Almost time...

I'm one week away from having kids in my classroom and I feel as though my To Do list just keeps growing as fast as I can cross things off of it! Although kids don't come until Thursday, Monday is the long weekend, Tuesday is a divisional PD session and Wednesday is an admin day at school which means I can't really count on having too much time to actually working in my classroom. I'm pretty sure a lot of the admin day will be spent in a staff meeting and just making sure things are in place. So tomorrow is crunch time for me.

I'm hoping that by the time I leave school tomorrow (hopefully at a decent time) that I will feel ready for the first day. Well, here's to hoping!

My brand new desks arrived today and I'm so happy with them. Mrs. B and I were able to get them into place so our room is actually looking like a classroom now which makes my anxiety level much lower.

I'm really looking forward to the first day of school and getting to know my new kidlets. I keep thinking of all the things that I want to do with them on the first day of school and I'm realizing that I'm going to have to prioritize a little bit. I'm not used to only teaching in the morning so those few hours are going to pass by really quickly and something I'll have to get used to pretty quickly as I will be rushing away on the first day of school to attend my first Reading Recovery meeting of the year.

One week to go and so much to do.... maybe I should get back to that.

Where are you?

Sorry, I really am still here! My life right now is getting things ready in the classroom... a real post will happen tomorrow!

The set up begins!

On Friday I went back to school for a short while to start getting some things ready in my reading recovery room. I was just too excited to wait until today as I had originally planned. Today I finished things up in that room and headed over to my classroom to start there.

Here are the before pictures:

This space was the forgotten room in the school. It looked so boring a kind of like a dark hole. That is until I got a hold of it!!

The after pictures!

There are no windows in this room which is the thing that I'm looking forward to least about tackling reading recovery. Hopefully the little bit of colour will help.

Fabulous Blog Award!

Well I am very excited and honoured to have just received the Fabulous Blog Award!

Thanks to Miss L from Miss L's Whole Brain Teaching for this really special honour. Miss L is an education student who is really excited and passionate about Whole Brain Teaching. I just recently found her blog and I'm so happy I did because she is also from Manitoba (I haven't found other teaching blogs from Manitoba)!

Here are the rules:
-Thank the blogger who gave it to you and share the link back to the awarding blog.
-Name five (5) fabulous moments in your life.
-Name five (5) things that you love.
-Name five (5) things that you hate.
-Pass the award into five (5) deserving blogs/bloggers


So here it goes...
5 Fabulous moments of my life
-Flying to Thailand to teach English while finishing my Education degree
-Graduating from The U of W in 2009 with my degree in Education
-Having a student realize something I've been saying for months!
-Ride a gondola in Venice, Italy
-Getting to see a Broadway musical in New York City

5 Things that I love
-Photography
-Hanging out with friends and family
-Teaching
-Dessert (pretty much any kind!)
-Spending time at the lake

5 Things I hate
-being late
-watermelon
-cleaning
-dirty apartment (I know how do they go together!)
-too much perfume smell in a store

5 Deserving Blogs
Each of the blogs that I follow are really awesome but these are ones that I really look forward to reading!
-Second Grade Shenanigans
-Primary Graffiti
-Step into Second Grade with Mrs. Lemons!
-The Teacher Wife
-What the Teacher Wants


Thanks Miss L!

Whole Brain Teaching Excitement!

Last spring I came across this thing call Whole Brain Teaching (WBT) as I read one of the many blogs that I follow. I took a few minutes to see what it was all about. Well, I really liked it! It was a way to keep students engaged in their learning using simple procedures. The school year seemed to be going well but I did pull out one small part and tried it out with my students.

Class? yes! Worked really well. When I said "class" they answered "yes" every time. It was an easy way to grab each student's attention.

But that's as far as I went.

WBT was on my list of things to learn about over the summer and today was the day I took the leap and visited www.wholebrainteaching.com. WOW! I think this could be really great and I'm very excited. My head has been spinning so much with how I would like to do things.

My goal is going to be to start the very first day of school and see how my students by into it. I know the group I will be getting and I think they will take a very strong liking to it.

I will do my best to post my progress with it here as I implement it into my teaching practises.

Let's Get Started!

I'm going to give this whole blogging thing a try.

My goal is to post here at least twice a week as a starting point. This blog is going to be a place to share funny stories (or maybe not so funny!), pictures and lesson plans from my life as a teacher.

I've been so inspired by the many teacher blogs out there that I wanted to share my stories in the hope that they may help just one teacher to get excited about things in their own classroom.

So, enjoy!!