Come be a fly on my wall!

Be a Fly on My Wall

I have been wanting to join in this awesome linky since the first time I saw it!  I have LOVED reading about a day in the life of my fellow bloggers. I am excited to try and paint a picture of a typical day in my life.

5:15am - WAKE UP. ugh. When my alarm goes off every morning, I ask I myself the same question: "Seriously?" I roll out of bed and head to the kitchen to let out the dog and give him breakfast. While he is outside, I find something I can inhale enjoy for breakfast. Then the whirlwind of showering, dressing, getting my two little loves up and dressed, last minute bag packing, loading the car, and driving off. I typically forget to breathe until 6:28am as Mr. First Love and I are halfway down the road.

7:30am - My day officially begins HERE:

BLISS. My friendly D&D staff know exactly what I want before I order. Except for those 2 weeks when they had irish cream flavored coffee. Delish.

I'm usually one of the first 3 teachers to arrive at school each morning. I chit chat with my FAB-U-LOUS secretaries, mostly about reality TV and my little loves at home. I leave my "To Be Copied" folder in my mailbox each day when I leave, so I can hijack the copy machine before everyone else! Once I'm in my room, it's another whirlwind of activity and I log on to the computers, set up the SMARTBoard files for the day, make sure my calendar, small group charts, Daily 5 Center activities, etc. are all ready to go.

8:25 The Little Loves have arrived! The classroom teachers have to stand outside the classroom doors during arrival to make sure the kiddos are being safe in the hall. My Little Loves come in, get unpacked and organized for the day, and get to work on their assigned Bucket Brain Booster activity. The activities include reviews and reinforcement of previously taught ELA and math skills. I do morning "housework", circulate through my small groups to check on everyone, and pull kids as needed to finish up missing work or do a quick intervention.

8:50 We do our calendar routine on the SMARTBoard. By this time of the year, my weekly calendar helpers can lead this completely unassisted. They love playing teacher!

9:00 Fundations. This is our multisensory phonics program. We are currently working on reading and spelling two syllable words. We use magnetic letter boards, dry erase boards, interactive SMARTBoard activities, sound cards, and do daily dictation.

9:45 So SPECIAL!

10:30 Snack Time! While the kids are eating snack, we either watch a Tumblebook on-line and take the follow-up quiz or watch a fun math video on Discovery Education. These are two of my favorite and most-used websites!

My content area instruction takes place from 10:45 - 12:15 and looks something like this:

10:45 Time to do some MATH! I really really really really (get the idea?) wish I had more time for math each day. I started my morning Bucket Brain Boosters this year because I was so desperate to get math tubs going in my room and this was the only way I could find time. Our whole class math lesson is from our new My Math series. There is an on-line component that has videos, games, and virtual manipulatives that work great on my SMARTBoard. We usually only have time to work through the lesson as laid out in the book, but sometimes I can squeeze in an extra hands-on activity.

11:15 Social Studies/Science. We do one science unit and one social studies unit each quarter. We are in my FAVORITE time of the year - CHICK HATCHING!!!!  We are spending the first week of this unit integrating science and ELA. We are exploring non-fiction text features. The Little Loves are making their very own Non-Fiction Notebooks to help them learn how the different text features help us read to learn. We are using non-fiction books about chicks and other oviparous animals to help us with this.

11:45 Whole-Class ELA Lesson. We are using a brand-new teacher created CCSS aligned district curriculum this year in ELA. I was one of the teachers who worked on it, and boy, was it tough work!  I learned so much about the CCSS and am enjoying leading my colleagues through this first year of implementation. We are learning about inferencing this week during ELA. Using poems from Georgia Heard's Creatures of the Earth, Sea, and Sky, my little loves are putting on their detective caps and making inferences to determine what kind of animal each poem is about. I LOVE listening to them explain their thinking!

12:15 My Little Loves head off for their 30 minutes of recess and 30 minutes of lunch. I know, don't hate me...I have a duty free hour for lunch. Sometimes I keep little ones in during some of their recess time to work out problems or catch up on missing work. We have weekly grade level planning meetings. But usually, I am running around my classroom getting organized for the afternoon before heading to the Teacher's Room for some much needed adult conversation.

1:15 We're in the home stretch! I spend the first 15 minutes after lunch doing a quick FOCUS Skill lesson. These are great little workbooks that focus on one reading comprehension skill at a time. There are 25 mini-lessons with a reading passage, multiple choice questions, and a short written response. We just finished Cause and Effect and are moving on to Sequence of Events.

1:30 Daily 5 Time, baby! My Daily 5 is my own little modified version. We used to do very involved centers that we had to prepare each week and then make sure every student completed every activity, yadda, yadda, yadda. I convinced my team that we needed to start transitioning to more of a Daily 5 model after hearing Mr. First Love go on and on about how awesome HIS Daily 5 was in his classroom. I have to admit, I can be a little competitive. *wink* I am TOTALLY looking forward to going to a more traditional Daily 5 model next year. I can't wait! This last hour of the day is also my intervention block, so the Academic Support Teachers pull out small groups of students for targeted reading and math support. I pull guided reading groups and hold individual reading and writing conferences during this time.

2:30 We made it! Whew. Another exhausting day. But of course, it's not over yet...

Thanks for being a fly on my wall. I hope you enjoyed it! I would love to hear your thoughts!