already, and I was set to be an aunt for the third time in November. Well, the little guy was so eager to come out that he decided to arrive over a month early! I got the call late Sunday night and was on standby awaiting any sort of news the majority of the next morning, so I was a bit of a wreck all day. I gave the kids a quick rundown of the situation (considering I was continually checking my phone...), and they were all so sweet and supportive. Fortunately, everyone is healthy, and I am officially the aunt of little Aiden! I've been regularly showing the class pics, and when I finally got to visit him in the hospital on Thursday, I brought a very special card created by our wonderful 4th graders. My brother and sister-in-law got a kick out of all the "life advice for Aiden" words of wisdom included in the card...

This week, one of the books that we read was Each Kindness by Jacqueline Woodson. The book ends in a rather poignant way, but the author's message is both clear and important: kindness matters. In the book, the teacher does an activity with her class that involves students placing a stone in a bucket of water while stating an act of kindness they've done recently. The teacher encourages her students to watch the water ripple, and points out that kindness spreads in a similar way. I thought this was a beautiful analogy, so we did the same exercise in our classroom. We also used this story to practice annotating and summarizing, which are two reading strategies we'll be circling back to quite a bit this year.

Our Bucket Fillers of the week were Logan G. and Aliyah. Effort is the word that comes to mind when I think of both kiddos. They've both really impressed me with their willingness to work hard and their perseverance during difficult tasks. Logan has been awesome in contributing to classroom discussions, and Aliyah is constantly making me smile. Congrats, you two!

  

I'm kicking myself. I wanted to take photos during our parent/guardian welcome breakfast on Friday morning, but it totally slipped my mind. That's okay, we'll have other gatherings this year that will similarly involve family involvement! I FINALLY gave students permission to explore my beloved classroom library this week...which I know seems quite delayed considering I am the ELA teacher. But I had to ward the kids off for the first two weeks or so, and that's the direct result of having wayyyyy too many books. This summer, I got an assortment of new books to add to my (already-overflowing) classroom library. As I started allocating the books to their appropriate genre bins, I realized that I would not have nearly enough room to add even a fraction of them. So, naturally, I decided that the only logical solution would be to expand and reorganize my classroom library. The only problem was that this decision happened to occur during the final days of summer break. Yup, the last week before the start of school wasn't the most opportune time for such a monumental undertaking. Well, tons of bin purchases, lots of book sorting, and a great deal of book-bin-label-laminating later, my library was just about complete, and just in time for the first day of school. The final hurdle? The actual labeling of books, which takes much longer than you'd think. Fortunately, that's where my lovely homeroom came in. After asking a few students here and there to give me a hand in taking off the old labels, the class expressed that they'd all like to pitch in and help me get the labeling done. So, that's exactly what we did. I was grateful not only for their willingness to help, but also for how well we all worked together as a team to accomplish a task. Since then, I've tried to give students as much independent reading time as I can. In addition, we've talked about and practiced how to find a "just right" book, discussed what it means to really read and interact with what we're reading, and even played charades to establish independent reading expectations.

On Friday, we were invited into Miss Matteis's first grade classroom to read with her kiddos. The time frame ended up being during Mrs. O'Keefe's homeroom's ELA block, but there'll definitely be more opportunities this school year to collaborate with other grade levels, and it'll all even out for the two homerooms. The kids made me so proud, and I'm looking forward to doing it again. Make sure to check out the photos below!

Our Bucket Fillers this week were Cash and Will. Cash is so helpful. I often notice him putting up chairs of absent students at the end of the school day, picking up pencils off the floor when we're lining up to head into the hallway, and just being an all-around awesome member of our classroom community. Will is also awesome. He is incredibly driven and eager to learn, so much so that he has already become an expert on the US map and its fifty states. I can't wait to see all that he will undoubtedly accomplish this school year!

   

  

  

  

Our first full week is behind us! It was our first run of our regular weekly schedule, which will take some time for all of us to get used to. Our morning schedule is consistent throughout the week, but the second half of the school day is dependent on the day of the week. On Monday and Tuesday, my homeroom remains in Mrs. O'Keefe's classroom for intervention block and science, and return to me after specialist for the final block of the school day. On Thursday and Friday, it's the opposite; I see them for intervention and the block before lunch, and they go to Mrs. O'Keefe in the afternoon after specialist. Wednesday tends to vary because of all the students taking instrument and because of the occasional half-day Wednesday. Yup--it will definitely take some getting used to!

We finished up our goal setting towards the beginning of the week. I'm big into self reflecting and goal setting, as I think it's important for students to regularly self assess and take ownership of their learning. So using a self reflection homework assignment, students set goals for themselves for the 4th grade school year. We worked hard to make the goals SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely. And trust me, this is no easy task. But this challenging assignment pushes kids to think about areas they need to improve on, and reinforces their desire to make that area a priority this school year. I'll hang up these goal pennants and throughout the year, we'll track our progress towards meeting our goals.

We also had our first STEAM class of the school year. Ms. Tosches is a close friend of mine, and I absolutely LOVE working with her. We did a divergent thinking activity around growth mindset and emotion regulation, and it's always fun to see what the kids come up with and create when given a set number of assorted materials. Make sure to check out the pictures below!

Our Bucket Fillers of the week were Mac and Quinn. Mac is helpful, kind, and respectful, and I often find myself saying his name as an example of a student making positive choices and following directions. I can also tell that he's insightful and receptive to feedback, which are qualities I really appreciate in my students. Speaking of qualities I appreciate, Quinn was the epitome of kindness on Friday, and I LOVED it. He noticed a classmate discouraged during STEAM class, so he made a little "good luck clover" for her to cheer her up. What was especially cool though was that it was a genuine act of kindness--he had no intention of me finding out. He simply that she was down and wanted to make her feel better. I love that, and I hope to see lots more acts of kindness this school year.

  

    

One thing I really like about starting school when we do is that we sort of "ease into" the school year. The first week is only 1.5 days, the second week is 4 days, and then it's not until the third week that we finally have a full 5-day week of school. It's a nice way to get ourselves adjusted and back into "school mode". And our crew this year has been adjusting quite nicely. The fact that we have such small class sizes is great. It makes instruction and behavior much more manageable. Establishing a positive classroom climate and community is always a big focus of mine during the first few weeks of school, and so those values were at the core of many of our activities and discussions this week. One such activity was our brown bag autobiography assignment. Students were tasked to fill a brown paper bag with five items that represent their interests, values, or personality. On Tuesday and Wednesday, students could choose one, two, or three of these items to share with their classmates, while also providing their reasoning for including it in their brown bag. They then could take two questions from their "audience" related to what they shared. This is a really nice way for us all to get to know each other, and I like taking part in it too!

This week we also did some team-building challenges, enjoyed a few back-to-school related read-alouds, and discussed Chromebook expectations, as students get 1-1 Chromebooks in 4th grade. Students were asked to answer a questionnaire to help me learn about them on both a student and human level, so that I can best meet their needs as one of their teachers this school year. We also had several visitors this week. We had our district's talented strings and band instructors for instrument demos, since students have the option of taking an instrument starting in fourth grade. Ms. Tosches, Mrs. Cullinane, Mr. Marshall, and Mrs. Kennedy also stopped by our classroom at different points this week.

We picked our first Bucket Fillers of the school year on Friday. This is a routine we'll do each week to recognize and celebrate positive behavior. It's based on the book "How Full Is Your Bucket? For Kids" by Mary Reckmeyer and Tom Rath, which introduces the idea that we all have invisible buckets over our heads that fill up and empty throughout the day depending on our feelings and interactions with others. Throughout the year, over the course of the school week, I write down the names of students who stand out for being kind, working hard, helping out, etc. and put these names in a jar. On Fridays, I randomly pick a name for the Bucket Fillers of the week, and they get to choose either a prize, show-and-tell, or lunch with the teacher. I also write a sentence or two about each Bucket Filler on that week's blog post. I pulled Jodenci and Annabelle's name from the jar to kick off the school year. Jodenci has had a great week. He's been attentive and respectful, and I'm confident that we're going to have a really awesome year together. I'm also excited to have Annabelle in class this year. I can already tell she's going to be one of those students who I can rely on to consistently do the right thing and to help me when I need it. Congrats, you two!

  

  

 

  

A new school year is upon us!! The first week of school always sneaks up on me, and this year was no different. Despite being one of the longer summer breaks we've had in a while, it definitely felt quick. But if the first day and a half are any indication of how this fourth grade school year will go, then it will undoubtedly be a great one. 

Rules and routines. Rules and routines. More rules and routines. As not-so-thrilling as these talking points are, we can't kick off our school year without going over them. Fortunately, students were patient and engaged as we took part in various back-to-school conversations and activities together. We decided on our classroom expectations together (Kindness, Respect, Effort, Safety, Positivity), we made our own 'License to Make Mistakes', we explored the room via a classroom scavenger hunt, and we gathered the whole grade together to make a 'time capsule' booklet that we'll take back out at the end of the school year. One other activity we did involved banning certain words and mindsets from our vocabulary. First, the children made a list of all the things they felt they could not do. They sat quietly as they jotted down anything school-related that is hard for them or that they think they're bad at, and I did the same. Then, each of us ripped up our list into tiny pieces. We put the pieces into a bucket, walked outside, and dug a hole to bury these “Can’t Lists”. We talked about shifting our thinking from I can't do this to What can I do to help me do this? Last year, I noticed how often kids would jump to negative self-talk when encountering difficult tasks. So this year, I wanted to address and break this habit from the very beginning. This activity symbolizes our "burial" of the word can't, and holds us all accountable to remove it from our vocabulary...and as I told the kids, I'll surely need reminders at times too!