Undercover Wrestler

Today was an awesome day! My students had me entertained the entire day starting in the first five minutes of our day starting. Yesterday, the IT guy was in the room downloading and installing some software that I wanted on the computer. The kids saw him working on the classroom computer for a good portion of the morning, yesterday. Today one of the children comes in with a wrestling book he brought from home to share that the IT guy at the school, is in fact a wrestler!

This I had to see! I ask to see the picture and the child shows me...



This wrestler surprisingly does look like the IT guy. So much so, that I grabbed the ipad and took a picture to send to the IT guy. Before I got a chance to email the IT guy, it was time for morning prayer. Every morning we have petitions and so this morning one of the children said, "I would like to pray that the next time the IT guy is at the school, he will give me his autograph."

After morning prayer, I sent out an email to the IT guy and also let him know that I have a student who said a prayer hoping to get his autograph.

While the children were in art class, I checked my email. The IT guy replied to my email and said, "That is funny." When I go to get the students, they immediately ask if the IT guy emailed back. I told them yes, but I don't think he is the wrestler. One of the children told me that they still wanted to get his autograph just in case.

At lunch the children, were back in the book reading information about the wrestler. It ended with the children still believing that the IT guy is in fact the wrestler because he is 6' 2" and from our area.

Baby Siblings

At the end of the day, one my students was talking about wanting a baby sister because he only has a brother. The rest of my students seem to have mixed reviews on more siblings. Some want them, others figure they already have little brothers and sisters that "get into their stuff" and do not want more. As a teacher, I love kids, and when the children talk about siblings, I will always ask, "Don't you want another baby in the family?" So, today I learned my lesson on entering in on their conversation of wanting or not wanting more siblings in the family because one of my little girls in the class goes, "Ms. J. I am ready for you to get married and have a baby!"

Let's get the oxygen moving

I am probably not the first teacher to comment on this, but the difference between the morning and afternoon is the children being awake and sleepy. The mornings are the easiest time to get things done, the children are more alert in the morning, at least mine are after the morning song with exercise, and come afternoon they tend to be rather tired. I also tend to notice that if you do not keep the children entertained, they are more likely to start getting sleepy earlier in the day.

There are a variety of things I do throughout the day to keep the children awake. For example, this year every morning after prayer, we have a morning song. Something like "Go Crazy" by Jackson Harris is a popular song in the morning. I get all the students up and get them to dance and exercise by their desk. If you throw in a few silly dance moves it really gets the kids excited. You just have to be willing to laugh at yourself or embarrass yourself in front of a class of kids, and the morning song becomes a popular hit. My class loves this part of the day so much, that the students requested that they get to take turns leading the class in the morning song exercises and dance. We call this person the fitness trainer.

The biggest thing of teaching is keeping the children entertained while you teach. The funnier you are, the more likely the children will pay attention to you, along with your principal standing out in the hallway laughing at you while looking through your window. The only thing you need to remember is that you must be able to laugh at yourself when someone catches you doing something rather silly for your students. I will do almost anything to keep my class entertained, become an actor and act out an example of a word meaning, I sometimes carry a yard stick around during math class on my belt loops like it is a sword (I will even knight my students for correct answers), or today I taught a fifteen minute portion of my reading lesson as if I were a stand up comedian. I would love to say I do this just for the kids, but really it makes the job fun.

Today towards the end of our day, I noticed the heads dropping. I immediately said, "Alright class, let's start taking in some deep breaths! We need to fill our bodies up with some oxygen!" I was sure this time to leave out my explanation that yawning is a sign of lack of oxygen. "Come on everyone let's start taking a deep breath in..."

Before finishing my sentence, Mary up front says, "Ms. J. why are you so energetic? You are like this all the time."

Be Careful What You Tell Children

Teachers hear all kinds of things, some can be so off the wall that you just nod your head or sometimes I respond by saying,
I'm not sure your family member wanted you to share that." I however have learned that children will share everything, so people should be really careful what they tell their child. Today was one of those days where I should have taken my own advice.

Today was picture day, so naturally I went through some rules for pictures in the morning.

Rule #1: Do not be like one of my classmates, who in the fourth grade stuck the little black comb in his mouth for the class picture. When everyone received their class picture the child's mouth was black. I must say back in fourth grade this was hysterical, but I do remember the teacher not being pleased.

Rule #2: After pictures do not play with the comb and remember that it is not a curling iron. My first year teaching fourth grade I had a child who tried to curl her hair with the comb. I spent a half hour trying to get her hair out before sending her to someone else. I thought we were going to have to cut it out of her hair.

Rule #3: When the photographer tells you to say stinky cheese, stinky feet, monkey, money, etc. do not get really excited and just say it a little. Last year, one of my darling students got very excited by this and her picture came back with her mouth wide open and eyebrows raised. I told the students our goal is to have beautiful pictures.

When it was time for pictures, everything was going smoothly. That is until it was Daniel's turn. The photographer tells Daniel to say, "money." Daniel says absolutely nothing, the photographer doesn't take a picture, but says, "Oh, you don't want to say money?" Daniel replies, "My teacher told us not to say money." The photographer looks at me, then asks Daniel to say stinky feet. Daniel again doesn't say anything and says, "Actually, she doesn't want us to say any of your words."

Oops, I don't know what I was thinking. I ended up telling the photographer that I had the child last year with the raised eyebrows and open mouth whose parents sent the photos back saying unacceptable. I didn't want this year's students to have open mouth pictures, so I asked them not to really say the words allowed. I must say it was rather an awkward moment.

Name Changes

This week in reading, we have been reading the story, "My Name is Maria Isabel." It is a cute story about a little girl who would like to be called by her name, but with two Marias already in her class, her teacher decides to call her Mary. This morning, I gave the children a journal question, "Why do you believe Maria Isabel wanted to be called by her name?" The kids came up with several answers and used the story to help guide their answers. One of the children said that they heard that you can change your name. I told them this was true, that some people do change their name. They asked why, so I said maybe they didn't like their name. Thankfully, many of the children do not feel the same way about their name and do not wish to ever change their names. However, I did have one. One of my many animal lovers spoke up and said that she would like to change her name to Catherine, so everyone can call her Cat. She will now forever be named Catherine in my blog. :)

School is back in session!

Okay, so school actually started yesterday, but there is this wonderful rule saying teachers should never smile for the first half of the school year, so nothing funny really happened. Honestly, that is so untrue, I smile all the time, and it is ridiculously hard for me not to smile. With yesterday being the first day, I came home exhausted, and my throat hurt from all the talking I did when teaching. Pathetic, I know.

I'm testing out a few new ideas for school this year. We are continuing to do word study for our spelling program, and I'm introducing online classrooms and writer's workshop this year. A small change I made this year was to take our daily question for reading and turning it into a small journal to encourage all the students to share their answer. I had 100% participation today and none of the children said they needed more time.

Today's questions was "How would you improve a vacant lot?" Vacant is one of our vocabulary words. I was so happy when a couple of the students answered by saying, "They would spruce up a vacant lot...". Sprucing is another one of our vocabulary words. Teachers get excited over small things like that, I guess. Many of the children answered that they would improve the vacant lot to help animals. Building an SPCA, animal shelter, and animal preserve were just a few of the answers. When all students had a turn, I said "I can tell you all really love animals." Rose, one of my biggest animal fans, says in response, "I would own all the animals that needed a home, but that would make me a hoarder." This made me laugh because I once tried to watch the show Hoarders, I couldn't watch anymore after the third episode.

We are off to a wonderful start for this school year! The children are behaving beautifully and are excited to be in school. I think will have an awesome year together.

Footprints

I'm sure you read the title of today's post and you may have instantly thought of the poem, Footprints. It is one of my favorites, but it isn't what I'm writing about today. Today we had a crazy morning. When I walked into the classroom before the children arrived, the heat had not yet been turned on, so I turned it on to warm up the classroom. Well, while we were saying morning prayer, the classroom began to smell, kind of like the typical smell when you turn on the heat and dust is on the coils. The children began to complain of the smell, but since we were in the middle of prayer I told the children I had just turned on the heat, that dust was probably on the coils. I was also thinking, we were in the middle of prayer and God would definitely protect us.

Well, come to find out that the hallway began to have the same smell, which the hallway and my class share the same unit. After the maintenance man took a quick inspection on the inside of the ceiling, the classrooms were instructed to go to a different section of the building, the parish hall. I lined the children up with work and we went to sit in the parish hall. Then we had a number of firetrucks at the school and the firemen instructed us to go outside the building. Today was rather chilly, hint the heat needed to be turned on, and slowly but surely our coats and jackets were brought to us. When I finally got my coat, we were told we could go back in the building, but only back in the parish hall. The children got back to work and eventually we were allowed back to our class.

It took a few minutes before one of the children saw a black spot on the floor. I told the children that it must have come from the bottom of one of the firemen's boot. WOW, the children thought, we have fireman's footprint on the floor. Yes, this was exciting news to some in the class. Raphael raised his hand and asked, "Can I get on the floor and kiss the footprint?"

"I'm not sure you want to do that, we don't know where his boots have been," I said.

"Oh, that's right, he could have stepped on a dead body." Ralph replies.

Gwen finds in her reading book an old story we read titled "Fire!" "We should have read this today," she says.

Many of the children agreed with Gwen. I said, "Too bad we didn't think of that earlier, we could have got our books autographed by real firemen."