My Day

A day in the life of me!

I usually arrive at school around 7:45ish-time to make any copies if needed and prep for the day.

Once the students arrive, my day goes a little like this:
(Ribbons by Lovin Lit)

 Students start trickling in at 8:30, but I have some that come as late at 8:45-8:50. Band and chorus also meet in the morning, which can cut my numbers down.

For morning work, I do the monthly math packets from In the Math Lab
as well as weekly language from Got to Teach
We also do Morning Meeting when we have time (and a good number of students!)

Once everyone arrives, we can get started on our day! We switch off between Social Studies and Science.

Our team switches for Science, and I teach States of Matter and Weathering and Erosion. One of my teamies teaches Weather, and the other teaches Health & Nutrition.

For Social Studies, we teach map skills, our state history, Explorers, Colonial America and the American Revolution.

In Math, I always start out with my fabulous SMART Board Calendar that I got from Downeast Teach.
While we are working on calendar, the students are also having snack :)

Then, we move into the main math lesson.

We are starting our first year with Math in Focus

Our days run on an 8 day schedule (no M-F special schedule!) We have 2 Gym, 2 Art, 2 Music, 1 Library and 1 Spanish. I have this time free for planning (and any meetings that may pop up!)

We have a short time between our specials and lunch, so I use this time to do spelling, catch-up and our Mentor Sentences, which came from the wonderful Jivey.
My kids LOVE doing Mentor Sentences-I highly recommend them!

Kids have about 25 minutes to eat, and 20 minutes to play. We have a rotating recess duty schedule (the only duty teachers have other than meetings), so it varies between 20 minute duty, 10 minute duty and no duty.

We have the whole afternoon blocked out for literacy.

Usually we have about a half hour for whole group lessons, and then the rest of that time is for guided reading groups and independent work.

The series that we are supposed to use is Literacy By Design.

But none of us are very fond of it. Shhhh! One of my teamies and I are going to teach the skills differently (focusing in on CCSS), and use the book as a resource (NOT the end all be all). I will be using a lot of task cards this year (mostly from Teaching With A Mountain View!)

Time to go home!

I'm always surprised at how quickly the day flies by!

Usually, there is some sort of meeting after school, be it PLC, staff, or something else.

Hopefully, I'm out by 4 (which I was very good at last year!), and getting ready to do it all again!

Smiles and Sunshine,
Kaitlyn