We made a new craft in my class. I have made this craft every year and I really enjoy it. The kids get to make a cloud and have a rainbow coming out of their cloud. It's really fun!
With my new bulletin board this year, I have done my best to consistently change it up. This time around, I put the rainbows my students made up as they have a "rainbow of possibilities!" I think it looks really nice.
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We have now hit the kindergarten milestone of 100 days of school! Here are some of our decorations from this special day!
The top picture is my class bulletin board. The kids each got to tell me something they had learned in the last 100 days. We had a lot of fun listing all of the fun things we have learned! The bottom picture is an AWESOME decoration made by my coworker that she displayed outside of her room. It was excellent! Just as last year we made a fruit pizza for school board appreciation week, we kept with our food theme!
This year, we did a taco themed poster and made little taco dip boats for the board members. It was really fun! On the salad, there was cheese, onion, and tomato. It was really quite fun for the kids and I think the board enjoyed it! It has been a while since I have posted regularly. I am hoping to be able to continue my posts about my Disney vacation this last summer soon. In the mean time, I have posts from this last month and more current posts that will be coming up! Take a look at my new bulletin board and I am hoping to add more to my classroom page and update my pictures page to include summer 2019 soon.
I also have some BIG news about my summer 2020 that I will be sharing around March or so. I am very excited about this summer and am excited to share it soon! We made trees and penguins to decorate the bulletin board for January. Everyone did a really nice job!
I work in a school with an AMAZING staff and faculty. Everyone is supportive and wants to do their best for our school and the kids who go here. For teacher appreciation week, everyone went above and beyond in showing how much we all really care. We got fan mail from some of our students! Our principal provided us with a nacho bar and the rest of our staff provided us with delicious food ALL week! This was such an amazing teacher appreciation week. We really got the red carpet treatment!
In my class and the other kinder classes at my school, we all make memory books. There is at least one page per month and they are made by the kids with finishing touches put on by me!
Last year, I barely got all of them made and looking nice. This year, I am super excited for the kids to have their memory books and to see how much we really have done in kindergarten! Here are some of the pages that we did for this year. Pictures have been edited to protect the privacy of the students to whom these books belong. Two weeks ago, we had our last day of school! I am so glad to have made it through my second year of teaching. I'm very excited to be coming back to kindergarten again and to continue working with the amazing team that I have at my school.
This year, I had to pack up my entire room before leaving because my wing of the building is getting new carpet. This came along with many different feelings but it is all for the best and I'm excited to see what my classroom will look like with this different carpet! I'll be sure to post pictures once I'm back in my classroom. It's definitely going to be VERY different. One of my teammates decided that it would be fun to have her students draw on the outgoing carpet (she had permission to do so)! It turned out to be so much fun for her kids! At our school, the classroom that is the "cleanest" is chosen each month to win the Golden Broom award. For the month of March, my classroom was the cleanest! (Honestly, I don't know how my classroom won it but I think we tried really hard and that work paid off!)
A while ago, we had our school board appreciation event. Last year, we punned upon donuts for our appreciation. This year, we punned about fruit pizza! Take a look at the craft and at the actual fruit pizza we made as a team!
At my school, in Kindergarten, we make gingerbread houses at Christmastime. Here is my setup for my class's gingerbread house making day. Now is the time to ask yourself, "Is it really a day in Kindergarten if there are no crazy surprises?" Your answer should be, "NO!" BECAUSE . . . about 1 hour after these pictures were taken and kids were coming in and I was showing them how to make their gingerbread house, the power went out! So, we had the fun and exciting experience of making gingerbread houses in a completely dark classroom with lanterns and travel lights. It really was an experience and made for an interesting morning of Kindergarten as we were all dismissed early. At least the kids will remember this! I know I will!
Here was my bulletin board from Fall! I made the tree out of construction paper and the kids each finger painted a pumpkin. This was a really fun craft and ended up looking really pretty!
I love books! I have a LOT of picture books to use in my class. For the longest time, I did not have nicely labeled and sorted book bins. Near the beginning of the school year, I put these new labels together for my nicely sorted books! I still have more to add and sort but this is a good place to start!
Last week, I posted about my new chair pockets in my classroom. I thought that I might share what my classroom looks like right now. Ignore the boxes but look at the cute apples that my kiddos made! This is probably one of the least attractive angles of my classroom but it's a good look at the chair pockets! I also added a color coordinated word wall this year and I'm quite excited to see how my students use it!
It is now the start of a new school year! I am still teaching Kindergarten and I have 18 lovely kiddos that are in my class. I decided to add some new flare to my classroom and make some new bulletin boards for my students. I decided that I could make a foray into sewing because I have an old sewing machine that I never learned how to use and I thought that learning to use it to make chair pockets for my classroom would be cheaper than buying chair pockets for my classroom. I didn't really have a pattern but I had an idea and I successfully made a class set of chair pockets in four different colors! This wasn't the most perfect chair pocket of the ones I made but it shows the basic structure of the pocket. There's a small pocket that fits over the chair and a large pocket on the other side to hold different things. I also folded a flap on the front so that I could have a vinyl pocket to put the child's name in. It was a really fun experience and I made about 19 chair pockets in about four days working on and off on them and it only cost me about $50 which would be about $2.65 per chair pocket while buying them online might cost me $20 per chair pocket. Hopefully with these being my first big sewing machine project, they will last the year and not have too much wear and tear on them.
Hello! It's a new year! I got to go see my family over winter break and have a nice Christmas. Unfortunately I now know that I was also battling strep throat and mono at the same time. I'm almost back to 100% (finally!). It's been nice to be back in my classroom and in my school and working with my students again! Here's a picture of the bulletin board that I made recently with my students' crafts. They made birds because we are learning about birds and the characteristics that make them birds (wings, beaks, and feathers). They did such a nice job that I had to display it for everyone to see! Additionally, one of the second grade classes at the school has been talking about random acts of kindness and participating in activities that support that kind of climate so I found this on my door after taking my students to lunch! It was just such a nice gesture from the kiddos!
I've discovered that a small benefit of living in a small town is that there are little holiday community events all over the place! I got my weekly town newspaper and the entire front page was dedicated to these different events. Tonight, I went to the holiday parade and tree lighting ceremony. There was also a town wide sale event put on by the local businesses. I actually didn't get to see much of the parade as it was really short and I was late but I got to see a few floats. I only got a picture of one float that was a small train but I did get a picture or two of the town tree being lit. There's the little train. It was really dark and I didn't want to use flash so it's quite a poor picture but the train was so cute! Here's the tree. Again, it was a low light picture so it's not the best quality and the gas station sign is in the background but it really is a cute tree. Also, at the tree lighting, there was Santa and Anna and Elsa from Frozen. The kids from town were really enjoying those special guests. I've got 13 days left before my winter break begins so I've got to hurry up on my report cards and all that jazz so that I can spend the next week or so not stressing out too badly!
So, I am now working in a kindergarten classroom in Washington. I am really excited to be there! I was coming into this school in October after the school year had already started and creating a fourth kindergarten class to accommodate for all of the unexpected enrollments for kindergarten. It's been an interesting transition for myself and the students. The other kindergarten teachers are fantastic and everyone has been very supportive so I'm glad to say that I have a job in such a good place.
For the next year, I'm in a small one bedroom apartment that is kind of like a cube with walls but it's definitely bigger than my place back in Seoul. I've got enough space and I'm still LOVING living without roommates. One thing that is a challenge is I am living in a very small town where you can walk from one end of the central area to the other in ten minutes or less. It's a really small town. I ended up getting probably the only available apartment in the entire city. Quite lucky if I do say so myself but there's not too much happening in town. There are about eight restaurants total in town and if I want anything commercial, like fast food, I have to drive about an hour away. It's definitely different but at least that drive is GORGEOUS! I've got about a week until Thanksgiving break when I get to go home and see my family and pet my dogs and my cat and eat a ridiculous amount a food. It'll be good and I'm excited! I'll try to keep things updated on here! So, I now have a job at a school in Washington! I will be teaching Kindergarten with a lovely team of ladies! I'm really excited but it's also a bit scary as I am moving several hundred miles from my hometown on a bit short notice but I'm looking forward to the challenge and the experience!
Last Wednesday, we planted flowers at our school! It is a part of the school's mission to make the school beautiful and to keep it beautiful to show pride in both the school and in the community. I was asked to come and help! I was working with many of the students, other teachers, and parents of students at the school to help plant many flowers around the school's front. It was a ton of fun and it was wonderful to see everyone working together and showing so much pride in the school! I can't wait until the flowers grow in a bit. I think it will look absolutely AMAZING!
On a side note, I had a magical moment with one little girl today, who I think is in the second or third grade, when we were planting flowers. She kept coming up to me and the native English speaking teacher and kept saying how she speaks English very well. We both said that she did and she kept wanting to show off to us different things. It was super cute! Eventually, she got onto the topic of Let It Go from Frozen so we sang Let It Go from Frozen and it was magical! This little girl was super adorable and was so proud that she could sing Let It Go in English. It was a lovely experience and is one of the joys of teaching and working with children in general! Here's my drawing of the US (the picture cut off Texas and Florida) and a glimpse at some of my picture cards for my lesson! I'm supposed to start teaching my American culture lessons tomorrow and I'm kind of nervous. I think that I've really worked to scaffold and make these lessons accessible to many of the grade levels. I have even worked with my cooperating teacher to ensure that the lessons are appropriate for each grade that I will be teaching but it's the first lesson(s) so I don't really know how it will all go. I'm using some elements of GLAD and trying to make the material really accessible for all of the students but we'll see how it goes tomorrow. Wish me luck!
Things here at my school are going really well! I've co-taught one English lesson so far and I have taught a lesson about my hometown(s). Because I am in a public Korean elementary school, a lot of the instruction during the day is in Korean. This means that it is really hard for me to be a regular classroom teacher. Instead, I am what the teachers call a "subject teacher" my job is essentially to provide English instruction as a native speaker of English as well as to share lessons about my home culture. I am planning on teaching a 10 week (one lesson per week) unit on America and American culture. The scary thing is I will be teaching these lessons to all of the grades in the school. First grade through sixth grade. That is kind of scary but I'm really excited to take on this role of being a bit of an EFL (English as a foreign language) specialist which is extremely similar to my endorsement that would allow for me to teach ELLs (English langauge learners) back home. I will essentially be teaching the same lesson to every class but it will be tailored to meet the language and developmental abilities of each grade. I'm supposed to start with some fourth and fifth grade classes on Thursday so I hope it goes well!
Last night, we as a school went out to dinner! It was really great! We ate a lot of traditional Korean foods and we also went out for coffee afterwards. I posted pictures of this in the pictures page here. (Click it, it will take you to the picture page :) ). I had a lovely night and tried several new foods like stingray/skate. It had a good taste but the texture was very different from how it looked. I had a lovely time after school today with several of the teachers. Every Tuesday, the teachers get together to play badminton and have a good time. I really enjoyed badminton all throughout school but I never really had the opportunity to play it recreationally so it was really nice to be able to go play a fun sport with several of the teachers from the school (even the vice principal!). It was a great time! I really enjoyed how we could all play a sport together and not really need to use our language. We were all simply having fun! I am now glad that I was forced to take some of those PE classes in school :) knowing some of the rules to badminton came in handy! I know this post was a lot of different things smashed together but a lot has happened in just a few days! Please go look at the pictures page if you want to see some of the pictures that I have taken while I've been here! It's a bit more interesting than just reading all of this :). Today I taught my first "lesson." It wasn't much of a lesson. It was more of me just talking about my hometown and where I went to school. Luckily I had a book and some playing cards with pictures of my home state on them and I had the students working to look through these pictures and sort them from what I had shown them and what other pictures they saw. It ended up being a pretty short lesson but I think I have already learned a lot about teaching English in an EFL setting versus an ESL setting.
In my lesson, I also shared about some of the things that I like like K-pop (BigBang) and Hamilton (which none of the students really knew anything about which was not surprising as I figured it was a bit of a shot in the dark). I also shared that I really liked to read. I then asked the students to share a bit about what they like so that I could get to know a little about them. Some students were more eager to share than others but whenever I would go up to a student and ask them, "What do you like?" they all had an answer that was pretty good! Although the management strategies differ a bit from 2nd grade, I think that working with these 6th graders is going to be a great experience in teaching and learning for both me and the students. |
AllisonThese are the chronicles of my time before, during, and after student teaching in South Korea! Archives
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