First Five for Friday

I am so excited to join in my first linky party! Thank you Kacey for hosting! It was a crazy first, full week of school - and I'm exhausted. Here are a few of my week's highlights.

1) My week officially started at school on Sunday when I went in with my fabulous sister to work for a few hours. Even though I had school last week, I had a ton to get done to gather my bearings for the week.

 My "new" no name papers place - I actually made this last year, but the clothespins fell off en route to school and I never got the wood glue to fix it.

 I got the centers of the desks and pencil cups organized - I let them keep three pencils, an Expo marker, a highlighter, an eraser, and their scissors in them and they filled them Monday!  The center bucket is new this year, but I am hoping it will keep them in their seats a lot more. I just had them place two of each supply in the center and stored the rest for when we run out later this year.

 We begged for some hallway bulletin boards and they were up when I got there Sunday - lucky for me, I got to decorate it. Unfortunately, I don't think my co-workers were happy that I set the precedence to have them done before open house that night.

 I got all of my stools in place finally!

 AND - to end our sister day, my sis did my nails to prep me for Hubs' first soccer game this week!

2) Open House - This deserves its own post. All I will say for now is, what were we thinking when we made open house the same day as the first full day of school?! Also, a Monday is just not when I'm at my best and most prepared for something like this.

3) Something really cool happened because of Instagram! I was browsing through the other day and I saw that Art With Jenny K (@artwithjennyk on Instagram) was giving away her awesome pens - after I  emailed her, she sent me one of her products to do with my class - it was so perfect because we were able to use it as a team-building lesson and our class was in need of that this week. Here is a picture as we were working. Unfortunately, we ran out of time to finish, but we will next week!

4) My favorite lesson of the week was a change of plans aka one of those I'll just roll with it moments. I had the students divide their paper into halves down the middle with a happy face and a sad face as their headers - then I went through different parts of reading: from choosing a book, to understanding, to imaging. As I said the different things and explained them, the kids wrote them down on one of the sides. I left this open so they could decide the placement based on if they felt like they were good/bad at it or if they liked/disliked it. I loved seeing what they liked or didn't and the areas they felt strong in. Obviously my goal is to get all students to love reading, so I am excited to use this to build off their strengths and weaknesses to get them excited this year.

(**cute picture of my students' journals won't upload right! ugh! I'll try to add it later.**)

5) Lastly, another person that has been a huge influence to me through social media, that everyone needs to follow! Some mornings I literally pick one part of my outfit and then type "outfits with..." into Pinterest. What I'm trying to say is that without Pinterest I'd be wearing the same dozen outfits over and over. So, imagine my excitement when I found Jamie (@jro1583 on Instagram) and Amy (@aem8168 on Instagram) who host a Pinned It Spinned It each week. It is constantly giving me new ideas and combinations!

 Thanks for sticking with me for my first linky! Be sure to check out Doodle Bugs Teaching!





- Mrs. O'Connor