Can I Have Your Attention, Please?

Wow! This week has been tiring. And although I've had lots to write about, I haven't had the energy!!! Ay caramba.

Anyway, I want to talk to you about something that is a bit silly slash embarassing.

Whenever first year teachers ask me about advice that I have for them, I ALWAYS say, "You need to have an attention-getting strategy!" I have said it a hundred times. I have even added that I didn't have one last year and that is part of the reason that I didn't feel confident about my classroom management skills.

I went into this year with my attention-getting strategy in mind - I wanted to do the Class/Yes from Whole Brain Teaching. I haven't bought into the whole WBT situation but I felt like this was a pretty standard thing to try out.

So I went in on the first day, taught the Class/Yes thing to my class................ and then didn't use it for the next 3 days. I felt really self-conscious about it for some reason, even though I teach 6 year olds!!

On Thursday afternoon, day 3 of school, I was already just as frustrated as I was last year. I hate the feeling of standing in front of the class and just hoping that they'll stop talking. Or talking over them and then no one hears you whatsoever.

So I decided - on Friday, I was doing it! I was going to Class/Yes all day long! There was no stopping me!

So I did it. And it was AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMAZING. I never had a hush fall over the crowd like I did on Friday. Go me go!

It made our Friday schoolwork SO much more pleasant and wonderful!

For example, we made our first math quilt!

I absolutely loved making these last year, but my love for them increased 1000% when I had everyone's attention to teach the folds and cuts! My second graders (who made these last year - but starting in December) were trying to do the fancier folds and cuts that come later in the year so I had to stop them, haha!

We also did a super fun estimation activity with oatmeal squares!

Yum!

A side note - one of my friends came out from New York this weekend and we did lots of touristy things in the city! It was a beautiful day yesterday and I had so much fun!

What attention-getting strategy (or strategies) do you use? If you need some ideas, there are a bunch of options here!

Getting Stuff Done!

I had a productive day! Sadly it was one of the last days of spring break............. let's have a moment of silence for this great week.

Okay, moving on!

Yesterday my boyfriend and I went to see Jim Gaffigan. Any fans out there?

SO FUNNY! I was crying laughing all night long.

Today I went into school again. We got a new copier at school and my computer isn't hooked up to print to it... so I went in since my BTF next door was there too! I got everything copied for next week which feels GREAT because I am never so ready this far ahead of time. I usually plan only a few days ahead of time since things change so fast. I feel so happy that I got everything ready!! This is the file box I bought at Target a few months ago to get myself organized and I am just now using it, haha. I didn't realize how much paper I use, yikes.

I finished getting the math quilts ready by cutting out all of these chicks! I am a super precise cutter for some reason. I wish I could just cut fast and not care if they look perfect but that's just not how I roll I guess! I am psyched to do our new quilt on Monday!

That's all I did at school! I still have to plan Science for this week... we are the middle of our dinosaur unit and I am trying to find fun things to do. My book is not helping!

On Monday I went to the eye doctor and got new glasses and prescription sunglasses, and my sunglasses came in yesterday! Here I am driving home from school. You can see the cornfields through the window! 

Last day of break tomorrow! But I'm going in to a 4-day week so I can't really complain too much. Do you all have this Friday off too?

Student Recognition

Happy Thursday, mis amigas! (I'm just assuming most people reading this are ladies...)

So I went in today to school because I didn't bring all of my manuals home and I wanted to plan a little. There were also some housekeeping types of things that I wanted to do also. So I texted my cousin, Lisa, and we headed to school for a little bit!

While I planned, Lisa did lots of stuff for me, like put away some books, set up the April calendar days in the pocket chart, got my April math quilt pieces ready, and punched out some letters for my XtraMath student recognition board!

I have been meaning to make this board for like.... 2 months. I make a BIG DEAL when one of the kids masters an entire operation on the day that it happens but it sort of gets forgotten after they get their certificate. I want them to be proud of themselves! So here we are. I have four little ladies who have finished addition so far. Maybe the excitement of seeing their names on stars will inspire the other kiddos to do the same... I will let you know.

Has anyone found any new hobbies during spring break? I have discovered the amazingness of Draw Something!!!!!!! I am so, so bad at drawing but this game is so fun.

I've also been reading. Right now I am working on two books - Elijah of Buxton and Earth.

Both good in very different ways. :)

Celebrating Spring

Perhaps you remember that on Friday afternoon, that is 4 days ago, it snowed crazily by my house.

Well, as Chicago weather often does, it turned itself around and we had a BEAUTIFUL day today!! What do we do when the weather is nice? We take a walk, of course! Sadly my phone refused to take pictures... so I will repost this old walk picture!

It pretty much looked like this... except everyone was wearing winter coats and there were no leaves... But it was 65 and AMAZING outside. Seriously the best way to end the day.

Can you take your class for a walk whenever you want? Our parents sign a walking field trip form at the beginning of the year so I can take them out whenever.

Yesterday we made our March math quilt! It went amazingly, which was unusual for a math quilt day and unusual for a Monday. Here's what I did differently this time...

• I played Celine Dion and told them it was "relaxing music." Haha! They were so into it until my CD started skipping... 
• I did not make a sample ahead of time. I doubt this had anything to do with it but that is something different!
• I made them cut all of their pieces before they glued any of them down. In the past, I have shown them the cut and then just let them go.

I'm pretty sure it was bullet number 3 that made the difference. They were intently cutting. The cutting was also a lot better than usual! So maybe it was the pre-cutting... maybe it's because this was our 4th one and they are getting it now... who knows.

So pretty! Except for the disgusting coloring on my phone. Sigh.

And! Staci from Let's Teach Something gave me a Top 10 award today! Thanks Staci! Be sure to check out her blog. :)

Last thing - thank you for birthday month wishes from my Currently post! And for your comments from my exercise ball post! And for checking out Taylor, Molly, and Laura. :) You all are the bomb dot com!!

The Facts

Today in first grade math, we learned about fact families. My book's lesson was incredibly terrible and I know that fact families are something I've seen a million times in blogs!

I meant to look up a good activity a few days ago but I totally forgot until 1:15. First grade math is at 1:30.....

So I did a mad Google Reader search, scanned through a few people's posts, and threw this little fam together!

This was based off of Gladys's guest post at Frogs, Bees, and Under the Seas (now known as Playing with Pixie Dust!). I'd like to cutesify this up a lot but, like I said, I was a little strapped for time...

I told the first graders that I wanted to introduce them to a family - the Fact family. There is a dad, a mom, and a baby. Then I assigned numbers and explained who is who. I asked if they wanted strangers in their house - they said NO! So I said, "Neither does the Fact family! Don't let any stranger numbers come in to their math problems."

Then we wrote out our problems, making a note that Dad comes last in adding and first in subtracting.

They really got it! And they even referred to the numbers on their practice sheet as Dad, Mom, and Baby. Haha!

And on a related note, here's our math quilt for February!

It's looking a little tiny this month. Some friends didn't feel like they needed to do their quilt square after they cut out every triangle. I really need to stop scheduling math quilts for Mondays.... oh wells. I still LOVE it and I love Reagan!!!!

Aaaaaaaaaaaand another set of q's from the lovely Jessica at apples and papers!

1. If you could meet anyone in the world, living or dead who would it be? This one is hard! Mmmm.... I'll say Joakim Noah! Love him.
2. If you weren’t teaching what would you be doing? Honestly, I would be working at the bank I've been working at since high school! But if I had another career, I've always wanted to be a delivery nurse for some reason. I think it sounds better in my head than it might be in real life.
3. What was your favorite thing about school when you were a student? I looooved my teachers and I loved big projects. Maybe I should start doing some of those...
4. What do you wish you were better at? In my classroom, organizing and classroom management. I hope I get better with time on both of those! In my life, I wish I was better at athletic things, like running!
5. What is your favorite store to shop at? I'd approximate that 95% of my clothes come from Old Navy.
6. What is two things you need for your dream classroom? A Smart board!!!!! Or whatever brand, I am not particular. I'd also like a document camera. And a big rug. :)
7. Where do you want to travel to? Somewhere like Fiji or something.
8. Favorite TV show? Right now my two favorites are 30 Rock and Seinfeld.
9. What is your least favorite chores? Laundry and washing dishes. When I was little I said I wanted to have 7 kids so I'd never have to wash dishes. Haha!
10. Would you rather be an actor, singer, or athlete? Well I'm not a good actor AT ALL, and I am incredibly not athletic. But I love singing! By myself in the car, of course. So I'll say singer!!
11. Who or what inspires you? All of the amazing teachers in the blogging world! I want to be all of you someday.
12. What’s your favorite children’s book? Anything by Mo Willems. Also I just read Hooway for Wodney Wat (thanks for the recommendation, Tammy!!!) and my kids were DYING LAUGHING. So that's one of my new faves. Plus I do a good Wodney voice. :)

Odds and Ends ... and a Dilemma

Just some random stuff to share tonight! I'll make a list.

1. I took a few new pictures of some winter-y things in our room!

I already wrote about our snowman comparing activity, but since then, a few people at school were boggled by the display, so I added a title and took a nicer picture for you! I just printed out letters in a bubbly font and then cut them out. It was a little tedious but I am happy with the outcome!

 Here is our door right now. Nothing too fancy but it is okay. The kids love their mittens for some reason.

 And I never posted a finished picture of our January math quilt! Please don't mind that aquarium underneath............ ay yi yi.

2. I have been slacking on the Clutter-Free Classroom Project BUT I did want to update that I cleaned an area of my room!!!!!! I am super proud of myself.

Here is the before picture...

 And here is the after!!

That corner by the file cabinet has legit been messy since like week 1 of school. So it reeeeeeally makes me happy to see it clean!! I pretty much just threw everything away. I did relocate the linking cubes to a math area.

I am happy that this week in CFCP is working on our teacher area. Mine needs some help. :( My students tell me that almost every day....

3. I'll end with my dilemma. Today we started our new unit in Social Studies, which is Our Government. Because I teach at a Catholic school, my students come from very conservative families. That, in and of itself, obviously is fine! We did another vocab visit, like I did with matter, and I had printed a picture of President Obama, since he is our president. As soon as I put the sheets out to write on, I had a few students saying how much they hate Barack Obama, how their parents hate Barack Obama, that he doesn't want to have any schools anymore (???) and how he is a bad and terrible person.

This frustrates me on several levels, but mainly because regardless of how you feel about a president or his tenure in office, I think it's very important to instill in children that we respect leaders. So basically that's what I said... you can have your opinion, and that is totally fine, but we are not talking about how we feel about President Obama. He is our leader and he is important to our country.

Have you dealt with something like this? Or how would you have responded? I know I am going to be hearing this every day until I can figure out what to do. :(

January Math Quilt!

First, thanks for all your thoughts on the threaded commenting post! It appears that lots of people are having issues with it. Now..... I didn't make it and I don't know anything about it so I am not super helpful. BUT! I looked into it and found out that people with custom templates will have a more difficult time getting threaded commenting up and running and that they are going to put out a guide soon to help out!! I guess it's good that I haven't sprung for a blog layout yet. :)

In other news, on Monday we did our January math quilt. Here we are, hard at work!!

And here is our almost-finished project! We hadn't glued onto the paper backing when I took this picture. I actually rearranged them to make a 4 by 6 rectangle before I hung it in the hallway. Now that I look at this again, I sort of like the 6 by 4. Oh wells, next month. :)

They can't WAIT to see the design for February. One girl said, "Maybe the picture will be a heart next time!!!!!!!!!!" Smartie pants, haha!!

Thanks again, Reagan. :)

Also!!! Thanks to Kelley and Lisa for prepping my quilt!! Love my cousins.

Our First Math Quilt

I heart Reagan and her awesome geometric math quilts!

Today was a crazy day. We had 30 minutes of tech, a combined 120 minutes of music, lunch and recess for a total of 60 minutes... I'm lucky I got anything done. What I'm really lucky for is the sweet geometric math quilts we made today! I stuffed Math in there somewhere!

They loved cutting the triangles to fit the pattern! And they thought the final quilt was so beautiful. Ours is tiny because we only have 12 people! One second grader was absent today so I made one to put on the quilt - otherwise it would be way smaller!

It was easy to teach them the cutting, and once I showed it to them, they took off on their own!! Also we don't have a die cutting machine, so I hand cut my trees during our crazy long music time.

When I told them that we'd do one every month, they were super excited! I am too. 

Also, I have a first grader who is pretty far behind the rest of the students in most of our content areas. I also usually have to give him directions a minimum of 5 times before he processes them and pays attention. But during our quilt-making today, I only had to show him once, and he did great! He had no problems figuring out how to turn the triangles to fit! I was so super proud of him and I think he felt great about himself too! Hooray for a project that incorporated a different type of intelligence!! And hooray for Reagan!!