Classroom Transformation Takeover: Book Tasting!

For those of you new to the blog, I am an assistant principal who has a passion for teaching. This week I was able to do a Book Tasting for a 3rd grade reading classroom. I call this Classroom Transformation Takeover because the students had no idea it was coming. The students went to music and PE and when they came back their room was transformed into a restaurant! Shout out to my awesome principal, Tiffany, who helped me decorate in 15 minutes!

Next time I am going to put up more plastic table cloths on the wall to make it more of a dramatic difference. Lesson learned for next time! :) 

Here are some more pictures of the decorations!

I used the Book Tasting activity from Joanne Miller of Head Over Heels for Teaching. You can grab this resource here at TPT for $6. It was worth EVERY penny. It saved me so much planning and prep time. You can also visit her blog here for other great ideas! 

All of these resources are included plus more! 

A special shout out to Sheila Barnes, one of our 3rd grade teachers for helping me gather the books for each genre. She is the book queen! 

I LOVED getting to teach again. I love the connection that is made with students when teaching. The students enjoyed the book tasting and got a kick out of their assistant principal standing on furniture while teaching. 

Thank you Mrs. Unruh's class for letting me come into your class. I really enjoyed it and I hope you did too! 

Enrichment World Tour!

LEARNING ABOUT OTHER CULTURES!

First, what is Enrichment? It is a time where the  teachers have an extra conference so they can plan together, and it is from 2:45- 3:30 once a week.  The RTI teachers, ESL teachers, a Special Ed teacher,  Dyslexia teachers, paras, myself, and the counselor go in during this time and teach an enrichment activity. We also have our PE teacher and music teacher who volunteered to be subs if someone was absent. Did I mention they volunteered to fill in even though this is their conference time? We have some rock star teachers at our school.

So you might be wondering what we teach during this time. Since we have so many great teachers teaching during enrichment time we had a plethora of ideas. But one of our goals was to make this easy for teachers who were teaching enrichment. We didn't want this to take anymore of their prescious planning time for their own classes. One night I couldn't sleep and was wondering how we could make the planning process easier for everyone. I began to think about our students and what we could do to broaden their learning experience, and then it hit me. How cool would it be to learn about other cultures? 

We live in a small rural town and we don't have as much exposure to different cultures compared to students who live in larger cities. Originally I was thinking of calling this time Where in the World are the Principals? Kind of like Where in the World is Carmen San Diego?  But when I presented the idea to my principal she suggested Enrichment World Tour since our school theme this year is Rock N' Roll. I thought it was a great idea and that's how the name Enrichment World Tour was born. 

Side Note: I have to give a shout out to my principal, Tiffany Bietz. I come into her office on a frequent basis and I always start off with, " Ok, don't think I am crazy but I have an idea....". She never does and always supports me in my crazy adventures.  She runs with me and makes the crazy idea even stronger! I am grateful for her support!

Back to Enrichment World Tour. Our students will  have a month to learn about a new country. We will teach the students about the people, language, and the different things that make the country unique. 

One thing that did concern me was how we were going to keep the students interested. We were only going to be having a lesson once a week. How could we keep it exciting and interesting for the other 4 days a week? That's when I came up with the idea for a hall way transformation or more like a nook transformation. I found the signs in the picture below and thought it would be perfect. My husband David , who is also a 3rd grade teacher at my school, created the stage. We then added artifacts, information, student work (not pictured), and pictures that are all about Australia. 

I will be posting about each country we tour at the end of the 4 weeks. Our first stop is Australia! Next stop will be Brazil! Stay tuned!

Special Thanks To:

Teaching Doesn't Always Go As Planned

I taught 3 lessons this week! On Friday I went to Mr. Erickson's 3rd grade classroom and planned to compare numbers with the students. However, after a quick formative assessment I realized we still needed a little more practice on reading whole numbers to the hundred thousands. Since I had to change my lesson on the spot all I had was a white board, a marker, my mean rhythm skills, and Mr. Erickson's students.



 The students could recite the place value chart correctly, but once we put numbers in the place value chart the students struggled reading the numbers. We couldn't move on to comparing numbers if they were struggling reading them. This is actually a common misunderstanding 3rd grade students have but is a very easy fix.  I simply put a number on the board and grouped it by their families as shown below.

I then had the students give me a beat. My active students especially loved coming up with their own beat. As soon as the beat was established we began reading the numbers together.  I wish I had a video of all of us doing this together. Since I wasn't able to do so, I created a film on my couch, no makeup, and wild hair. It's all for the kids. Enjoy!

As you can see it wasn't anything fancy, and it was a lot more upbeat when the students did it with me. They even created some pretty creative beats when they started doing it on their own. Before I left the classroom the students were able to read the numbers with ease.

Sometimes lessons don't always go as planned. That's ok though! It's all about the students and meeting them where they are at.  I hope you have a great week teaching your amazing students!

Building Teacher Leadership

I am still here! My first post was a month ago and I have been waiting to post until school started back up. Well...it has started and it has been fast and furious. Just the way I like it. We welcomed our fabulous teachers on August 10 and it was great to see their smiling faces. They worked so hard getting their rooms together and preparing for the new school year.



As you know I am very passionate about teaching and believe all administrators should continue to teach so we stay connected on what's going on in the classroom. I also believe that as an administrator it is important that we build leadership among our teachers. My  principal and I are giving our teachers more opportunities this year to do just that! The first set of teachers that led a professional development for our campus were Mrs. Barnes and Mrs. Roberson. Their professional development was over Super Improver Boards and Practice Boards. Here is a GREAT post about the Super Improver board from 3rd Grade Thoughts.

Mrs. Barnes and Mrs. Roberson did a fabulous job and we learned so much from their expertise. It is important to build leadership within our schools. These teachers are in the trenches every day and have valuable knowledge and expertise to share. Having teacher led professional development encourages collaboration not only with teachers but with the administrators as well.

As an assistant principal I learn so much from my teachers on how I can become a better teacher. I walked into a 1st grade classroom this week and saw the students paying the game below. They call it Wacka Word. The students LOVED the activity and so did I! This activity can be used for phonics, spelling, and so much more!



Seeing this activity and other great activities inspired me to do an Activity Trade-Show with our teachers. Basically, our teacher leaders will pick one of their favorite activities and will set up a table in the cafeteria. They will provide handouts to the teachers on the materials needed for the activity and the directions. As each teacher goes from table to table the teacher will demonstrate the activity in 5 minutes or less.  This event will take place October 10 so stay tuned! (I will be having a table set up too!)

I hope you are having a fantastic week. I am off to TEACH a first grade lesson!