1st Week of School

Well, I survived the first week of school. For the first few days, I had them looking at number patterns and sequences in math and nature. I really had a fun time showing my students how patterns are everywhere. I had my dean bring in some pine cones from her back yard and then we looked at their spirals. It all relates to the Fibonacci Sequence and the kids were totallly into it. I have a great group of kids this year and I am very excited to be teaching them. For the most part I'm around 25 students, but one class has 43 students. We all just squish in the room and do our best. This year I didn't start with any rules or procedures, I just went straight into math. And I think that is the best way to do it. I can teach procedures as I go along. They don't need a full day of "do this" and "do that". For the most part, they know how to behave. I wanted to get them from the start doing math so they knew what my class was about - MATH. I haven't even given them a chance to misbehave because we've been so busy learning. Hopefully, that will set me up nicely for the remainder of the year. I've almost learned everyone's name (except my big class).

I've been staying late at school to try and get everything done and I haven't been to the gym to work out. That's been bugging me a lot. I did still manage to lose one pound last week, so that has kept me going through this week. Thankfully, I have Labor Day off and I can go in the morning like I used to. I'm still trying to work out a schedule so I can work out, go on my RS visits, and be an effective teacher. It's quite the balancing act!