calm breeze

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Welcome to my blog!

In my desire to cultivate my professional life through technology, I have begun my own teaching blog.  I hope to share my ideas and classroom creations with you as well as to learn, discuss, and collaborate with fellow educators.

A little bit about me:

I am going into my third year of teaching and my second year of teaching 4th Grade.  This year, however, I will be self-contained for the first time in my career.  Last year I team taught ELA and Social Studies.  I am excited (but slightly terrified) to be teaching math and science! 

While I will not go into specifics about my school, locations, or students, I will share that I live and teach in Michigan.  My school is in an area where poverty and low socioeconomic status are concerns.  We are currently 'tweaking' our RTI program to a 'push-in' model vs. a 'pull-out' like last year.  State and federal budget cuts have taken their toll on most local schools - bare bones funding have resulted in out-of-date text books and instigated a lot of creative teaching.  We are currently bridging our prior curriculum that followed the standards and benchmarks laid out by the State of Michigan (and the state-wide assessment M.E.A.P.) to the CCSS. 

This has been the first summer where I have had the ability to plan for the following school year.  I was laid-off last summer like many teachers in Michigan.  It was been a real treat creating lessons and planning curriculum for the same grade level!  The thrill of it has been one of the highlights of my summer...and the project list for my classroom keeps growing longer and longer....Pinterest is not helping!


In future posts, I will going into more of my teaching philosophy and my implementation of Readers Workshop, Writers Workshop, Daily 5/Cafe, and Math Centers.  Eventually, I would like to post and share some of my more unique lessons and teaching tools that I have created....who knows...a Teachers Pay Teachers store my be in my future?





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