Say NO! To Bullying

I have been having a hard time keeping my posts up- but I have been writing notes in my planner for what has been going on each day- that helps when I am updating my posts. Wednesday was a great day. A lot of air was cleared and peace returned to our little corner of the world. I had a couple people email me asking what happened with our class, and really- it isn't important about what happened- what is important is that it was handled effectively and everyone continues to work with the student's best interest in mind. I know as a mom I will make sure I do what I feel is right for my kids and I would expect nothing less from the parents in my class. It was just a lesson as a student teacher to see how it unfolded from a professional side as well as the parental side (since I am both at this school). 

Wednesday I continued working with the students in their reading and writing. I work with them all morning and usually well into the afternoon. The goal is for me to complete all of my lessons in the morning so that the afternoon can be dedicated to math, writing workshops, and science. I'm doing my best and working on pacing. I just struggle with a fast pace when I know there are students that need that extra time. I have been using the techniques we talked about in the differentiation workshop on Monday with some of my fast learners and it has been working well. I don't want to give them "more" work- I want to challenge them more. I'm writing lessons for next week with more depth to them so that those students who seem to get done so quickly have a deeper level of challenge to complete their assignments. 

Everyone in school was wearing orange today. October is National Bully Awareness month. Orange is the movements color- so to symbolize our awareness of this, we were all asked to wear orange.
I went shopping last weekend to find the kids and myself orange shirts (not normally a color I choose so I didn't have many selections) Anyway, I went to the outlet mall after we left the campground and stopped at Aeropostale. I found a shirt for both of the littles and when I got home I was surprised to find this in my bag with the receipt:

I thought that was pretty neat- I didn't even know that they participated so it was nice to know I was supporting this cause in more than one way. So anyway, our whole school was orange and supporting anti-bullying.

Wednesday marked day two of the MEAP tests. We decorated our car Monday evening and it was still decorated. I let the kids write with an orange marker on the windows (it was a window marker) It was cute, but definitely something I don't want to leave on there! It will be cleaned tonight for sure.