Happy :-)

It is days like today that make me thankful I am a teacher! The day started out like any other, but as it progressed it just seemed to get better & better.

Reading went well. Most of the students worked really hard on their assignments. We were called towards the end of Reading to go to get our pictures taken. They told my class that they were the best behaved class they had had ALL morning! Way to make me feel good (as well as all of them)!

My students have really been struggling with the new math series our county has adopted. I think more time was needed to transition to the series & new standards, but nevertheless we are trudging on, trying our best. Despite all the set backs we seem to experience we worked today on pictographs. I had a few wrong answers on the papers, but overall THEY GOT IT!!! I was so excited & I think my reactions to how well they were doing really inspired some of them to keep on working. They did more work than I had planned on & they did it really well!

After lunch we had our Science time & they worked with partners to identify the physical properties of substances. Don't worry it was ordinary stuff like paper, an apple, water, a cracker, etc. They just had to use their 5 senses to describe it, then categorize them as solid, liquid or gas. They had so much fun (despite a few complainers) & seemed to really enjoy it & learn from their "self-discovery".

On Wednesdays we have early release days & we do professional development during the extra hour. Despite the fact that we have to go to a meeting, even though most of us would love extra time in our classrooms, the meetings we have had this year have been really useful. Today we talked about how to use our 90 minute reading block. My grade level team enjoyed working together & we were inspired to try to get together & work on somethings for our classrooms.

I wish everyday went this well. Of course, it may be that the "rainy days" are what help me to enjoy the "sunny days" that much more!