The Next Two Weeks

Happy Monday everyone!  I am just coming off of a great weekend and I hope you are too!  It was a little hard to return to "reality" actually.   It was my birthday yesterday and so my husband and I had a fun weekend in Seattle attending a Mariners game!  The Mariners are now our local team and we were happy to cheer them on and see them win!

We also stopped in Olympia on our way home and explored The Evergreen State College Campus.

I currently have a student teacher, Kayla, (or "Miss D." as the kiddos know her) in my room and she is doing a fabulous job!  Today starts her two week solo teaching portion of her time in my room.  I am happy to report that I am not worried because she has some fun lessons planned, and she is capable of handling the classroom, and continuing instruction for our kinders.

One exciting theme of her two week lesson is the metamorphosis of the butterfly.  We got caterpillars over a week ago and when we came in this morning, we can see that they are starting to form their chrysalis.  We are all beyond excited!

In addition, Kayla will be working with my students on their end of the year tech sample (how are we working on end of the year goals already???) using the app "Draw and Tell" to have the students draw the lifecycle of the butterfly.  Yeah!  They are learning, using technology, and we get to take care of some end of the year tasks.

Do you know "Draw and Tell"?  It costs $1.99 but it is so worth it.  It guides the students step by step through the app and is a great reminder of what they need to do.  Each student will be drawing their own lifecycle so they will all have their own unique touch.  Last year my school bought the app for all of the iPads in our building so we got a deal on the price.  Many of the K-1 teachers use this app for our tech sample.

This is a big two weeks because Kayla will also be working with the students on their end of the year district writing sample.  The prompt is "Think about your favorite animal.  Name the animal and describe three characteristics that make it interesting."  What????  That is a hard prompt for kindergarten.  But, we will do our best!

We are also going to have some fun math centers taking place, as well as all of the other things that pop up in kindergarten - children losing teeth (two today!), College and Career Day Assembly and presentations, storytime, songs, and more learning fun to prepare for first grade.

What will I be doing while Kayla is teaching you ask?  I have many tasks on my to-do list.

• Individualized easyCBM progress monitoring for all of my students
• Begin the end of the year district math assessment for some of my kiddos
• Work one:one with students on skills they need to practice (I am so excited for this part)
• Look forward to the end of the year and try and get things organized and ready
• Go through my vast book collection
• Time depending - go through my math and science cabinet
• Plus, all the other little things that pop up

Check out this book collection!  It is awesome! I have a rolling easel where I keep all of the current themed books to read.  You can see some of the books have been removed from my book shelf which is why they look like they are falling down.

My mom is a retired first grade teacher and when she retired, she sent me all of her books.  I also inherited some books from retiring teachers in my buildings, I have bought some, and I have also gotten books from book orders.  They are organized and labeled (thankfully - that was another project years ago!), but I find that I do not read all of them.  There are books that I tend to skip year after year.  So, those books will be taken out and either given to Kayla (if she wants them), put in my students' library, or given away to my kiddos - which they will love!

This will be a fun two weeks, but it will go by soooooo fast.  Do you have a student teacher?  What do you do with your time when you have a student teacher in your room?