This Summer

This summer I decided I was going to work on a bunch of things I have seen on Teacher Pay Teachers that I liked, but I knew I could also make. Holy cow! Sometimes it really is worth the $1.50 to pay for someone else to make it! My two biggest projects I tackled were to make new Parts of Speech signs. Those took FOEVER! I would love to put them up on TPT, but I haven't paid for a license to sell products with fun fonts.

Tonight I finally finished my syllabus. I never had an official one for my students. Last year I worked on a letter to send home to the parents, but I did not have anything concrete for the kids to hold. I made a fun PowerPoint with my rules and expectations, but this is a little more serious. I scoured the Internet to find different aspects that I like. I also included many of the issues that I have to tackle throughout the year. Hopefully this will help things a little.

1st page

Second Page

It is hard to believe that this summer has come to a close. I've enjoyed hanging out with my very stubborn, very passionate little man. It has been a great time and I am thinking about this school year with mixed feelings. I am excited to tackle this next school year, but I am also going to miss this little guy. We've had a good time, and he has gotten very attached to me. This is every working mother's plight, isn't it?

During our trip to Cooperstown, NY

Starting Again

Although this blog title can really fit into a bunch of aspects of my life, today I am focusing on my eating. Last summer, I ordered the 21 Day Fix program. I did it for a little bit, but then I decided it was too much work. I revisited it this winter, and I really liked it. I did the workouts when I got home from work. I would put Bubble Guppies on in my bedroom so Little Man could do something while I worked out. He usually would end up "getting strong" with me. After two rounds, I lost 16 pounds. I was feeling great, and then I got sick. I took two weeks off while this cough worked its way out of my system. I am thinking it is better now. I hope so because I am starting up again this week!

Pinterest has a ton of resources, and I started with using those, but I needed to work out my own methods. I created a Google Sheets document that I color coordinated with all my containers. I like this because rather than separate it by meal, it is just an overall method. I also have an app for my phone that you check in every day. That is pretty useful as well.

I get most of my meals from Pinterest as well. I will sometimes take a recipe that isn't 21 Day Fix approved and figure how to make it so or just change things so that they fit my family. I am blessed to have a mom who baby sits at my house so she makes my meals so I don't have to do all the meal prep the way some people do.

If anyone is interested in getting more information, please feel free to contact me. I am going to be putting up some recipes that I have found the best.

I Think I've Realized Something

I have a very hard time with this blog. I think I know what my biggest issue with this is. I sometimes want to keep this as a private page. Sometimes I want to make this as an educational blog. I try to keep this just about me, and only focus on the positive things. All of this comes off as very blah.

I have decided that if I want to talk about school, I will. If I want to talk about my home life, I will. I hope that anyone who still reads this or starts to read this understands that this is just about every aspect of my life!  Thanks for the support!

And Just Like That

Summer is gone!  We have a new principal at my school this year.  With that have come some amazing new changes. I know I am going to be stressed, but I am sure it will be for naught.  Last week was spent in Professional Development meetings every day.  After the meetings were over, I would work on my classroom. I have to say that this is the best looking classroom I have done to date. This is the first time I made the majority of my own posters. I am pretty excited with how it turned out. Welcome to my classroom tour!

Being from Chicago, I had to add a little bit os White Sox in my room! Each student then decorated a jersey to hang up for the beginning of the school year.

I found these reading posters on Teachers Pay Teachers.  What I love most about this set is that it is can be used no matter what the grade level. I bought these for my 7th grade classroom even though it was designed for an elementary room. If you are interested, you can find it on this website.

One thing I started working on at the end of the school year was short answer responses. With our new testing procedures, short answer response is pretty important. I loved the acronym RACES for the middle school. I would have liked this to be printed in black, but it was one of the last things I finished for my room.

I like the 6+ Writing Traits in theory. I am not a huge fan of the way they expect teachers to grade, but I do like different categories. I found this site via Pinterest and created my own version that fit my classroom's personality. I even changed my rubric to include these terms.

I have a procedure I use to work with my students and the writing process. I created the posters for the bulletin board (I have no idea why Publishing ended up being blue and the rest are black). I found the title here on Teachers Pay Teachers. I loved it so much, I plan on creating the same thing for my reading board. 

I'm sad that this turned out a little blurry, but this is my reading board. Another Teachers Pay Teachers purchase. It is a little primary, but I love the color coding aspect of this. I am going to try Close Reading with my kids this year. This was the method that made the most sense. Staples sold Post It note cubes for $5 before school started. I bought a couple of packs and hope they last! I also found these Text Evidence posters on Pinterest, so I grabbed those to add to the reading section as well!

Teaching in a Catholic School, I have my religion board. I did this as a back to school board last year, and I really liked it. It was simple yet effective. 

Keeping Charlotte Danielson in mind, I came up with a simple method to showcase the students' work. I came up with this idea after talking it over with my cousin. I saw multiple teachers with paper hanging up to organize student work. My cousin was telling me about a teacher at her school who allows the students to pick what work they want to show case. I just added a fun title and The Fridge Door was born! The students are allowed to put any work they want on the board, but they have to have something put on the board at all times.

My classroom was built in the 70s. It is full of beige, brown, and a pop of a teal-ish color (hence the color of the counters). I made these fans as just another way to put color in the room. I taped them up with masking tape, snapped the picture, and then three fell off. I am going to hot glue ribbon on to the back of them and try hanging them up again in a week or so.

I fell in LOVE with these signs. There were three signs that fit perfectly, but I had to recreate two of them on my own. I found the frames at Michaels, and spray painted them some fun colors. I thought I took a picture of them hanging in my room, but must have forgotten. 

Well, my classroom is almost the exact way that I want it to look. I have a few more things to hang, but overall, it is very colorful and full of information. I hope that this year comes together the same way my room has! I know I am not the only teacher who feels jitters every year. 15 years in to this gig, you would think they went away at some point!

Summer Adventures and Pictures!

Since my last post, I have knocked eight things off my list! I can't remember what happened in date order, so I will discuss it in chronological order.

I have no clue how I will ever catch up on my reading list.  I read all the time and eery time I think I am done, I had 10 more to my list.  I am going go to say that is an unattainable goal. Right now my brain in back in school mode. I am trying to find books that I can use with my class. I am reading a book called The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian. It seems like a great book, but I think it is a little too racy for me to teach.  I'm still looking for the perfect 7th grade novel in case anyone out there knows it!

The other day, my sister and I went to the Lakefront and walked around for a bit. We took a bunch of pictures for photo locations.  My sister has an amazing eye. She took some AWESOME pictures of my son playing in the lake, playing at a park, just experiencing life. I don't know how I can ever repay her for capturing these moments. While we were there, my sister was helping me with some of the settings on my camera.  I am still working on it, but these are the pics just from my phone.

My cousin and I decided we needed to start doing somethings. We went to a brewery on the south side. It is called 5 Rabbits. While we were driving there, we had a hard time figuring out where the place even was! It was in the middle of a trucking depot and was a big warehouse.  When you walk in, there is this adorable tasting room where you can buy samples, pints, and bottles. They also had tacos for sale that were AMAZING! I only eat poultry and fish, but they only had steak and pork. I ate four pork tacos and could have had more! Because of this, we decided we needed to try some other of these local breweries around town.

Another thing on my list was to visit the "Waterfalls" in Worth. It is a little gem on the south suburbs of Chicago. It is really just a place where air gets put back into the water. There are tons of ducks and geese so it is very smelly. It was SO pretty, however. 

I think that is about all that has been going on for now. I plan on having a few more things crossed off before summer is over. Time to work on some school activities!

What I Should Be Doing

I wrote this long blog about things that have been going on in my life and how I have been checking more things off my list, and for some reason, it wouldn't update.

This weekend, we went to Michigan to visit the Hubs family. We were going to see the Sox vs. the Tigers, but the game got rained out.  Instead, we went to Dave and Busters with cousins. It was so much fun and qualified as a date for us! The hub's family told us to go out and have fun. We followed those instructions!  It was a great time! I haven't had that much fun in a long time.  I don't remember the last time I have gone there. Because of the hubs work schedule, we don't get to spend a whole lot of time alone together.  He works nights, I work days. Thankfully, I have my summer off so we can do things like this.

Last week, we got a chance to go to see a Chicago Fire soccer game.  My favorite restaurant was having a give away for four tickets.  Not many people entered, so my chances were pretty good. I ended up getting four free tickets so I called my sister to see if I could take my nephew, B. He has been playing football, but is switching over to soccer this fall.  I wanted to take him to the game so he could see what it was really like. The Fire ended up losing, but the game was really good.  Taking John to a Fire game was on my list of things to do, so there is another thing done!

For anyone keeping count, there are still 73 things left on my 101 Things list.  I feel like I am doing things to meet this goal!  Hopefully I will accomplish more before this is up.  I know I still have a year and a half, so I guess I am all right...

Summer is Here!

I still can't believe this school year has come to an end. I love looking at teacher meme that describe teachers in June. This girl was no different!

Last fall, the hubs and I started to do some major projects around our house. Since we bought it,we installed a new roof, new windows, new ceramic tile in the kitchen, completely remodeled the bathroom, put in a front porch, added rock to the front of the house, and put in a huge patio in the backyard. There are still some things I want to do, but I'm getting to a point where I'm happy with the way things look here. This year, I decided I wanted to start gardening. We had so many weeds we had to put weed blocker EVERYWHERE. The only place I can really put any flowers is in pots.

My school had a flower sale, so I bought a couple of flats of flowers I liked. I've never really planted  flowers before, so I just put bunches of them in pots.  They  came packaged in groups of four, so I left them that way. I really should have read up on the flowers I planted. This is what they look like now.

A little over grown. I am going to have to fix that, but I'm excited about having flowers!