Three Things We are Doing Differently on our Next Disney Trip

If you have been following me (either through my blog or through Facebook), you know that I love all things Disney. My family loves Disney movies, we love Disney music, and, most importantly, we love Walt Disney World.

Two years ago, my wife and I took our four boys on a trip to the Walt Disney World Resort. She and I have been several times, but this was the first time as a family. We were able to find a great deal on a two-bedroom condo, bought tickets through a special broker, and rented a van to drive to Florida. IT WAS AWESOME!

We are going to be taking another trip this coming summer, just as soon as school is done for the summer. However, we are going to be doing some things just a little bit differently this time.

1. We are flying to Disney instead of driving. As I mentioned, last time we drove to Orlando. We rented a van, loaded all of things into the van, and made the 2-day drive. This was fine last time. We were able to put the two bigger boys in the back seat, our toddler in one of the bucket seats and the baby in the other. This time, we have five children. That means that there will be three boy in the back seat. We can barely make it to Chick-fil-a without a fight. So, this trip we are going to be flying. Yes, it is a huge expense, especially when you have to purchase 6 tickets. My wife and I just decided that it was worth the cost to save on the potential arguing and fatigue that comes from making such a long drive.
2. We are renting a house. So many folks rave about the Disney experience of staying on property. It is something we would love to do, but the size of our family makes that a bit more difficult (and a lot more expensive). We found a 4-bedroom house very close to the parks for an incredible price. This is perfect for us because we can cook our own meals, there are enough rooms for everyone to sleep comfortably, and it has its own private pool. The boys are especially excited about this part.
3. We are only going to parks for 4 days. We will be in Orlando from a Sunday until Saturday. Last time we went down, we tried to go to the parks every day and there were a lot of meltdowns. This time, we are only planning to go four out of the five days we are there. We have purposely scheduled a day off in the middle of the week so that we can spend time at the pool, visit Downtown Disney, and just relax. Hopefully this will help all of us to stay refreshed and to get more enjoyment out of our trip.

Every trip to Disney is full of magic and memories. Our hope is that by making these changes, even changes that will cost us a bit more, we can enjoy our trip all that much more.

I Love My Job

I am experiencing a new adventure this year. I am co-teaching a third grade class that has an enormous number of students who have been identified for special education services. Yeah, it is exactly how it sounds.

Yesterday, in class, one of my students put his arm behind his head, pulled his sleeve up, and began sniffing and (possibly) licking his armpit. I was trying to teach about rounding numbers to the 1,000s place. Do you have any idea how hard it is to teach on rounding when there is a student licking his own armpit?

I have another student who became very upset at transition time. He was standing in the room, sobbing. The reason he was so upset was because he had a handful of rocks wrapped up in a paper towel. Every time he would try to pick up his book box to leave the room, he would drop some of his rocks. "How can I carry my cubby when my hands are full of rocks? I can't pick up my cubby because I have to hold on to these rocks! I'm not going to be able to leave school!"

Another student was singing "What You Gonna Do With That Big Fat Butt?" in the lunch room. My student with autism told on him and he started to cry.

There is a little boy in my class who can only read 6 words per minute. He stumbles over the simplest sight words. When he was given a reading passage as a part of his PALS testing, he looked at the passage (with the very large print and few words on the page) and said to the teacher, "Are you kidding me? This is a joke, right?" I gave him a story that I wrote using some site word phrases and his response was, "I'll read this, but your story doesn't make any sense."

I also have a student who is extremely sensitive to noise. I gave her a set of headphones to wear because I thought it might cut down on the amount of noise she can hear. Unfortunately, I have created a monster. Now, she wants to wear the headphones all the time and the headphones have to be "plugged in." Oh, and now all the other students want to wear headphones as well. It is like a Daft Punk concert in our hallway.

I love my job.

Pirate Math - Pirates vs. Ninjas!

One of the favorite activities in my classroom last year was a surprisingly simple game that I created to help my students practice comparing numbers. It was called "Pirates vs. Ninjas - The Epic Battle Continues!" The title is a play off of an internet activity where people argued about who would win in a battle, pirates or ninjas. I was amazed how many of my students knew about the activity and how sound their arguments were for each side. Then again, these were the kids who knew every character in Lord of the Rings and "Doctor Who."

The game came with two decks of cards, one for Pirates and one for Ninjas. Each card had either a 3-digit or 4-digit number. Two students played the game and each one had a deck. Each student would flip over a card from the deck and compare the number with that of his partner. The student with the largest number would collect both cards. After playing through the deck (about 24 cards), the student with the most cards was declared the winner.

To help promote accountability and to check for understanding of the skill, I provided the students with a recording sheet. The students were to write down their own numbers and the numbers of their partner. They would then use the inequality symbols (<, >, and =) to indicate if their own numbers were greater than, less than, or equal to the number of their partner. I would collect this sheet and look to see if the students had an understanding of the concept of comparing numbers. Obviously, every student page would be different from the next, but looking at the work turned in provided me with a glimpse of how well each of my students understood the concept.

"Pirates vs. Ninjas!" is really one of my favorite games. Even after we were finished with our place value unit, it was popular during Math Games and Math Centers. I get a lot of feedback on the game and many of the teachers tell me how excited they are to use this game with their boy students. I had girls who loved to play as well. You would do well to add this game to your math classroom.

"Pirates vs. Ninjas! - A Comparing Numbers Game is available in my Teachers Pay Teachers store for $3.00.

For some other great Pirate products, please visit Teaching Momster to see what other teachers are using in their classrooms.

Back to School - Day 1

Yesterday was my first day back in the building. I have been doing some training, but hadn't been in my classroom yet. I don't have a lot of exciting things to report, so I thought I would share some of the things that I did today.

First, I had to reorganize the furniture in my classroom. When I arrived this morning, all of the furniture was on the opposite side of the room from where it needed to be. Additionally, all of the desks had been taken out of the room so that the floor could be waxed. Needless to say, I had a bunch of moving around to do.

Here are a few pictures of what the room looks like at this point:

Obviously, I still have a lot of work left to do.

In addition to moving furniture, I also got a little bit crafty. I am going to have 23 students this year and my co-teacher will have 24. I soon realized that I didn't order any name tags in my school order and I didn't have enough left over from previous years. What was a teacher to do? I pulled out my laptop and put my Teachers Pay Teachers skills to work. Here are my new name tags for this year. My students will have blue and my partner's students will be in red.

Another thing I made was a cover for my students' binders. It is pretty simple, but I think it makes the point.

Finally, we will be sending out our placement letters to our students on Friday. Our principal asked that we put together a personal letter to the students to introduce ourselves. Here is the letter that I made to send out. To be honest, the idea is not original with me. I got the idea from Pinterest.

So, that was my day. How was your day at school? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Student Teaching - What's the Worst That Could Happen?

Everyone has memories of their student teaching experience. Some are good, some are bad. While my student teaching semester was one marked by the worst kind of tragedy (my classroom experienced the death of a student), my "worst" experience happened on the very first day of "Full Responsibility."

For those of you not familiar with that term, "Full Responsibility" is the week where a student teacher is completely in charge of the classroom. My supervising teacher handed me the roll book and walked to the back of the room, where he picked up a novel and started to drink coffee.

When students are coming into the classroom, the best word to describe this is chaos, pure, unadulterated chaos. Even the most organized and managed classrooms experience this chaos every single morning. As I was standing there greeting the students and collecting notes, one of the girls came up to me in a bit of a panic.

"Mr. Pearson, I don't know what happened. I just looked down and noticed that my skirt was covered in blood and I don't know where it came from!"

Did I mention that I was teaching 6th grade? Yeah, that should set some context for this story.

I didn't really know what to say, so I looked back to my supervising teacher. He shrugged, took a sip of his coffee, and turned the page in his book. Great.

The poor girl looked like she was about to cry, so I did the only thing I could think to do: I sent her to the nurse. "Quick, here's a pass. Go to the nurse. She'll take care of it."

The girl left and I was able to get the day going without any further catastrophes. About an hour later, the girl returned to class wearing a new skirt. A little later in the day, I asked her if everything was okay, secretly hoping she wouldn't share too many details of what had been going on.

Oh yeah, everything's fine. There was a kid on the playground this morning who cut his leg open. I guess he brushed up against me and that is where the blood came from. I had to wait in the nurse while my mom brought me a change of clothes. No big deal."

No big deal for her. It certainly threw a wrench in my plans for the day. And, fortunately, that was the most traumatic (for me, anyway) thing I had to deal with during my student teaching. Interestingly enough, my student teaching experience is not at all what my actual teaching experience has been, but I guess that is the case with most teachers.

What memories of student teaching, good or bad, do you have?

Five For Friday - A Bunch of School Crafts, Comics, and Bow Ties

Another week has come and gone which means it is time for another Five For Friday. As always, I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching. Be sure to swing by there to see what some other awesome teacher-bloggers have been up to this week.

I think the fact that school is just around the corner has caused me to get a bit "crafty." I have a confession to make, however. I hate doing crafts and making projects. I shared this information with my wife and her response was, "And why are you an elementary school teacher?" That being said, I made a few things this week to get me ready for the upcoming school year. First off, I made some pencil cans. I took some old fruit cans and wrapped them in duck tape. I think I got the idea on Pinterest or somewhere like that. Here are the originals and the final product.

The second product I made was a multiplication math fact center. Again, I think I saw this on Pinterest (I really need to write these things down), so if this was your idea, I apologize for not being able to give appropriate credit. Anyway, the activity involves using an egg carton to create math facts. Inside the egg carton, I wrote the numbers 1-12. I put some duck tape across the openings and painted the tops and bottom. The students will put two markers inside the carton and shake it. After opening the egg carton, the student will multiply the two factors together. Here are the pictures I took:

Another thing that I worked on this week was finishing up some bow ties. I wear bow ties every day to school and a few months ago, I started sewing my own. I'm still learning to make them look good and some are better than others.

I'm probably the only one who cares about this, but about a week ago, I was able to get a month's subscription to Marvel Unlimited, an online comic book collection. I've spent a bunch of time going back and reading old Marvel Comics, especially a set of stories called "Planet Hulk" and the old Frank Miller Daredevil comics. Some of you may recognize the name Frank Miller as the director of the movie Sin City. I've never seen it, but I hear it's good.

The last thing is that this is the beginning of my last week of summer vacation. It is shaping up to be a busy one, beginning with a doctor's appointment. This appointment was rescheduled from an appointment I was supposed to have in April. My wife has been bugging me to go to the doctor for a check-up, especially now that we have five kids. I am very excited about the beginning of the school year. Each new year is a new adventure and I am ready to get this one started.

Thanks for checking in from another week. I hope you all ready for the fun to start. Those kids are coming soon, if they aren't with you already.

Guided Math in Action - Chapter 9

We have come to the last chapter in the book, Guided Math in Action by Dr. Nicki Newton. I hope that you have enjoyed reading my recaps and that I have convinced you to purchase a copy of the book for yourself. Seriously, it's a good one.

In this chapter of the book, Dr. Newton provides a day-by-day plan for how to introduce the guided math framework to students. She gives the topics for mini-lessons and provides a number of anchor chart examples to be used in the classroom. If I can be honest, these examples are worth the price of this book alone. She has has some really great stuff here, many of which I am going to be making for my own classroom.

The framework that Dr. Newtown provides covers 4 weeks, or 20 days. In the first week, the focus is on the structure of math workshop and the ways that mathematicians communicate with each other. The second week is for focusing on the routines and procedures for things like the daily calendar and how to work together in groups. Week three continues the focus on the routines and provides guidelines for using manipulatives and playing games together. In the fourth week, the students are taught what is expected of them at the end of math workshop, or "debrief."

I didn't feel the need to go into a huge recap of each day or week (you can read the book for more specific details.) If all of the information that needs to be covered in the first 20 days seems overwhelming, Dr. Newton has provided a rather specific chart at the end of the chapter to help you know what to cover and when. I will certainly be referencing it in the days and weeks to come.

Question 1: There are so many things that I need to prepare/finish up for the upcoming year. These include:

• Hot topic centers
• Anchor charts
• Take home bags (love this idea!)

There really are so many things that I learned in this book that I could attempt to make a part of my instruction. There is so much that it can be a little overwhelming. I think the best thing to do is choose a small part or parts, put it into practice, then implement another part and repeat.

Question 2: The things that I am going to continue include:

• My Problem of the Day
• My Number of the Day - very similar to Calendar Activities, but teaches numeracy

Again, the key is to take things slow and steady. I know that if I try to implement all of these awesome ideas at once, I will quit and that's not good for anyone.

Thank you for joining me as I worked this book this summer. I hope you have learned as much as I have and, if not, get a copy of the book!

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