BUSY!

School. Is. BUSY!!! Holy moly. I know every teacher knows this and could have told me this, but it is very different figuring it out myself! I'm loving it though! Tons of great days. But BUSY! 

Here are some things I've been doing lately:

My teammate (& friend!) and I copied and got these ready several weeks ago, but just now got around to getting them bound. Turns out, it takes an HOUR at Kinkos, so we treated ourselves to dinner while we waited! It was wonderful. Anyway, we made these Reading & Writing Workshop conference logs:

I downloaded the covers from here, printed them on cardstock, then laminated both covers as well as black cardstock for the back covers. Then I stuck in the tabs- I have since written each student's name on a tab. This is how I will keep track of my conferences with them over time!

I love having all of one student's notes in one place- it helps me see if they have been stuck on one book or one piece of writing for a long time, and lets me reiterate important teaching points, or introduce new ideas to them easily. I "stole" the idea to make this type of log from my awesome mentor teacher. She is a rock star at workshop!

I'm so excited to start using these on a regular basis! So far, I've kept conference notes on my iPad, and while that's fine, I'm more of a written-note-jotter type of girl. 

Today our 5th graders had job interviews for an upcoming field trip to a mock community in our area that students visit and function in for a day. My students worked so hard preparing for their interviews- nice clothes, firm handshakes, eye contact, everything! So proud. Staff from all over the school (plus my dad!) volunteered to help us interview all the 5th graders, which was so great. My sweet teammate made all our volunteers lemon muffins, and I gave them one of these: 

So corny, I know! But we really appreciate them taking time from their busy schedules to give our kids valuable, real life experience! 

The book fair was here last week! My kids were SO excited to get in there and buy BOOKS (and pencils, and erasers, and posters) but also BOOKS! A few sweethearts even bought me a book to add to our classroom library! 5th grade had the most students attend our Back to School night last week, so each 5th grade teacher got $15 to spend at the book fair! I'm pretty pumped about my haul:

I can't wait to get them into my classroom library! 

Wellllll I guess I should go home since it is 6:15 on a Wednesday and all.... Good night!

-Lydia