So my first year teaching I wanted to have a game for my 2nd graders to explore the library and discover new books. I’ve blogged briefly about this game before. We spend a lot of time in second grade talking about how we choose our books, how to find summaries on the backs and inside the dust jackets of books, and basically just how we find the books we like. I do another activity called “Judge a Book By Its Cover” (I talk about Drop Everything and Read in that post). Judge a Book By Its Cover came in real handy this year when my 4th graders started Wonder; they remembered the 2nd grade game immediately and understood what I wanted them to do.
Tag: lesson plans
I love this time of year at school. Every year during the short Thanksgiving week I have the 3rd and 4th graders help me change The Library Tree from fall to winter. It’s a small thing, but I love those rituals.
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I cannot overstate what a marvelous fall read-aloud Bob Raczka’s Fall Mixed Up is. I have read it to all of my 1st grade classes, my Multiply Disabled class, and I’m getting ready to read it to my kindergarten classes. I think this might even be my favorite read aloud of the year so far.
I bought this book last year hoping to get some use out of it, but I guess in my pregnant haze I decided it would be too confusing after all to read with classes. Not to mention the fact that I was furiously trying to squeeze in all of my Big Important Units with each grade before I went on maternity leave—we were kind of rushed last year. But this year I brought it out, and it was a huge hit.
Last week was Respect Me Week at school. We focused on anti-bullying education as well as just general acceptance–it was a big school-wide week of tolerance. I suggested and loaned lots of various titles to the classroom teachers and then kept a few to use in my library classes. Here’s what we did:
I went back to work today, and I did much better than I thought I would. Adam stayed home with H, and I got lots of photos and updates about her during the day. But I also just felt surprisingly good to be working again. Using that entire catalog of brain functions and social skills again just made me feel like a better mom when I got home. Yes, it sucked not to be able to give her hugs at any moment. And yes, I may get hysterical tomorrow when I drop her off at the sitter’s and see how she reacts to being left with someone she doesn’t know very well yet. But today I was able to leave home at home to get stuff done for the kids’ arrival tomorrow, and then I was able to leave work at work, zero in on her when I got home, and then do whatever prep I had left for tomorrow after she went to bed. I was one of the first teachers to leave the building today, and I did not feel guilty about that.