She's got a great RACK...

I hope my perverted teenage mind isn't too much for you :) Anyways...

***WARNING: RANT AHEAD***

So y'all probably know what RACK stands for. If you don't, that's okay (I found out a couple hours ago), it stands for random act of Christmas kindness. Now I'm all for random acts of kidness (we call that a mitzvah). Oh wait, look at that, someone just used a hebrew word. I bet you can guess what this rant is about...

First of all, I love Farley to bits. She's great, and I should probably do her currentlys, they're so fun and cute. And we share a love of mustaches. But her post about a RACK led me to this rant. Specifically, she has this thing she's doing with her kidlets that involves them doing a RACK and adding a note which mentions that it's a says random act of Christmas kindness. Frankly, I feel like this is insensitive. Sure, I get it if you're whole classroom celebrates Christmas, but are you positive your whole school does* and anyone encountering this note? And I'm not done yet.

I follow a number of teaching blogs, and it seems everyone is doing Christmas related stuff. Full out Christmas. My feed has been bombarded with red and green and elves and santas and evergreen trees, etc.When I was in elementary school, that certainly did not fly. Sure, that's really cool that 95% of the population celebrates Christmas, but it seems everyone is being a bit ignorant and insensitive. Now, I'm not the kind of person who flips out whenever someone wishes me a merry Christmas, but this got me upset. Could it be a random act of holiday kindness? Or a random act of winter kindness? I guess not. Which is why, in my plans, there are no Christmas related activities. Unless other holidays are included. So for me, RACK stands for random act of Chanukah kindness. Or I could still just call it a mitzvah.

Nonetheless, I still would like to wish everyone a happy and safe holiday season, no matter what you celebrate.

Miss Lena
* Watch her teach at a Christian school... now I sound like an idiot...

Traveling and Subs

No, not the sandwich kind. But in the teacher blog world, I doubt anyone would see that and think of sandwiches. But I digress.

I do a lot of traveling, mostly due to my dad's job and the fact that most of our family lives on the east coast. This is problematic for teachers. Since I can't just say to my parents "sorry, can't go on this trip, I have to teach a theoretical class!", I figured I'd have to make do. So I've been doing sub planning. (This includes reading Sub Hub. Lovely blog.) My first order of business was this:

That is literally the title of my doc. It's pretty self-explanatory. Since I don't have an *actual* classroom, it's a good place to put my thoughts. But where do subs come in? As an elementary student, I hated subs because they didn't do things the way the real teacher did it. I realized that this document would be really super helpful for a sub, especially a longer-term one. They would have more of an idea as to what the heck is going on.
***
In other news, I finished my noun posters and might throw 'em up on TpT.
***
Happy Chrismakwanzakah to all!

Miss Lena

I'm back and a mini unit in the works

I am officially back from beautiful Florida! I had a great time and ate plenty of amazing food :) I also got so see my sister, who is off at college, so that was nice.

In SGP news, I've put my lemonade unit on the back burner to work on a mini ELA unit on nouns. Here's my preview:

I'm going for a wintry theme... can you tell?

I'm already sick of Christmas... so winter seemed better. Plus, I don't plan to do any Christmas unit, considering I'm Jewish and I always get slightly uncomfortable at the over-Christmasization of this season.

Anywho, I hope this will be a quick and cute unit, so I can move on to verbs!

Miss Lena

Quick update

I am in Florida so I won't be updating much this week. But I'm loving the sun and the beach! Miss Lena

Classroom theme...

I just got a great idea for a classroom theme...

VIDEO GAMES!

I could have a leaderboard, or high scores, for great student work, and ohmygosh, so excited. I get excited easily.
What do you think?

Miss Lena

"You're a genius!" - Dealing with Gifted Kids

In my blog description and welcome post, you'll see I'm a freshman in high school. But I'm already taking one college-level English course and math two years ahead of where I should be. Next year I'll be taking two college classes and two AP classes. You could say I'm smart. I've never been prodigious, though. Far from it at times. I'm getting a C in my advanced algebra 2 class. But I've been in dome sort of a gifted and talented or enrichment program my whole life, so I know the ins and outs of smart kids. After remembering my frustration in elementary school, I thought I'd share some tips with the teachers of the internet.

First of all, smart kids get frustrated. Easily. With a lot of things. Stupid people is a big one. (Seriously, you're like, "it's super simple, you just add two to both sides and divide by three." Abd they're like "... wut." After you've explained it a billion times.) Also, when a smart kid is used to always being able to do stuff easily, and then suddenly they can't do something, it frustrates them. A lot. Which leads into my next point...

So there is this kid in your class, and you realize that they are smarter than the rest, so you decide to give them some more challenging work. Woah woah woah. Stop right there. It's not that easy. Especially in upper elementary, smart kids have gotten 100s (or As or sparkly alligators or whatever your highest mark is) their entire lives. They are used to being the best and school being easy. (This can sometimes make them extremely cocky. You've been warned.) The transition into gifted education is going to be a tough one. Easing a child into more challenging work is the way to go. Make sure they're prepared, and know what is going on. Most likely, they'll realize the work is fun soon enough, and trust me, they will enjoy being challenged. Which coincidentally leads into my next point...

The kid needs to be challenged. I cannot stress this enough. If a kid in your class gets everything right on all of his tests, is he/she really learning? Sure, they're absorbing what you tell them, but they can't apply it to better their lives since it's so easy peasy. My mantra is that if you have a 4.0 GPA, you're not being challenged enough. This concept is simple, and doesn't need much explanation.

Sometimes kids don't want to tell you stuff is easy, or they'll mess up because they don't want to be 'different'. Check in with your class. Ask if things are too easy just as much as you ask if they are too hard. Overall, most of the time, smart kids need to be treated just as differently as the slow kids are.

Too sum up everything, your average above-average kid is going to be independent, eager to learn, and occasionally outgoing and slightly cocky. But don't fear them, or send them away for every subject. From experience, no kid likes being reminded that they "are a genius!"

Above all, your gifted kid is still just a kid. A special kid that learns at their own pace. But a kid.

***
How do you deal with your little smarties?

Miss Lena

Working on my first unit :)

Hi again! Hope you're counting down to Thanksgiving break, I know I am (I'm going to Florida!). I've been getting started on my first unit, a lemonade stand unit that is one full week of all subjects. Here's the preview:

What do you think? I'm excited for this! Plus yellow is my favorite color... if you couldn't tell.

In other news, here's how I'm organizing my lesson plans and stuff (is there a better word for it?):

It's a folder in my Documents folder. I might separate into more folders, but for the time being, here is where it stands. Now let's look at the folder called "Lemonade Stand".

 Pretty bare for now. I'll have individual folders for the days, if it's a theme week. Moving on to Monday...

Yup, this is a folder! I might do a tutorial on changing your folder backgrounds eventually. As you can see, everything is separated into subject, and is easily navigated. I'm a pretty excitable person, so I already have a lot done for Monday. And the current school year isn't even halfway over!

News and random musings:
1. I added a Follow button...
2. ...And subsequently got my first follower. Yay!
3. I'm thinking of creating a TpT store. But since I'm inexperienced, I'd have all my lessons be free and encourage feedback from teachers to how it would go with 2nd graders. I don't need the money that much anyway.
4. I updated my blog background. The old one was glitchy.
5. I'd be happy for any feedback!

Miss Lena

More Classroom Details

Hi again!

I thought I should give some more class details, so I am!

My 'class' has 21 students in it. This number was chosen by the lovely Random Integer Generator. My limits were 15 and 30 (soooo glad it didn't give me 30). It's an odd number, which will lead to uneven groups, but that's life!

Now for the student names and genders (yes I'm that dedicated). This was the complicated part. First, I generated 21 numbers that were either 1 or 0. I forget which was which but one meant girl and the other meant boy. In another window, I generated 21 numbers between 1 and 100 (I believe), found a list of popular baby names for 2004, and used that to pick names. Does that make sense? Because it's about to get even more confusing. To pick last names, I went to a name generator, generated 21 different numbers between 1 and 99, used those for the obscurity factor, and (in order) got my last names. Each child was also assigned a number for use everywhere in the classroom using the order they were created.

Whew!

I also created a fake schedule.

The kids start arriving at 8:30, but we start at nine.

First is morning meeting and daily starts:

(Morning meeting: I discuss what's going on for the day, make announcements, etc.

Vocab: I assign each child one word to define/research, draw, and then present to the class. I'll be using the 95 dolch sight nouns for the first four weeks, then I'm not sure what I'll be doing.

Quiet Read: What it sounds like. The kids pick their own books. They read and respond during this time and I'll have individual meetings occasionally during this time.

Quick math: I'll pass out a worksheet that they have to complete in a certain amount of time, then we'll play scoot or around the world with math for the rest of the time.

Read aloud: Either I or a student will read a favorite book to the class. If needed, this time can be used for other things too.

Game time: Students can pick from any [hopefully educational] game to play. Yay Fridays!)

Then the kids go to Specials. I don't teach any of these.

After that is one subject period. These rotate every day, to have variety.

Recess and lunch are out of sight, out of mind. I don't manage the kids for those.

After lunch is reading and writing, every day. This gives me flexibility to choose what ELA to do when during this time. I'll probably start kids off with silent reading, to wind down from lunch.

Then it's two more subject periods before free time, which will be used to my discretion and will vary from testing to group meetings to extra lesson time to mini parties.

On Fridays, this is used for weekly wrap-up, where I review the GLCEs we learned that week and do other review-type things.

Then the kidlets go home!

What do you think of my schedule?

Miss Lena

Welcome!

Hello!

My name is Lena and this is a 2nd Grade teacher blog. Except I'm not a teacher.
What? Let me explain.
I've always loved the idea of teaching; making lesson plans and all that. But not the actuality of it. So what's a girl to do? Get a teaching job anyways? Can't do that, I'm only in high school. (Oh, did I mention that? Yup, I'm a ninth grader currently) So I decided to pretend to be a second grade teacher, and make lesson plans, etc. Thanks to Random Integer Generator, I have 21 students. A nice manageable number, don't you think? I'll have lessons for the entire 2013/14 school year.

Join me in the adventures of The Second Grade Project!

Miss Lena