We Made It!!

We have finally made it through the first week of school! It has been exciting, new, fun, and AWESOME! This week we participated in many different activities surrounding different attitude words. We focused on being respectful, principled, communicators, caring, and being risk takers.

Some of our favorite activities this week were:

- Passing notes in class: We communicated special things about ourselves by writing it down on paper and passing our papers around. We learned that you don't always have to talk to communicate.

- Bubble letters: After reading "Chrysanthemum" we wrote our names in bubble letters and inside each letter we drew something that represented us.

- Classroom library- we were excited about learning about our class library because there are a lot of books to read. There are many different genres to read and learn about.

- Started math with problem solving: It was fun to read and use the clues to answer the problem.

- Writing in journals- we started to write about our lives after we made Heart Maps where we added different things about our lives

- Decorating notebooks- We enjoyed getting a chance to be creative. It helped us by adding pictures of family because it made us think about those people.

- Imagination activity- "Not a Stick", "Not a Box"- After reading one of the book we were all risk takers by taking either and eraser, hockey puck, or cube and using our imagination to turn it into a new object. Our eraser turned into magic eraser, a phone, and a remote. The cube turned into a house, a box full of diamonds, and a dice. The hockey puck turned into a motorcycle tire, a football, and a hamburger.

It has been an enthusiastic week, we are looking forward to next week and our next blog post!

Before the BIG day!!

After talking to many students on Friday night, I realized that my summer vacation was rather unexciting compared to all my students. I heard many beach stories from South Padre, Galveston, Florida...etc and realized that I needed to do something fun too! I spent my last weekend visiting friends in Dallas. We went to the Dallas Aquarium on Saturday afternoon. It was a beautiful aquarium! If you have never been before, it is a big open space where birds and fly free and you see monkeys climbing the trees around you. What I found really cool were the manatees. They were HUGE! We were able to go down a couple of levels and look into the tank where they were kept. They would swim along the glass, almost like they were showing off to all of us observers. Another exhibit that I thought was really interesting was a tunnel that you could walk through that went through the shark tank. There were Hammerhead sharks and Sawfish. Here are some of the other interesting animals I saw:

They remind me of "Mr. Popper's Penguins"!

I love owls. This one is just beautiful.

He was in a big glass tank by himself. Scary!!

He was posing and playing around. He was definitely the entertainer in his cage!

I'm looking forward to seeing everyone tomorrow! I hope everyone had a fun and realxing last weekend of summer!

Back To School Night!

I know this is before the night starts, but while its on my mind, I want to post a few reminders from tonight before I forget!

1. Please fill out and return ALL paperwork on the first day (Tuesday)

2. The yellow cards and transportation (whole year and first day) forms are very important for me to have before the first day!

3. Have a wonderful and relaxing weekend. I am so excited for the new school year to start, as I know all of you are too!!

Thank you to everyone who showed up tonight! Also, if you are reading this... thank you for checking into our new technology, hopefully it proves helpful!

Ms. Pair :)

Looking forward to...

As I start back working in my classroom each year I start thinking about goals I would like to accomplish in my classroom or things that I am looking forward to. So here's a "Top Five" list of things that I am looking forward to this school year!

1. Meeting all my new students and learning each ones unique personality. Who will be the joke-ster? Who will be the "mom" of the class?

2. Using more technology in the classroom this year. I love working with the prometheans in our rooms and I don't know what I would do with out having that piece of technology to help engage my students in lessons!! Using a blog is new and I am really excited to see how the blog helps to keep everyone informed and updated on what we are doing this year.

3. A fresh start. Each year lends its self to change and "newness". After spending some quality time up at CHE my room received a makeover. Change is good!

4. CHE is in the process of becoming an IB school. We have been working since last summer on making the change. I have attended trainings last summer, this summer, and all through the school year. Our team has been working very hard on planning the "units" that are included in the IB program. This year we are starting to implement the IB (International Baccalaureate) units by teaching what we have planned so far. This is a big change from the teaching style I have been used to (teaching all of the subjects independently with integration) but I am excited to try out the new change (all subjects are integrated, for example, no more specific "reading" time) because it will bring positive results!

5. Being back in a routine!