5 months later...

This year has certainly been more of a “first year teaching” experience – filled with many late nights, stressful weeks and making things up as I go!  Thus I have had very little time for blogging!  but it makes a 4 week holiday in the middle of winter such a BEAUTIFUL thing!!!  No complaints that I have to sit on a bus for 5 hours as I travel down the east coast of Australia filling my ears with music and my mind with whatever thoughts I so desire (not having to plan for what I’ll teach the next day!).

It actually makes me smile (a lot) to think of my students now.  They are the coolest bunch of grade 3s.  It is true that building relationships is HUGE!  I only hope I can teach them something they need to know!  I LOVE seeing students’ grow and get excited about learning.  Here is just a peak... The student who came into the year with very little oral language skills and who others call “shy” but who sings louder than most students in music and reads aloud to herself in Silent Reading so NOT silently! haha! I just announce to other students when she lingers around my desk at recess time that I know she’s really not shy.  Or another favorite who chose to make himself the victim of some of my entertaining punishments at the beginning of the year but who has now become a super classroom helper and mediator when other students have conflict! WOW! Another student joined our class late and had a difficult time fitting in at first culturally as well because he’s a good foot taller than everyone else (and could very possibly be taller than I am by the end of the year!). But he’s starting to find his place and I smile big smiles and hold back my giggles as he lifts up other students in the air to hold them closer to the one heater we have in our classroom to help them get warm before we go back outside after lunch for PE! And then there’s the 2 girls who want to stay in at recess to read more Robert Munsch books (that we were studying) and fill out more Reading Logs – so much so that I kept having to make more photocopies just for them! As a class they have amazing teamwork skills when we play Capture the Flag in PE – strategizing and assigning each other positions.  Plus they all love music (which thankfully I don’t teach) and will break out in song during class (no joke!) – I actually have to make them stop!  Still the coolest class!!!

I could go on, but will take a break so I don’t get sick on this windy road through the countryside.  Up next… entertaining punishments I must record before I forget J