Mrs. Tina's Tots

Well, I found a job! Whew. Last month I was hired as a 5th grade teacher in a wonderful school. After meeting with my principal and team a few times I don't think I could have been placed in a more perfect place if I had handpicked the school myself. Not only is everyone kind and helpful; it also aligns to my own teaching pedagogically. When you move to a new school you kinda have to go with the flow until you prove yourself. No big shifts away from the curriculum, not a lot of new activities, etc. I was prepared for it, and for being told what and how to do things. However, their pedagogy aligns so much with my own that it is going to be an almost seamless transition, or so it seems. With that said my team and I are going to be doing classroom Book-A-Day, and so I went off to Barnes and Noble to see what new books I wanted to add to my collection this year. I found a ton of really cute books, and I thought I would share them with you in case you hadn't heard of them either. ...

Transition. That word has been echoing through my heart and my mind since June when I first sat down to plan for this school year. I was finishing graduate school in December. Finally. For the second time. I was looking forward to having time to relax a little more, spend more time with my family, and take back over my share of the household responsibilities that my husband had been doing. Then we found out that my husband had gotten excepted into a program at a college that was working in tandem with a local hospital. He had quite the acceptance process to make it through, and it was truly an answer to our prayers that he was accepted this year. That word rang a little louder in my head each time another commitment would come up with either of our programs. Being in school at the same time as your spouse is a special kind of something, and has turned us into expert strategists. Every time I would see a cool idea online (that was cool, but could also be taught effectively in a simpl...

Hey friends!! Just wanted to drop in to let you all know that I have picked topics for my social studies units this year!! I just wanted to start off by saying how disappointed I am in the Arkansas state social studies standards! They are so vague, broad, and redundant it's ridiculous. I'm all for teachers having more of a say in what topics they cover, but I don't want to teach something that the teacher before me previously covered thoroughly. (Yes I know that's where vertical and horizontal alignment come in, but in my tiny school there is very little of that, unfortunately) There is also no need to have basically the same standard from K-6th. I liked our old standards much, much better. They were more defined, but still broad enough I could pick my topics. I also learned that from K-8th grade there is only one standard on the Civil War, and one standard on both of the World Wars. That seems crazy to me. Anyway....I'm sure there could be a lot of debate on our ...

Hello friends!! I am bound and determined to keep my blogging going during this school year. I usually blog a few times during the summer, and then the school year hits and before I know it's May again! Sound familiar??!! So I thought I'd start this year off by sharing how I set up the first part of the school year. Now that I've been teaching this grade level for 2 years, I am getting more confident about sharing what we have been doing.  But first, I want to share with you my situation because it is a little bit different than most teachers, and it will help you make sense of my schedule a little more. I teach at a small Title I school. We are actually consolidated with a school about 10 miles away, but we kept our building. We are a K-5 campus, but we do have 3 and 4 year old Pre-k program that share our grounds.  I teach fourth and fifth grade ELA and social studies. I have fourth grade until lunch, and then fifth grade until the end of the day. Fourth grade is my hom...

Hey y'all!! It's been a crazy three weeks of school! I am LOVING being in upper elementary, and it has taken me no time at all to feel comfortable with kids in this age group again! :) I have a lot of different things I want to share from the first 3 weeks, but first I wanted to start out sharing a song! :) My fifth graders have not had a very strong background in language, and they were really struggling with finding the subjects, and predicates. No matter how many times I went over it, or how many interactive activities we did with it I had almost half my class that still didn't get it. I NEEDED to move on, and I was racking my brain, when Taylor Swift's "Shake it off" started playing on my shower radio. And the lyrics just came to me. I was hoping the kids would like it so I sang it for my daughter who's in second grade, and she just LOVED it. The lyrics are simple and repetitive, because I needed to teach it in one day so they would have it in their br...

Hey y'all can we first just Oooh and Aaaahhhh over my new blog design!! I am so in love with it ! Shanon and Courtney from Blogs Fit For a Queen did a fantastic job, and the whole process went so quickly! In fact they were always waiting on me to make up my mind about things! :) I appreciate them being so patient, and easy to work with! I have been MIA lately, but I have a lot of really good reasons! :) To kinda recap the end of my summer I'm going to link up with doodlebugs teaching for her Five for Friday linky! It's more of a summer summary though! I finally graduated from graduate school!! I am so excited! It's been a crazy 2ish years, but it was well worth it. This year is going to be a whole new world with out homework looming over my head every weekend! :) I'm excited to be able to use this  time to work on lessons for my class and TpT! Please excuse the crazy cap. I shoved it back on really fast to take a pic with my little! :) My husb...

Hey friends! The beginning of July was a lot busier than I anticipated!! And, my summer of no worries is officially over! Even though my teacher brain never turns off completely I took a month after we got out of school, and worked only on things I wanted to, only after my kids had gone to bed. This summer was about family time, and we packed A TON into June! :) So, as Jed Bartlett would say, (any other west wing fans??) "What's next!" Here is a rundown of what I have planned for the rest of July! I anticipate it is going to be busy and productive...hopefully! :) FOR SCHOOL * Next week I am leaving on Monday and taking my daughter to gymnastics. Then, I am meeting my mom for lunch, and dropping my kids off with her for the week. I am going to a PLC conference out of town, and my husband works nights 2 of the nights I'll be gone so they enjoy spending the week at Grammy and Big Pa's. :) * The week after that I'm headed our for a literacy coach training...