It's SUMMER!!! Woo hoo!!!

Whoa.


No seriously. Whoa.


Thanks to Lindsay at My Life as a Fifth Grade Teacher for giving my blog a shout out in her last post! My followers have more than TRIPLED in the last couple of days! SO EXCITING!!!

And, it's SUMMER!

Ahhhh. I feel more relaxed already.

So it's been about 5 6 days since my last post, and I've missed you! (Yes, you!)

Man, the last few days of school were a big ol' bowl of craziness.

Let's start with Monday.

Almost...there.....

Am I the only one who can't focus without music? I've been planning on blogging all afternoon, but until I get some music playing, I'm so distracted! I check Facebook, I check Pinterest, Yahoo, read blogs, check Facebook and Pinterest again; I am in no way productive. Heck, I tried listening to music on my computer and it was distracting me. Ok, I have a record on now. I should be able to focus now.

 (Yeah, I said a record. I have a record collection because I'm cool like that. Charlie, however, decided that he wanted to try one out as a snack the other night. Not cool. )

I feel like I need to make an outline for this post, I have so much that I want to talk about!

Laura's Blog Post Outline

1. End of the year motivators
2. Memory books/advice to next year's class
3. Character trait word clouds
4. Update on classroom organization
5. Preparing for next year (already!)
6. A really awesome website (for next year)

Whew! That's quite the list--let's get this started!

Can it be? Only 6 more days!

Since my last post was long and rambling, I'm going to do my best to keep this short.

I'll try.

But I can't make any promises.

Once I get going, it's hard to stop.

As our last class novel of the year, we've been reading Zach's Lie (which the kids LOVE). In the book, the main character is put into the Witness Protection Program because his dad got caught up in a drug cartel. One of the key elements of the story is the journals that the main character keeps.

After the back to school sales in the fall, I managed to pick up some cheap composition notebooks for $0.15/each. Really good deal. I love clearance. I had no idea what I was going to use them for at the time, but the deal was too good to pass up, and I bought about 30.

When we started reading Zach's Lie, it occurred to me that journaling would be a great extension activity for the book (and would get some use out of those notebooks I had sitting on a shelf). So I made cute labels with each kid's name, and handed them out. The only condition that I put on the journals was that they had to write one page per day. I don't care what they write about and they can request that I not read their entries and just glance to make sure that they did it.

A totally scatter-brained post

Let me apologize ahead of time in case this post is slightly incoherent. I'm watching the Lakers/Thunder game, and the Lakers are getting destroyed. Not cool. Fingers crossed that things start turning around soon.

Anyway, I thought that my post today would be photo-centric. I mean, who doesn't like pictures. I like pictures. Surely you must like pictures. So, my dear 5 followers, today you get pictures to look at.

So, I don't know about your kids, my mine are getting a serious case of summervacationitis. It's a highly contagious infection that quickly spreads through your classroom, causing bouts of daydreaming, frustration, agitation, and desk drumming. The only remedy I've found so far has been a small dose of extra recess at the end of the day. I write "Extra Recess" on the back board, and erase a letter each time the class is too loud or off task. If they have any letters left at the end of the day, we go outside. If the letters are all gone, we stay in.

Me being me, and having the need to make things pretty...well, I might get a little carried away.

Only *8* more days!!!

I can't believe that we only have 8 more student days left in the school year (plus an extra day for report cards, but I don't have to write lesson plans for that)! This year has just flown by. I remember thinking in August, "This is going to be the first school year, in the history of schools, that will actually never end." Now here we are in May, and there is an end in sight--crazy!

One of my goals for next year is to (finally) get organized. In my defense, I'm doing way better than last year. (I actually forgot to turn in my kiddos' spring picture money because my desk ate it. And, I didn't realize it until the orders came in, and my students wanted to know where their pictures were. I then panicked and fled to the office, hoping that by some miracle, the photographer would be able to still get them their prints. Not my finest moment. But, the kids did get their pictures. And I did not lose the picture money this year. Lesson learned). Despite the fact that I'm doing better and can typically see my desk at least once a week, I have a long way to go. For example, this is what my desk looked like around 3:00 on Friday:

Yeah, not good.

I did at least uncover a small area before I left.

Free end of the year poster!

I told Matthew that I was just going to finish uploading a file to TpT and then I would get off of the computer, but I really wanted to share my newest resource with you! It's free for now, but will be $1 in a couple of days.

Enjoy!

Keeping it Short and Sweet

I don't know about you, but I only have 16 school days left before summer vacation! As we all know, things are crazy this time of year. For example, yesterday I found out after school that I was going to get a new student today. Yup, that's right, a new student with 17 school days left in the year. So I scurried around my room yesterday afternoon, trying to figure out which group I could add my new student to so as to not disturb the careful balance that I had established with my seating arrangement.