Orientation/Classroom Setup Week!

WHAT. A. WEEK!

This Monday kicked off "new teacher orientation" in my district. Four long days of information overload. While the days were long and my brain was fried at the end of each day, I learned some amazing things and was given access to some amazing resources.

In between orientation (which ran 9-3:30 Monday-Thursday) I have been setting up my classroom (with the help of my patient, kind sister! Thanks CMF!). It took about 8+ hours to get my room student ready, but I am sooooo happy with how it has turned out!

Here is a snapshot of some of the bulletin boards in my room:

I am hanging this sign on the outside of my door. Where I currently have "apply your 'self-ie' I am going to put a class picture that I will take on the first day of school. I got the idea from a colleague in my last school who used something similar with her fifth grade class. 

I am so looking forward to meeting my class next week. I have met some co-workers here and there while setting up my classroom and everyone has been extremely welcoming and friendly. I am looking forward to building professional and personal relationships with many of them.

I plan on spending every waking moment of this weekend at my beach club, swimming, going down the water slide, doing stand up paddle in the Long Island Sound, eating, drinking and soaking up one of the last weekends at the beach!

What are you doing for your first day of school? I have a few things on the burners and I have yet to narrow down exactly what I want to do, but I know I better decide soon!

Major Life Updates!

I can't remember the last time I blogged! Things have been very, very busy in my world! My husband and I moved from our little east side Manhattan apartment to a beautiful house in the suburbs! We are official Westchester residents, and it feels AMAZING! Below are some pictures from our moving day, and some of our adorable new house! 

All packed up & ready for the movers! 

We're going to miss our East River, Empire State Building & Chrysler Building views from the 29th floor & from our roof deck! 

Suburbia life! 

 Next week begins my "new teacher orientation" week at my new school. I am feeling more excited than I am nervous, which is new for me! I am usually a lot more nervous at this point in the summer. I am a warm weather lover, and I am always more sad for the school year to start because it means cold weather is around the corner than I am sad that I have to "go back to work." My girlfriend Jenn and I hit up Lakeshore Learning last week and got almost all the supplies I need to set up my room. Unfortunately for me, I can't get into my room until the same week I have orientation. I think I have some late afternoons and nights coming my way next week! I was really hoping to get into my room this week, but because of building construction I am unable to. So instead of setting up my room I am focusing this week on organizing our house and making sure I know where all of my work clothes are for the next month before our furniture arrives! Here's a snapshot from our morning at Lakeshore. The place was a ZOO! 

 I have been speaking to my new instructional coach at my school, who also happens to be the head of the ELA curriculum for the district. We have been in touch the last few weeks and she hooked me up with the fifth grade scope and sequence for the year as well as the units for the first five weeks of school. This curriculum goes back to a previous blog post I wrote a few months ago regarding published programs versus teacher/curriculum coordinator generated units (click here to read it!). My district uses a custom made ELA curriculum created by none other than my instructional coach. I am so excited to familiarize myself with the units and start planning my first week with the kiddos around it!

What do you do during the first week of school? Do you go back before or after labor day? I start with orientation and personal development August 24th, and the kiddos come September 2nd. So excited to meet my new class!

Mealtime Monday with Miss Vericker's Adventures!

I'm going to be completely honest with you -- my husband is a better cook than I am. He is more adventurous, better skilled in dicing and chopping, and not afraid to make a mess. Now, while I enjoy cooking, I stick to the basics, and usually try to find recipes that have the least amount of clean-up involved! I am loving Miss Vericker's idea for "meal time Mondays" because I know planning a weeks worth of dinners is sometimes challenging (for me at least!). Since she started the link up, I've done a fair share of cooking, but it hasn't always been on Monday. I am going to use this post as a "catch up" session for the quick summer time meals my husband and I have been enjoying the last few weeks. 

Here in Manhattan we are experiencing those "lazy-hazy-crazy" "hazy-hot-humid" typical NYC summer days. Temperatures each the 90s, and we suffer from about 95% humidity. Lucky for me I have straight hair! Anyway, with those kinds of temperatures outside our apartment, my husband and I are always searching for dinners that do not require us to put the oven on -- and sometimes dinners that don't even require the stovetop! Although that last one gets a little trickier. Here's a look at a quinoa salad my husband and I love - it's chock-full of veggies, easy to make, and can be served on its own as a main course or as a side to a protein of your choice. I like it because you can substitute or delete vegetables that you prefer - and you can treat the quinoa as a blank canvas!

 For this salad, you will need:

-Quinoa 

-Cherry Tomatoes

-Cucumber 

-Crumbled Feta 

-Red Onion 

-Kale 

-Avocado 

 and for the dressing, you need:

-Dijon Mustard 

-Honey 

-Lemon 

-EVOO 

-Salt & Pepper to taste 

 All you do is dice and chop the veggies, boil up the quinoa, and top it with some avocado. For the dressing, mix dijon mustard with honey, EVOO, lemon juice, and salt and pepper, and pour over the quinoa. Voila! 

 My husband and I are total carnivores. I LOVE red meat, and I love it cooked rare, and seasoned delicately. Below is a shot of a strip steak my husband broiled, along side a kale, endive, pine nut salad, and served with the above quinoa salad! 

Another SIMPLE go-to summer salad we enjoy in our house is a corn, tomato and avocado salad, lightly dressed with lemon juice, EVOO, and salt and pepper. Can you tell I LOVE avocados? I eat them almost every day, and almost every which way (more on that in a later post!). I love cherry tomatoes, and I enjoy them best when they are sliced in half, so I cut cherry tomatoes, dice avocado, and mix in canned OR fresh corn. A little lemon juice (helps keep the avocado from browning), EVOO and S&P mixed in, and you have the perfect accompaniment to any summer dinner. 

 TODAY (finally, on a Monday!) I just finished making an orzo salad. Orzo is a lot like quinoa in the sense that its like a blank canvas. Today's temperature is "90 feels like 101" outside and our AC is broken! I figured a cold pasta salad would suffice for dinner tonight!

Here is what I used in my salad: 

-Orzo 

-Cherry Tomatoes 

-Sliced Kalamata Olives

-Cucumber 

-Feta 

-EVOO 

-Lemon Juice -S&P 

-Avocado slices for topping (optional) 

Here are the veggies before I added the orzo: 

And here's the salad complete:

We are big wine drinkers in our house - but after a weekend spent on the beach drinking beers and soaking up the sun, we need a little break from alcohol. This heat called for some home made iced tea. Here's my finished product:

I also couldn't resist picking up some white hydrangeas this morning at the corner market! 

Thanks for hosting Miss Vericker's Adventures! Can't wait to see what next week brings! 

What are you cooking tonight? I would love to hear from you!

Plan Books: Pen & Paper.. or Digital?!

I have mentioned my best friend and fellow teacher Jenn on this blog before. She graciously accompanied me to see my new classroom last week and patiently helped me map it out and plan a theme. She is a rockstar middle school math teacher in a neighboring Westchester school district. I've always strived to be half as good a teacher as she is. I keep trying to convince her to join the blog world! I think I am finally starting to wear her down! 

I mention Jenn because just today I was browsing Erin Condren's website carefully planning out which lesson planner I wanted to purchase. Jenn first introduced me to Erin Condren when she bought me a personalized wedding planner from the site two years ago when I was planning my wedding. I was instantly hooked. 

Fast forward to this afternoon, I send Jenn a picture of what I am thinking about purchasing from Erin Condren, but was discouraged because it is a little costly. Lakeshore Learning gives out teacher lesson planners for free for goodness sake! It is so cute though.. and I love the quote.. take a look for yourself:

Jenn loved the planner, told me a teacher's planner is her LIFE LINE, and that I am justified in purchasing it. (Hey, thats what BFF teachers are for, right?!) But for some reason I just can't pull the trigger. Then, Jenn drops a bomb on me! She switched to digital planning two years ago!? I couldn't believe my ears ... my Jenn has the cutest teacher handwriting, is *slightly* OCD about plans, and always has the sweetest plan books and accessories! She turned me on to Erin Condren for goodness sake! WHAT?! DIGITAL?! 

She immediately showed me what she uses, gave me a quick tutorial, and told me to go try it out. Hesitantly, I did. I signed up with CommonCurriculum.com and gave it a test run. Here's a screenshot of what it looked like when I began:

You can color code your subjects, move widgets around, view by day, week, or month, add personal notes, add CCLS, and even share your planner with others. Hmmmmmm. Is this the "way of the future"? Am I archaic for *gasp* hand writing my plans?! 

I am not sure how I feel about diving into the digital world of lesson planning. But then again, I do everything else on my computer/iPad/iPhone, why not go digital with my planning? I often find myself complaining of hand cramps when I have to write for extended periods of time and find myself thinking how much easier it would be if I could type...what's taken me so long to make the switch? Why had I never put this much thought into it before? Is this something that would impress my principal and colleagues at my new school? Am I ready for this?!

What do YOU use? Does your school require you to format your lesson plans a certain way? Let me know in the comments section! 

New Classroom Visit!

Today was an exciting day for me. As you know, I am starting at a new school in September. Today I had the opportunity to go to school and check out and spend some time in my new classroom. Lucky for me, my best friend and fellow teacher Jenn came with me!

We had a nice little chat with my new principal, and she led us up to the third floor where my classroom is. The room is a GREAT space and the teacher I am taking over for left the room in great shape. Things are very organized and clearly labeled, and there is even a leveled library all ready to go! The classroom lends itself to creative bulletin boards, and is spacious enough for a meeting area, a teacher nook, a small group table, computer work areas, and the desks to be arranged in clusters. I can't wait to get back in there next month and start organizing it to make it my own.

I have been brainstorming ideas for the "theme" of my room the last few days. Being upper elementary, I know a lot of the cute themes from grades 1-2-3 are lost on fifth graders, but I still feel I need a cohesive theme for myself! Having seen an idea at PRES, I have considered making a "social network" theme in a future classroom. I feel my fifth graders might be perfect to try this out with! Jenn and I plopped ourselves down in the students desks and played around with different ideas for bulletin boards inside and outside the room. For our first go at it, we came up with some pretty good ideas! I will be posting pictures towards the middle/end of August when I start hanging and decorating! 

Here are some shots of what the classroom looked like today:

Here is Jenn hard at work on our diagram, TO DO List, and theme brainstorming!

Here's some of our "top secret" notes!

My "to do" list for now consists of some trips to Target, Container Store, and Lakeshore Learning. I am going to back my bulletin boards with black backing paper and accent them with neon colored borders. I am in need of backing paper, borders, cut-out letters, and lots and lots of labels. I am definitely also going to be hitting up TpT for a lot of organization templates and fun back to school documents. Any recommendations for stores and products, please comment below!

I am hoping to use this blog as a way to communicate with parents of the students in my class. I am hoping to blog every Thursday/Friday/[and/or]Saturday with what we've accomplished that week and what we have coming up the next week. If anyone out there reading this has any experience doing this, please let me know! I have toyed with the idea of doing a class newsletter, but I am much more comfortable blogging and think it has less of a chance of getting lost in little ones backpacks than a newsletter! 

Touching on yesterday's blog post, my new school uses a teacher-generated ELA curriculum that follows a workshop model for reading and writing, and uses Envisions for math. I am excited to be using Envisions again, and happy I have experience with it. I am intrigued by the ELA curriculum and can't wait to see what has been created. I hope I am able to bring some of my own units in and somehow incorporate them into the curriculum. I don't think I can go a whole school year without reading Wonder and Absolutely Almost!!

Thanks for taking the time to come with me today Jenn! I wouldn't have done nearly as much brainstorming without you!

Cheers!
Mrs. Frank

Opinion Piece: Pre-made Curriculum Programs or Make Your Own?

In the six years I have been teaching, I have always relied on purchased curriculum materials and programs to guide my teaching. Sure, I have used supplemental lessons and resources, but I have typically always had a "teacher's edition" within ELA and Math programs to follow and a scope and sequence provided through said program to keep me on target for where I need to be throughout the year. In ELA, I have used Houghton Mifflin's Storytown,  and Journeys, NYC's adopted "READYGEN," and in Math I have used Envisions, Singapore Math, and CMP3. With the exception of READYGEN, I have found all the programs up to par and enjoyed using them.

Recently, I encountered teachers who strongly dislike programs such as Storytown and Journeys. Some of their complaints are that they are not rigorous enough, are not aligned strongly enough to the standards, are not easily differentiated, and are too "generic." These teachers prefer to examine the CCLS and create their own curriculum for the year. Some teachers even take it s far as to desire cross-curriculum teaching, where all a theme spreads throughout ELA, Math, Social Studies, Science and the arts. I have met teachers who spend their entire summers creating curriculum.

While I think teachers who take it upon themselves to create their own curriculum are amazing, I am currently not one of them. I still consider myself a "new" teacher, and I would go as far as to say I enjoy using these programs and following their scope and sequences and teacher's guides. I trust that my curriculum coordinators have done extensive research on whatever programs they are purchasing and that the programs are the best fit for my school and my students. Of course that is not to say that I would not supplement materials as needed, or cut out or expand on areas that I believe could use trimming down or plumping up. Aside from working in schools where creating your own curriculum doesn't fly (public school represent!), I simply have not had the time to devote to a project like this. Last summer I was busy finishing my wedding planning and going away on an extended honeymoon, and this summer I am traveling and moving!

I know a lot of my private school friends are able to (read: have to) create their own curriculum for their grade. In my experience, public school teachers tend to not have this option. We are usually "required" to use the programs purchased by our school.

What about you? Which do you prefer? What does your school encourage? I would love to hear from you!

Last day of school!

Today was our last day of school at PRES. We had an 11:30 dismissal,  but we were busy bees all day! 

We had an all-school moving up ceremony, where each class "passes the banner" to the next class, symbolizing the "move up." So my fourth graders received their fifth grade banner and "o-fish-ally" became fifth graders. The current fifth grade sang songs, showed off their ballroom dancing skills, and shared words of wisdom with our school. It was so sweet and touching. It really drove home that PRES is a special place with special people. 

The moving up ceremony and the day were full of mixed emotions for me. I am so excited for the summer, but I am sad to be leaving PRES and not returning in the fall. PRES opened the door for me to experience general education teaching for the first time, and I am eternally grateful for the opportunity. I know I would not have landed such an amazing job for next fall without this on my resume. I am so thankful for the teachers and administrators who took a chance on me back in October and hired me as their leave replacement. PRES will always hold a special place in my heart. 

PRES has a tradition of the whole staff standing outside and waving to decorated buses as they pull out of our circle one last time. The kids love it and I think the teachers do too. We went outside with whistles and streamers and music and waved until our arms gave out. It is "o-fish-ally" SUMMER! 

My amazing co-teacher Nikki and our class created this wordle for me. I adore it and will cherish it for all the years to come. I can't wait to display it in my new classroom. 

Here are the adorable mustache whistles Nikki bought for us to blow as the buses pulled away...

And here we are waving goodbye!!! 

How does your school celebrate the last day of school? Tell me below! 

 

Hi there! I am very excited to be posting my first blog entry!

 I am writing this as I wrap-up my first year as a head general education teacher. In December, I had the opportunity to work in a 4th grade co-taught classroom in Pound Ridge, NY as a general education teacher to 20 amazing students. While it was a challenge to shift from my role as special educator (which I had been doing for about five years), it was a rewarding one! Unfortunately for me, Pound Ridge Elementary School does not have room within their building to keep me on full time. Luckily for me however, I will be starting a new job in a new district in the fall! I am going to be teaching fifth grade in White Plains, and I couldn't be more excited!

I learned a lot during my time at Pound Ridge. For starters, I learned how to manage a class, follow an on-grade level scope-and-sequence, give reading assessments and benchmarks to all of my students for MOY and EOY, and how to effectively differentiate for a general education population! When I first started I was very nervous to be taking over someone else's classroom. The teacher I was replacing was very organized, and had many systems I was unfamiliar with in place. The transition ended up being an easy one, and I was able to take her classroom and her students and make them my own. Its amazing how adaptable children are! I can't believe that my six months at PRES are actually over!

Here is a look at some of the EOY things we did during June at PRES...

For Father's Day, we created "Fathers Illustrated" Magazines about our dads!

To check out these Father's Day Templates and others like it, head over to Miss Vericker's TpT page here.

For end of the year gifts for our students, we created Wordles. One day we had the students write one word for each of their classmates that comes to mind when they think of them. From their lists, we created the Wordles and chose shapes that reflected their personalities. 

Here is a look at our EOY gifts all wrapped up and ready to go! The "You are O-Fish-ally in..." tags are from no other than my best friends TpT store - you can find them here. 

 Our last read aloud of the year is "Absolutely Almost" by Lisa Graff. If you haven't read this book, run, don't walk to the book store and pick it up! (Or head over to Amazon) It is an adorable story about a boy named Albie who is always "alllllllllllllmost" good enough. He struggles in school sometimes, and he's trying to figure out why. The book can be used for character study, lessons on learning styles, and theme studies. My students look forward to the end of the day every day to hear what Albie is up to!

As we wrap up this school year in the next two days, I am feeling mixed emotions. I am of course excited for summer vacation, but I am sad I will not be returning to PRES in the fall. The PRES community - colleagues, parents, and students alike welcomed me with open arms this year, and for that I am forever grateful. PRES took a chance on me, and allowed me to break into the Westchester school districts. I know I have made friendships that will last a lifetime. I hope I cross paths with people from the PRES community in the future. 

Thank you for a great 1/2 year PRES!