Currently...

Hello Readers! When I started this blog a few months ago I had some grand plans about posting once a week. However.... life got in the way. =) Nothing major happened, but we all know how busy the testing season and end of the school year is for teachers. For July, I am recommitting myself to posting at least once a week. No promises for August, as I go back to work August 3rd. (Eeeeek!)

Today I'm linking up with Farley at Oh Boy 4th Grade:

Listening

We have been getting a TON of rain here in central Texas. We had some major, flood-causing rain in May and early June, and now it seems like every day we get a short rainstorm. Oh well, we still need the rain and it breaks up the heat.

Loving

I read Learn Like a Pirate by Paul Solarz on the recommendation of some teacher friends and some blogs that I read. At first I was disappointed, because it seemed like many of the ideas would not work for me. When he talked about having a 15-20 minute class meeting every day, I remember thinking, I only have 120 minutes to teach ELA and Social Studies, how could I find time to do that? However, then I started thinking about ways I could modify his ideas to work for me... so maybe I can't have a class meeting every day, but I could have a class meeting once a week. And really, when do I ever using anything (a lesson, idea, curriculum) as it is, unless I made it myself? So now that I have a different mindset, I am slowly rereading the book and loving it!

Thinking

Teachers at my school return August 3rd, so my summer's about halfway over! AHHAAA! I'm sure some of you can relate to this feeling.

Wanting

I'm painting my new classroom, and I spent most of the afternoon today taping everything off. I'm exhausted. Does anyone know of any elves that specialize in classroom painting?

Needing

Team USA needs to win the world cup. Because we're awesome and so is soccer.

All Star

This kind of goes back to what I said earlier in the Loving section. I'm not great at coming up with ideas on my own, however, when I see or read about an idea I'm great at modifying it to fit my needs (or my students' needs). This is one of the reasons I started reading teaching blogs in the first place-- to get more ideas!

Well, that's it for today, but I will be back sometime next week.

Happy July,