Sweetness in an email

This is a 12 day work week.  The weekend is filled with 16 hours of a teaching conference, so it's just one of those weeks - BUSY and TIRING.  And then this pops up in my email:

Hi,Ms.P!

How are you today?

What you want to do on your weekend?

I'm going to the soccer training and sitting with P----- my brother for 4 or 5 hours on Saturday!

On Sanday I don't know what we are doing.

Have a nice weekend!

V-----

This little guy just made my day!  Maybe this class that started out driving me completely crazy will turn out to be one of my favorites.  Ahhh... the 12 day work week is for this boy!

Another Year, Another Class

It is the fifth week of school and I find myself still baring the “Mean Ms. P” fangs.  I miss my own smile.  The beginning of the year always begins with a stricter-than-usual version of myself, which pays off later when the classroom is running smoothly and learning becomes fun for everyone.  This year I have a unique group of students consisting of 75 percent only children or youngest children in the family.  With this dynamic, my cheery disposition has been set aside a bit longer than I find comfortable.  This week I found myself pulling new ideas out of my ever-increasing hat of tricks.  “Life lessons with Ms. P” was my latest invention.  Our first lesson: Doing Things You Don’t Want to Do.  Through discussion we created an anchor chart, students shared their ideas, and we wrote them down.  Some of my favorites included “it’s for your own good” and “zip it”.  After our discussion and repeatedly revisiting the chart throughout the week, as well as little notes of encouragement, I began to see progress. 

This group of children will learn and grow just like their predecessors I see in the halls each day, waving and smiling at me.  This year we will laugh, cry, have problems, solve them, get a little messy and become a team.  We will learn multiplication and reading comprehension skills.  We will write our first chapter books and jump with excitement during the Times Table Hockey Tournament.  It will be another great year.

And so I start my fourteenth year of teaching, knowing it will be special.  I will teach differently than I did the year before.  I will learn new things.  I will be exhausted and get sick.  I will have mornings I don’t want to get out of bed.  I will have nights when I dream lesson plans.  I will have a blast doing the best job in the world and “Life lessons with Ms. P” will have been worth all the extra effort.  If not, Fall Break is just around the corner.

Back to School

TESCO has teachers figured out!

Welcome back to school everyone.

Summer!

Need I say more?  Enjoy it teachers!

The End of the Year

It's getting to be that time... Testing.  Good-byes.  Warm weather.  Antsy kiddos.  Squeezing in those last lessons.  Not enough instructional time.  Meetings about next year (when there is still so much to do this year).  The end is here.

The last month of school.  It's always crazy.  Every year I make a plan to ease into the end of the year, rather than crash and burn.  And every year it never actually happens.  It's the nature of the beast we call School.  So here we are again.  At the end.  Survival is the best word to describe it, I think.  But it's also every year at this time that I remember the advice of one of my past principals.  He always said, "Slowly glide to the end.  Don't crash-land."  So once again I take that advice and try to remember...  That last writing lesson will make no difference in the future life of a 9 year old.  Making sure they have an amazing final project will not be what my students remember.  So I'm throwing it out.  If we don't get to it, we just don't get to it.  We'll glide and enjoy the ride to the end, instead of flailing through the air like we're sky diving without a parachute.

So raise your glasses to making the landing smooth.  May we all glide to the end and give our kids a great finish!

(Bottoms up.  We'll need it!)

Times Table Success!

Third grade is the year you learn your Times Tables.  It's a big deal.  Some are excited about it and feel grown-up.  Others just hate math.  Parents drill it or dread it.  But this year, it was LOVED by all third graders at my school.  How did we do it?

My Canadian co-worker in true Canadian fashion taught us "Times Table Hockey", a six man on six man game that inspired our little sponges to learn those multiplication facts.  And let me tell you, kids loved it, parents raved about it, and teachers got a little competitive about it.  A two week tournament with brackets and a championship game set the stakes high for our 9 year olds.  When it came down to my class and Class 3K for 1st place, I gotta say that my palms were sweaty and my heart was racing.  The posters were flying and crowds were cheering.  Teachers from other classes wandered out of their rooms to see the commotion and join the chanting.  And multiplication facts were being shouted out, memorized, and learned.

Life-lessons came out of it too...  Lessons on good sportsmanship were easily integrated as well as the lesson that no one seems to teach anymore: NOT EVERYONE WINS.  There were losers and winners.  And we all still had fun.

Why did this work?  How did we get every 3rd grader to want to learn those facts?  Because it was a competition.  They wanted to win.  And they wanted to play the game.  Simply put, it was fun.

Here's how we play the game:
Six players on each team with three rows.  Last row is the goalie, middle row 2 defense men, and front row 3 offense men facing the same set-up from the other team.  Center (of the 3 offense) faces center of the other team to start the game.  Referee calls out a multiplication fact.  (We used playing cards in two stacks, pulling the top ones off the pile to give a random fact.)  The first kid to say the correct answer wins and moves across the other teams offense, answering facts from the referee.  It's one man on one man, giving the answer to the referee's fact through each teams offense and defense.  The first team to beat the opposing team's goalie wins that goal and earns a point.  Anytime the round gets down to only the goalies standing and facing off, we all shout "Goalie, goalie guacamole!"  (Just for fun.)  The team with the most points after several rounds wins.

Video Clip of 2013 Times Table Hockey Tournament

I highly recommend "Times Table Hockey" to any Grade 3 or 4 teacher who wants their students to memorize those facts.  Now when I join the game with the kids, they can beat me half the time.  It works, and it's highly motivating.

More than one parent said to me during conferences this year, "I don't know what you did, but my kid loved learning the times tables."

What I really want to tell THAT parent.

As with every job there are some things I don't like about teaching:
Grading papers,
Forms, forms forms,
Meetings that have nothing to do with my students,
And sometimes... parents.

This is the internet and any parent tracking me down can find that I wrote this.  But any teacher who has worked with kids long enough has had the parents who drive her crazy.  Teachers, you know what I'm talking about.  Parents, we love your kid, but you can sometimes make our lives miserable.  It isn't all parents by any means.  In fact, it's really only a small percentage every year.  The rest are great... appreciative, kind, give me gifts to the spa.  But those one or two (or sometimes more if you're cursed), can overshadow everything and make you rethink your career options.  And the poor kid... it's not his fault.  So you keep on loving him and teaching him regardless of his parent who you'd like to say a few choice words to.

Well, one principal did say it in a CNN article.  So if you are the parent who actually searched me out on-line and are reading this, read this article too.  Because I REALLY do have your child's best interest at heart.  ALWAYS.  And teachers, read this and be encouraged... you're not the only one who wants to say THAT to a parent.

What teachers really want to tell parents - CNN.com