First full week!

Well I survived the first full week of teaching! My school lets kindergarten have 5-6 students a day so we can test them and they can get used to school. Let's say my first testing day was interesting. Yesterday was my first full day with all 20 Kindergarteners. The day was spent teaching rules, procedures, and exploring math tools. Oh and the school added a tornado and fire drill! Thank goodness I had help!

This week has been exhausting! I spent 13 hours at work on Thursday and at least 8.5 to 9 every other day of the week. Not to mention kids take all of your energy! It has been a shift from where my kids were at the end of the year to starting over. I have a great group of kids!

Here is a funny story from talking with one of my sweet students during testing:
Me: what's your last name?
Student: ********* but its gonna change
Me: why is it going to change?
Student: because my daddy took the test.
Me: what test?
Student: the DNA test.

Dont forget, I teach kindergarten!

I added some pictures of the kids playing at recess and one of my classroom!

Throw Back Thursday

In honor of today being "Throw Back Thursday (#tbt)" I'm going to post pictures of my classroom last year and things I did in my classroom!  Hopefully I can provide some inspiration or motivation for the fast approaching school year :)

This is what my classroom looked like when I first walked in!

The other side on my first day!

After I had organized/decorated a bit

Another view of the transformation

This is the open house treat I had for my families to take :)

Hopefully soon I can add new pictures of my classroom and what I'm doing different this year (which seems like EVERYTHING) I learned so much in my first year, I can only imagine what I will learn in my second!

Let the School Year begin!

Last week I had a Kindergarten Math professional development day.  It was all about counting and cardinality.  It was great to see several hands on ways to implement and assess kindergarteners on these skills.

This week I have been able to get into my classroom!  I have a completly new layout (pictures to come soon).  Today we spend 6 hours trying to go through our new reading series and new social studies/science standards to lay out our year! (we still havent even touched math yet) Lots of changes in Tennessee this year, and LOTS of new things to teach!  I will be looking for creative new ways to get everything done in a day, and hopefully I can share the time savers we come up with too!

End of summer

As summer is starting to wrap up and professional development and inservice days are in full swing, I have been thinking about this up coming school year.  I have decided to blog throughout the year (and summer) about all the things that happen in my Kindergarten classroom.  I will share funny stories (leaving out students names), ideas I tried (successes and failures), and anything else that happens throughout the school year.

So who am I and why am I writing this?  Well, my name is Ashley and I am a second year kindergarten teacher.  I am writing this to keep a record of all that happens throughout the year.  Maybe it will help another teacher and hopefully I can get some advice from other teachers (or parents).  I will gladly accept comments and advice from all :)