Jennuine Teaching

Today was anti-bullying day at our school. I'm not sure if it's a national day, but today all our classrooms taught a bullying lesson. Our second grade team decided on this lesson to teach. At first I didn't think my kids were understanding it. I had them draw a picture of themselves. While they were drawing I wanted them to look at their picture and think of all the good things about themselves. What were they proud of. Then we sat on the floor a traded pictures. After trading we talked about how bullies treat people. I had each student say things that bullies tell others to their paper person. They crumppled the paper up. Then I had them apologize to the paper person while uncrinkling it. Then I had them give the paper person back to the original creator. I asked them if their paper looked the same or different. They all said that it was different. We all went into a discussion on how bullying will affect you and even if someone says they're sorry, we will never forg...

I have had a busy week, to say the least. I figured the best way to recap is to participate in Randomness #1 Valentine's Day was on Thursday. It was a lot of fun. I loved that it was on an early release day and the following day (Friday) there was no school for the students. Teachers had an inservice day. I want to share some of our pictures from our mustache party.  I used A Cupcake For the Teacher's Valentine's Day file to write a conversation heart story. My students LOVED it and some of their stories were amazing. Here is my favorite.  While my students were passing out their cards, we played some fun games. I make it into a rotation so every 10 minutes the students rotated to a new station. One of the stations was passing out their cards. Another was this fun little pin the mustache on a man game.    I also made a few props for our version on a photo booth. I brought in my new Canon t4i. My students felt like celebrities. Then came the cupcakes. These cupcakes...

This week was a quick one, but very tiring. Monday and Tuesday were my only full teaching days. Sometimes you just have one of those weeks. On Wednesday my students took their English proficiency test. I was so nervous throughout the whole thing and I hope they did well! Thursday was early release and today was... FIRE FIGHTER DAY!! I have been arranging a firefighter to come visit for the past few months and today was finally the day that my students got to meet him. I didn't tell them about the visit until minutes before we left. They were so excited and so was I. I have a couple pictures to share with you from today. The firefighter that came was AMAZING!! We was great with the kids and had them interact with his presentation. After his presentation was over, he had us simulate smoke with gray fabric that the kids had to crawl under. I have to admit, I was a little frightened when 100 second graders started stampeding towards me, but it was fun.   Afterwards, we went outside and...

If you couldn't already tell by the title of this post, I had an amazing week! I had one of those, "I love teaching and nothing is going to get me down kind of weeks." I've been needing a week like this for a while now. We were extremely busy all week and I didn't get time to take pictures of anything. We didn't really do anything post worthy, other than our Presidents Day activity. It's drying right now and once I hang it up on the wall, I will post pictures. Another exciting part is that one of our friends came back! I've had a student that has been afraid to come to class since November for personal reasons. He missed a lot of school and the days that he came to school, he spent them in the office or with the school counselor. I am happy to report that he is back and adjusting back to normal. Our class feels whole again. :-) Now onto my week in pictures... We have thouroughly been enjoying our carpet. I can't believe how much joy it has brought ...