Appreciate

This week was teacher appreciation week and it was a fun one! Monday morning these lovelies were waiting for me outside my door.

Wednesday was early release and the faculty and staff were treated to a delicious lunch by the PTO complete with goody bags for everyone! Yay for tissue and hand sanitizer! AND a Chick-Fil-A coupon! The PTO also had a drawing for door prizes everyday. Each teacher won something and I got the cutest set of notepads and pens. You can never have enough note pads as a teacher.

Then, on  Thursday, the best. gift. ever. came (okay...maybe not best ever, but still a great gift). I was sitting at lunch and saw the secretaries bringing in some arrangements with these cute balloons flying over them.

I assumed it was something being brought in for all the teachers. Each day we had received some little surprise in our box. When I got back to my classroom, an edible arrangement was delivered to me with chocolate covered pineapples in it! YUM!!

I was shocked that everyone was getting one of these. They aren't cheap and we don't even have enough money to buy paper to make copies. Then, I learned that it was from one of my students. She and her mom were so sweet to think of us and get us one of these. It was delicious!

I finished out the week of appreciation receiving several other gifts from other students. It was such a nice week for teachers. At this point in the year, we're doing EOG review, which can get really boring for teachers and students. When students are bored, they get into trouble. When teachers are bored, they get frustrated really easily. So, it was nice to be reminded this week that we are appreciated and that we have awesome students!

As we prepare for EOGs, our principal encouraged us to think outside of the box as we did some corrective instruction on concepts students didn't show an understanding of on their assessment. She mentioned switching students around or combining classes...she just wanted some extreme change in how we approached this time of corrective instruction. So, as a math team we decided we would review in our classes and then on the two Fridays before EOGs, we would all come together for a common assessment. Yesterday we did that.

I'll be honest, we were worried (real worried) about having 90+ kids in one spot (the media center), but they did awesome! We could not have asked for a better day from them. We grouped them heterogeneously based on their achievement in class. We placed 1-2 strong students in groups with 1-2 students who needed a little more help with the concepts we had reviewed. Then, they took a group quiz of EOG practice questions. They were allowed to use the people in their group, their notes, and any of the math teachers for help. It was incredible to watch. Some of the students who can be major behavior issues in the regular classroom (the ones we were real worried about) stepped up and lead their group. They were the one explaining the problems and keeping everyone on task. There were other groups with students who tend to do nothing on a regular basis who worked harder yesterday than they have on any assignment all year. We were so excited to watch them do so well. And, all of the math teachers got to hang out together all day, which was fun for us too!

Next week we're taking them all outside to do an assignment with side walk chalk...stay tuned for the details of that! Going outside adds another level of craziness so we're hoping for another amazing day from them!