Sunday, October 17, 2010

Blessings, Blessings, Blessings


These past 2 weeks since I've posted have been fantastic! I've gotten to implement several activities that I've really been looking forward to! During my outside activity, the middle math coordinator came to watch probably my most difficult class.... so no pressure there!! They actually did very well, and even made it through the entire thing. Below is a picture of my huge diagram. When Clancy and I did it at Baylor we made a duck-tape diagram and did it during a huge career carnival. I was happy to have the chance to use just chalk on the tennis courts, but it took me forever to draw three of them. In the end, it was definitely worth it though!! The kids loved being outside - duh!! - and it's even better when they have fun using their math.

So the purpose of this activity is to practice order and comparing rational numbers. I had 6 different sets of cards and the kids have to meet different people at the stars. They then have to compare their number and the  
                                                                 larger number always goes left. If they've 
 done it correctly, when they get to the end of the diagram, they will always be in order from least to greatest! My accelerated kids really enjoyed everything (except for the small distraction of a rather large caterpillar during 2nd period). ha My students really are such a blessing in my life and I can't help but think about God hand picking each of them to be in my classroom. It's a pretty amazing thing.

So, if you did not already know - the Rangers are in the second round of the play offs!!! And since it only happens once in 40 years, on Friday we celebrated as teachers!! Our awesome assistant principal grilled hot dogs for us and for lunch we had hot dogs, chips, and lots of desserts! There were a ton of us wearing our Ranger shirts and only one teacher who had the audacity to wear a Yankee shirt!! ha It was such a nice break and a super way to end the week! I'm so happy to be working at a school that will do things like that for their teachers.
So during class on Friday, I wanted to do something fun/baseball related as well. So we played baseball with our homework sheet for the majority of the period! It was kind of just something I made up and went with as the day went on, and ended up being a really cool idea! I was pretty proud of my baseball diamond I drew on the board and the kids came up with their own team names (hence the Pickles and the Smores). 

I'm now friends with several of my teacher friends on facebook and when I posted these most recent pictures, our librarian commented on them of how much I am a blessing to all of them. But I definitely believe that they are the blessing to me. I cannot believe how smooth of a transition it has been and how everyone has accepted me. I seriously come home thinking how lucky I am to have my job, love my job, and keep growing everyday. 

On a little side note.... my first illustrator decided a couple weeks ago, that my project was too big for him. I was very disappointed and had no clue where to go from there. But just like always, another door opened and through a friend of mine have gotten in touch with another artist. We have emailed a couple times and are setting up a meeting to go more in depth about exactly how I want my illustrations to look! I have my fingers crossed that this time will work! 
God is so good.