Sandy has Arrived!

Well, Sandy has arrived. The storm moved west as it got nearer to New York, so Maine is not getting the brunt of the storm. We are getting wild winds, but we're talking under 60mph compared to like 100 or something. And we have had spurts of pouring rain. School got out an hour early today as they were predicting the late afternoon as the star of high winds, and we wanted to make sure all kiddos got home safely. As of right now, I am grateful because we have electricity. They were expecting huge outages, and there are some nearby, but as of now, my neighborhood is okay. Hoping it stays that way.

At school we are finishing up the NECAPS. How frustrated do you feel when you watch the kids take a test and you know they would get it if you could just explain what they were being asked. It drives me crazy....I mean if I could as one question the kids would get what was expected. It just seems how accurate is a test that kids don't understand. I think as teachers we need to make sure our kids have the test taking skills necessary. We NEED to do some activities that resemble test questions..maybe mini math meets in the classroom and kids do an individual test and a team test. It could be made fun, but I think they need to understand the way tests work and the expectations of writing out their answers. ANd then I have the kiddos who say they're done with a 45-90 minute test in 10 minutes. Not a single answer even making sense to the question...ahhhhhh. frustration. I am not the classroom teacher and many of these kiddos I don't work with at all. And I don't do any math this year. But wow! I just wish we could better prepare them. I mean, I know it can be done. But many folks at my school think that is teaching to the test. I think it is getting kids aware and comfortable with the way questions are posed...so what do you think? I would love to get some folks to weigh in on this.

Off to find the candles, just in case.
Cindi

Oh my, a tree came down two houses down...gotta go see how bad it is.

Teacher Blog Hopping

Well, it HAS been a long time since I posted. Everything has been so hectic, but we are getting back to normal at school. Only the two classrooms that were burned as well as the office of some  specialists are still closed. They are due to reopen in all their brand new glory by the end of the year 2012. Ahhhh, then I will get  MY classroom back. I gave it up for a classroom and moved into a smaller space. It is just a bit chaotic cause I just cannot find all my stuff.

SO I got a new computer from the school. A macbook air! I love it. But I am feeling weird about using it as my only computer. My home computer broke, and I am wondering if I should get another one. What do all of you do? Do you design activities and things you sell on TPT on your school laptop or personal laptop. It just seems weird to have two laptops, with things on different computers, but do I really want all my stuff on a computer owned by the school district and they can access it at any time? Big Brother is always watching! I'd love to hear from all of you as to how you keep it all together.

Okay....pet peeve....I have spent a lot of time in last few days blog hopping. I am addicted to teacher blogs and materials teachers make. But I am frustrated that so many teacher blogs have turned into stores. I mean I went to at least three blogs this morning that ONLY talked about the item they were trying to push. I mean, I might share something about an activity I did, but not exclusively. I would rather read about their day, their lives, their students, not their sales. I guess that is the issue. I wonder if the market is getting saturated with teachers selling their materials. I will probably never be a Deanna Jump. Her work is amazing and she knocks it out so quickly. I really want to get better at it, but I just don't have enough knowledge of graphic design. I also need to know how to create my own graphics. I need to update and jazz up this website, but I am clueless as to how and I just don't feel spending money on it right now is justifiable. But then agin, if it brings in some followers, then that could be a good thing.

SOOOOO I have been on a rampage here it seems. I am really going to make sure I come in here more often and write. And I need to get my address out there so I can get some followers. ANyway..thanks for reading this. Leave me a comment! Please????

Cindi

A FIRE!

I am so tired of losing everything I write on this bloody computer! Anyway. Sunday night we had a fire at our school. A security light on the roof short wired and caused a classroom to catch on fire. It destroyed the room totally! And the sprinklers went off, preventing the fire from spreading in our old wooden school, thank goodness, but it did cause water damage. Today we spent the day looking at a local Catholic school to see if we could use it as a temporary building, but after talking with the recovery staff it appears that the building will be ready for Monday except for two rooms! So we are NOT going to relocate for only a couple of days. We will remained closed this week and help the two teachers relocate their classrooms..the bottom line? I will probably be losing my classroom in the meantime. I am a specialist and not a classroom teacher so my room makes the most sense to use as a relocation room. It is temporary so it will be fine. It is necessary. So, I will be back in a couple of days with some more info. cindi

the paperwork is alive!

Hey everyone, MY GOODNESS there is a ton of paperwork at the beginning of the school year. I got all of my littles tested except for one. Now I need to do the "biggens." But today my partner teacher reminded me of a few things we needed to get done. Since I do most of the emails and computer work, I got started. Step one, cross reference three different caseload lists from three different sources. OH MY! By doing that I learned I have two more kiddos who speak NO ENGLISH AT ALL arriving in a few days. So that led me to double checking and finding other new students. UGHHH. SO basically, I was doing scheduling and paperwork stuff all day. I didn't see a single student. I want to finish my benchmarking, but all of this stuff had to be taken care of. AHHHHHH I love my job, I even love my paperwork sometimes, but I don't love benchmarking time with the biggins...course the littles are fun..Takes all of ten minutes.:) SO here's to a day tomorrow spent with kiddos and not my computer! cindi

Purging is such sweet Relief

Ahhhh, It is such a wonderful thing to purge oneself of junk. I threw away and gave away a LOT of stuff today. Posters I hadn't even looked at for two years are gone, blocks, math manipulatives, STUFF! I don't have a classroom per se, so I do not need them. I gave a lot of things to two new teachers in our building, so I feel that I did some good. This weekend I designed new covers for our union rep team. I loved the ones I saw on craftybycindy so I adapted it for our team. I also did a back with education quotes. I was pretty impressed, though next year I will make them with different designs. Here are Cindy's which can be found at craftsbycindy@blogspot.com:

o and here is my version. Sorry, the sun was shining onto the lamination and I was using my iphone so not the best pics."

I also put together some notebooks. One for each of the ELL team members...I only got a shot of one because I already gave them out to use. ANd I also put together a teachers notebook..again pics aren't the best but they really are neat! Man, I spent a lot of time putting these together. I really want to look into taking a graphic design class. SO here they are...til tomorrow, cindi

so that was my notebook and an inside divider page. My theme this year is sunflowers, so I love some of the photos I found. this is the ELL notebook and one of the divider pages:

SUMMER IS OVER

Evening everyone, In a few hours I will be returning to school for our first official day of school. Yes, we start really late in Maine, even later in Portland. Our teacher contracts start on Sept 1, so it guarantees that more often than not, we start after Labor Day. We have two days and then the kiddos come. YEAH!!! I wanted to join the MONDAY MADE IT linksy party that Tara at 4th Grade Frolics hosts.
I am new to the blogging world. SO not sure I even know how to link. But I'm gonna try! (I also would LOVE to have more than 7 people ( 6 are family I think) reading my blog! So here goes.... This year we have three new teachers. I wanted to do something very simple (read inexpensive) for them. SO I copied this great idea on Pinterest. It is from CUte as a Fox teacher',s blog..www.cuteasafox.com. ANyway, I thought they came out pretty cute...

Gotta go get ready....make breakfast, make lunch,. take care of clothes...etc Okay, so I also want to try and link up to Oh Boy 4th Grade's September currently...let's see if it works nope...cannot figure out how to post the link and then type into it. Maybe next time.

BLOG HOPPING

Hey everyone, I have spent every spare minute of the last three days "trolling" through this wonderful linky party at 4th Grade Frolics site. OH man...wish I had found this in June when we got out of school. But I am determined to make 10 things in the next two weeks before I have kids coming to me regularly. I am soooo clueless about blogging but here is my attempt to post a link to her site. No idea if it will work, but try it if you can. Hmmm...now will that lovely boggle of letters and numbers actually translate into a button when I publish this...probably not. But I will try. cindi