Gardens for Health, Education & Experience

For the past couple of years, my sidekick Tiffany and I have had class gardens for our students.  We've been very blessed to win various grants in the past couple of years, and even more blessed to always win funds to continue with our garden. 

This year, I'm thinking big....and I mean BIG!!!  My goal is to triple the size of our garden, build a green house and hydroponic garden, in addition to our in ground garden (Shhhh...Tiffany hasn't heard any of this yet). 

I'd also like to educate our students enough about gardening and healthy eating so that they can teach other students at our school.  Furthermore, I'm hoping to collaborate with our new science coach, who by the way has not heard a word of this yet. lol!  As I said, I'm thinking big!

But how awesome would it be to instill healthy eating into our students lives? And how cool to see their faces when they see the product of their hard work. Again, I'm thinking big, and with this big thinking, I'm going to need a lot of help. So...if you know anything about gardening, hydroponics or building greenhouses and are willing to volunteer some of your time, please let me know. If you don't know anything about it, and still want to help, let me know as well. I'd like for this to become more of a community/school garden, verses a class garden. With help, my big thinking will become a reality! :-)


Here was how our garden began.  Let's see how it continues!

One week down!

Week one went great, minus Monday.  I couldn't wait to jump right into  my curriculum and teach. I typically wish I could bypass the first few days due to the lack of structure and covering the code of conduct.  Luckily, that day turned into one day, Monday, which was my least favorite day.  I wasn't sure how much I was going to enjoy my new group of kiddos because I was having withdrawals from my last group.  Fortunately, by Tuesday I loved them! 

I have one student in particular that I have vowed to take under my wing and invest a lot of time into.  Not that I don't do this with all of my students, but this student is ESE and amazingly sweet.  He's very low and has a severe speech impediment, but he's so willing to learn, even though it's really difficult for him.  This is where I'm going to see how good I am at differentiating (which I don't even know where to start, but I'm ready to).

We've implemented many new things to our class this school  year.  The day starts off with students picking out a Popsicle stick from our twitter  box for their daily class job.  I wasn't sure how well this was going to work, but I have to say I LOVE IT!!!!  My classroom look almost immaculate at the end of every day.  Our class jobs include a desk swabber, who cleans the desks with soap and water daily.  And for those of you that spend any amount of time with me, you know what a germaphobe I am, so this is awesome!  I also have a filer, rug doctor and sweeper. We also have the Welcoming committee, who write the morning message and the Research Reporter, who looks for a current event and shares it with the class.  I found out this week, I'll have to browse the articles before they share.  One of my students chose to read about Elections 2012, which is great but it included discussions about same-sex marriage and abortion.  Oh boy!  I just focused on the election aspect when she finished. lol!  I'm sure I blushed a little.   There are many more jobs, but these are definitely my favorites. 

Nothing Ever Happens at Groveland Elementary

 

My favorite start of the year writing assignment has begun!  We start this writing assignment off by talking about ideas and details.  We take a tour of our school and the students ask themselves 'what if' statements.  They have to be really creative.  By the end of our walk, their juices are flowing which create an amazing book for them to take home. 

 

My favorite 'what if' statement this year was: 'What if Mr. Meyers was a three headed, fire breathing dragon, and had a lair where he'd take students and eat them for breakfast?"  What if? lol!  Mr. Meyers is our wonderful assistant principal.  The kid must have been afraid of him to come up with that statement, but it'll be so great when he writes and illustrates it into his book!

 

There were many other 'what if' statements.  Some included portals to another world, books growing legs and walking away, and sharks taking over the school.  Like I said before, it's a great way to start writing.  It's exciting and includes illustrations.

 

Final Notes

 

I took a differentiated instruction(DI) course at the beginning of the summer.  My hope is to start off by implementing it in reading.  Hopefully I can branch out from there.  Due to having the ESE students this year, which I'm so excited about, I have the opportunity to really use what I've learned.  DI in addition to Kagan and Whole Brain Teaching is going to make for a wonderful year.  I have a great group of students and I can't wait to get to know them individually!



Twitter Class

Most teachers like to start off the year with a theme.  Pinterest has been my 'go-to' spot!  I've learned so many ways of decorating your classroom and making anchor charts.  I was determined not to spend a fortune on my class this year.  You always spend some money, but I didn't want to pay an arm and a leg.  So we decided to handmake things. 
Tiffany had seen the twitter door pin on Pinterest, so we decided to go with a Twitter theme.  Since we won the iPad grant for a 2nd year, we embraced the technology theme and went with it.  The one thing I really wanted to do was the scrunched up butcher paper boarder around my bulletin board.  Although  a little time consumming, it turned out amazing!  Taking that same idea, we talked about making a tree on our bulletin board and I proceeded to scrunch it up, just like the boarder.  We were very please with the results and decided to make an extra tree on our back walls.   Tiffany and I have our own classrooms, but our classrooms are almost a mirror image (an idea we got from the Dual Language program)
I've attached some before and after pics of my class:

Goals for the 2012-2013 School Year

Every year is a new opportunity to reach a new group of students.  And every year is an opportunity for me to grow as a teacher. 

In recent years, I have been a Whole Brain Teaching teacher.  I love WBT and it definitely works.  This year, we are planning to become Differentiated Instruction and Kagan teachers.  Woot! Woot!   (When I say we, I am referring to Tiffany Forsyth and I, my amazing co-teacher.  You'll probably notice I say we a lot!)

We started off our summer by going to a Differentiated Instruction training, followed by iPad camp.  We realized that in the past years, we have definitely been differentiating, but we've  been doing it unconsciously.  One of my goals for this year is to become more consciously competent.  I want to know why I'm differentiating and what specific steps I have to take to reach individual students.

We have been blessed with the opportunity to teach the mainstreamed ESE students this year.  We have a wide array of needs that we are going to have to meet.  This is going to show how well we do with differentiating. 

My other goal is to write at least three grants this year.  We began writing grants a couple of years ago.  We've won a couple of garden grants, iPad grants and the Petco Classroom Pets grant.  Grants are an amazing way of using giving your students different experiences. 

I know as the year goes on I will add to my list of goals.  My biggest desire, in my classroom, is to reach my students and love them where they are.  God has allowed me to be a teacher and I want to use the opportunity sow seeds and serve the little ones that have been entrusted to me.