What I have been up to? and a sale this weekend in my TPT store.

Well it seems that I haven’t blogged in awhile. I have been working to get acclimated to my new school and teaching position. Everyone at my new school has been very kind and helpful. I am thankful that this environment makes me feel good. My new position has been a bit more challenging than I anticipated. That is mostly due to the fact that I have kids at varying levels with many different goals. So my challenge has been trying to collect enough resources across 1-4 grade Common Core standards. Just this morning I have spent 3 hours pinning stuff on Pinterest, downloading stuff from blogs and Teacherspayteachers and putting stuff on my TPT wishlist. I am having to learn how to teach some of the upper grade math standards as I am not use to teaching upper elementary grades. It also seems that math is taught a lot different than I learn in high school or college.

I have had two IEP meetings and have much to learn about writing IEPs and PWN’s in the correct manner. There is so much to learn everywhere.

So I do like a challenge, but I am hoping that by January I don’t feel like I am still treading water.

The good news is that I am enjoying getting to know my students.

I have no new items that I have made as I have been too busy gathering resources that other people have made. Since I have nothing new to show you I decided to have a sale this weekend in my TPT store. So today (Sat. Sept. 27th) and tomorrow (Sunday Sept.28th) all the products in my store will be 20% off. Here is the link to my store http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Erica-Gower  Enjoy!!

~Erica

Back to School Linky 2014- Where

So today’s back to school topic is where do I teach. So a few things to know first. This is my first year as a resource room teacher and my first year at this new school. I share a room with another special education teacher and our room is separated by a very tall room divider. Here are a few pictures of my room with captions below the pics. The rectangular table in the front of the picture is my working table and will be replaced with a horseshoes table as soon as it arrives.  

The rectangular table in the front of the picture is my working table and will be replaced with a horseshoes table as soon as it arrives.  

Behind the blue sheet is lots of games and resources. Too much stuff so it needs to be hidden. I wanted a carpet for my reading area, but didn't have the money so I brought these foam tiles from home. 

This is my focus wall. The green, yellow, and purple posters will have the standard that the students are working on.  

I wanted a superhero table cloth for the round table so I found one at a party store and then put a plastic protector over it so hopefully it lasts longer. 

In this picture you can see the big divider. There is also this yucky file cabinet with alphabet stickers on it. I don't want/need the cabinet and can't stand stickers on things so something has to change with that. I have two ball chairs for my students to use when needed. The purple bulletin board is my word wall. The blue sheet that is not ironed is covering a shelf with all my math stuff in it. Behind that is a small table for individual work.  

Here are my rules which I modified with superheroes to go with the theme. 

My room still needs a little work, but for now it will be okay. I will have to see how things work when my students start and then will make changes as needed. ~Erica

Back to School 2014 Linky!

I am linking up this week to do the Back to School teacher week linky. Today is Who Monday!

I am a former kindergarten teacher (have taught K for the last 7 years), but am making a change to be a resource room teacher this fall. I am excited and nervous about this.

Family

I live in Maine with my husband of 16 years Shane who is also a teacher (HS Social Studies). We have an amazing son Josh who is 12 and recently grew taller than me.

We have two adorable doggies Katy our golden and Krypto our Pomeranian.

I have also have lots of wonderful family including my parents, brothers, sisters, niece, and nephews.

Friends

I have some wonderful friends. Some who have been in my life a long time and some who entered my life when I moved to China, Maine.

Things I love

I love spending time with my family and friends. I love watching my son play soccer, but I tend to get a little too excited and am the hollering mom. I love listening to music. My favorites are 90’s alternative and pop.

I love sugar candy like Runts, but I try very hard to stay away from that stuff as much as possible. 

Hope you all have a great start to the school year! Check back tomorrow for my next post. ~Erica

Fabric, borders, laminating Oh My! Working on my bulletinboard.....plus a little contest/giveaway

So I spent the last few days looking for new borders for my bulletin board (apparently I left all my borders at my former school). Since I wanted to work on the bulletin board today I didn’t want to order it online. There is no teacher store in our state so I looked at the Dollar Tree and Staples. They had some, but I just wanted a nice lime green or sky blue color and I couldn’t find what I wanted. I went back to Staples yesterday and did find a yellow that I liked. Then yesterday while I was spending time with my mom and sister we went to Michael’s craft store and I was so excited when we walked in and they had a teacher section. I got the blue and green that I wanted. Who would have thought finding border would be so hard. 

  The  next hurdle was printing off some super hero themed things I got from TPT. My printer at home is old and out of the ink that I needed and since I had already spent money on classroom stuff this week buying a new printer or ink wasn’t a choice. So I decided to try and print some stuff off at my new school, but I know sometimes schools are pretty particular about printing color things and since I am the new girl I don't want to upset anyone. My old school I had a color laser printer in my classroom and got a little spoiled. So I was able to print the stuff that I needed (the principal was there and was super nice about me printing some stuff) and I used my own laminator to finish it. Below are the pictures of my bulletin board. There is still more work to do on it, but it’s a start.

I guess I should start taking my camera with me as my old iPhone isn't taking such beautiful pictures. 

I avoided the table in the middle today. It's got all the stuff I don't know what to do with on it. Guess that will be for next time. 

So in an attempt to increase the amount of comments on my blog I am going to giveaway a copy of my Write the Room 1 (see pic and link below) for every 5 comments there are. So if I have 1-5 comments I will give away one copy, if I have 6-10 comments I will giveaway 2 copies and so on. So please leave a comment about what you are doing this summer to relax or get ready school. The winner will be randomly drawn from all comments. One comment per person please. Since the prize is teaching material only comments from teachers/educators will count towards the total, but certainly my friends and family are invited to comment they just can’t win.

  Hope you are having a productive and enjoyable summer. Don’t forget to leave a comment.

~Erica

My classroom in progress.

So I went into my room today since my husband was at a training and my son was at basketball camp. I had only been there for about ½ hr when I got very overwhelmed. The amount of resources and stuff that the former resource room teaching had was crazy. The space that I have is significantly smaller than the space she had plus I have to share the resources with another teacher so to say trying to go through all that stuff was stressful was an understatement! Don’t get me wrong it is good to have lots of resources when you are working with struggling learners as you never know what tools you will need, but one of the workbooks I opened up was from 1978 (which is a good year, it’s the year I was born).

  So I made a plan to try to find the programs and resources that I had heard of or used in the past first. I organized those resources and then browsed the other stuff to see if there were other things I thought I might use. Anything I knew I wouldn’t use I left for the other teacher to go through when she comes in. I didn’t want to assume that she wouldn’t want to use it.

  Then I began the fun process of unpacking all the boxes from my kindergarten classroom. I actually made very good progress if you look at the pics from my last post and then look at these pics.

This is where the large pile of boxes use to be. Two of the boxes you see in the picture are actually empty I just hadn't taken care of the boxes yet. 

Sorry for the blurry pic. Oh my!

Yes it's starting to feel like my space :)

I also started to make the classroom look like my own, by putting up my family pictures (I really need to get some updated pics).

Love my family....and The Wizard of Oz!

Even my Ruby Red Shoes made it to my new classroom! I wonder what my new school will think when I wear these. :)

  Next I need to work on buying some fabric and superhero stuff. Also printing and laminating the superhero stuff I have bought from TPT.  Since my room is getting in order I am starting to feel better about this transition. I think I will have a lot to learn, but I am excited. I was happy to talk to a few teachers today and one in particular made me feel very welcome and seemed to understand that even though I made the choice to make a change that it is still difficult. I think her and I are going to get along just fine.

  Oh one difference I noticed about my new school…..they can leave toys on the playground and apparently they don’t get stolen. Seems like that is a good sign.

Hope you are enjoying your summer!

~Erica

Cleaning out my porch.

    Since June when I moved all of my stuff out of my old classroom my enclosed porch has been filled with boxes, shelves, and organizers. Well yesterday I moved all of the boxes to my new classroom and I had already moved the organizers. My porch is almost empty of school stuff except for two book shelves.  My husband is pretty happy to have most of the porch back. Here are the pictures of my classroom after I spent just a short time there yesterday.

This is a view of the room from the doorway. In the far left corner is where I am setting up my space. Right now there is a small rectangular table there, but my special education director is kindly ordering me a horseshoe table which will be better for direct instruction. One big bummer is that the whiteboard is not magnetic :( 

This picture shows the wall that is next to the door. There are a lot of shelves which is good because the shelves are already filled with stuff that was there before I arrived. There is actually a lot of stuff that belongs to that room so I will need to go through everything and organize. The boxes on the floor are ones from my old classroom. Lots to go through!

This is the right side of my classroom space. I have to put some more shelves or something against the divider so it’s not so wobbly.

     I really want my classroom space to still look like a real classroom. I am trying to decide on whether to stick to my fish theme or try something else. Any ideas?

     Oh, it seems that the resource room schedule that I created was received very well by the teachers that it impacts. Also when I went to school yesterday I got to meet three of the teachers in the building. They were all very nice and welcoming. Hoping that is a good sign that people will like me at my new school.

~Erica

And the change has begun!

A few weeks ago I attended a conference with my new school district. The attendees from the district were the special education director (my new boss), the school principal, the school district curriculum coordinator, and then little old me. Even though I was pretty intimidated by this it actually helped me to be comfortable with my new district. The conference was about collaborating and co-teaching between regular education and special education. It was very interesting. I left the conference feeling pretty good about the new district I was going to be working in and wanted to get started.

  The following week I started to get organized. I copied and pasted all of the students goals (common core aligned already phew) into a new document that was visually friendly, created a new lesson planning form that may or may not work (won’t know until I try it), and bought grade 1-4 Common Core I can statement posters on TPT  to have for each students’ goals.  The new form is below in case anyone wants to see if or give suggestions: 

I also created this direct instruction tracking form to make sure I am meeting and documenting the IEP requirements. That form is below.

  Then this week I got to meet up with the teacher that I am going to be sharing a classroom with at our new school. I am a little nervous about sharing space since I am use to having a whole classroom to myself, but the other teacher seems very nice so hopefully we will get along just fine.  We decided how the room would be split and now I just have to start getting it beautified! Pics of my new school and classroom are below.

This is my new school! It’s in the country and very quiet and peaceful.

Here is the entry way to the classroom. You can see the big divider that separates our classroom space. 

This is the other teachers side of the room.

This is my side of the room. It certainly needs a little work to make it inviting and organized. I will post pics as I put it together. 

     Yesterday I spent the better part of the morning trying to make a schedule that met the IEP requirements while not interfering with classroom time. So after a few hours I gave up on the pie in the sky idea that I could meet the needs of the IEP and the student would still not miss anything from their regular classroom. As a classroom teacher it's really hard to take a kid out of their regular ed classroom when I know they are missing something. But for better or worse that's all part of my new job. We will see how many regular education teachers get ticked off at me because of the schedule. I created a chart to help me plan. I posted it below. The colors are for different students and for their different IEP instructional requirements. You won't see the names that go along with the colors. The letters on the chart are the teachers first letter so they can look at it to see if there are any glaring issues. Wish me luck! 

Erica

Well tomorrow is the day!

Well tomorrow will be my last day as a kindergarten teacher (at least for awhile who knows what the future holds). It is also my last day working with my Fairfield Primary family. Both of these are very difficult things to say goodbye to. I know I will be sad tomorrow when I say goodbye to my class of 19 5 and 6 year olds, when I say goodbye to people who I have been through a lot with, and when I say goodbye to the Little School with the Big Heart.
I am hopeful that after the sadness of moving on is over I can then be happy about this change which I think will be a good one. 

CHANGE IS HARD, BUT CAN BE FOR THE GOOD. 

Wish me luck tomorrow (that don’t cry all day)!
~Erica

The paths we take

I have significantly mixed emotions about this post. After much thought and consideration I have decided that this will be my last year at the school I have taught at for the last 7+ years. These people are like my family and we have shared so many memories together. 

In the end I needed to do what was best for myself and my family. The thought of not being a kindergarten teacher anymore bring tears to my eyes. Where else can I wear my ruby red shoes and tiara and no one think (or say out loud) how strange I am? Where else will sweet little students write me notes like this:

                                              

I will miss the Little School with the Big Heart with all my heart, but my path is taking me to a different place.

The place that my path is taking me is to become a Resource Room Teacher in in a small K-5 school. I have always loved working with students with special needs and I love teaching all students so I am hoping that this might be the perfect path for me. I am nervous, excited, and looking forward to a new challenge. 

I will continue to write this blog, but the name Kindergarten is Dazzling will need to be changed. So if there is anyone out there with a more creative idea than simple Mrs.Gower's Blog I would love to hear any names you can come up with. 
~Erica

Vacation is here finally!!

Well since my last post I have been very busy! School has been rather crazy. Part of this craziness was the fact that two weeks ago I moved my classroom upstairs as I had a student break her leg. The upstairs is more accessible than my basement classroom. The room is about half the size and let's be honest who wants to move their classroom with three months left of school. But it was what was best for my student so it had to be done. All my students helped to move the necessities upstairs. It has been about two weeks and we seemed to have done well with the transition.

Now it's vacation week and I must say I really needed this ;) My family and I ate at an airport right now on our way to Florida. We promised our son a trip to Legoland a few years ago and since he is 12 now we had to make it happen before he is too old.

I will blog about our trip later in the week. If you have vacation this week I wish you a fun and restful week. ~Erica