My Future Classroom!

This week I had the pleasure of meeting with the entire 3rd grade team I will be working with- there are 7 third grade classes for the upcoming 2012-2013 school year! We were all shown our rooms, I will be in a portable this year and I am going to try and have a "cozy" classroom vibe.  I will be posting pictures of before and after so hopefully all the ideas that I have in my head come out in an organized manner for the room :)

Books Galore

I have been quite the book scavenger lately- scrounging from old friends and family for any unwanted books and scouring the local Goodwill's to find quality literature to start building up my classroom library.  I feel comfortable with the amount of books I have now to start the year off, my shelves will be semi-occupied :) I also decided that as I get the books to level them.  The school I will be working at levels their classroom libraries using AR- I am not a huge fan of this so I decided to put the AR level and points of the book on the back and then use a conversion chart to label the F&P levels on the front of the book- which will be easier to then covert to the other leveling programs depending on which reading assessment program/tool we use.  I do know that we will be using the LLI (Leveled Literacy Intervention) Program (reading recovery based) which I was exposed to last semester during my final internship and when used properly it seemed to really help a majority of the students in the program- so I am excited to be able to use it again!

Hired!

Ecstatic- truly the one word that sums up every emotion I am feeling right now. I just graduated this past May from the University of South Florida and last week experienced my first ever "formal" interviews, (yes I have had interviews for various part-time jobs; hostess, server and secretary) but never any interviews that I have been consider a "Professional."  Nerve racking to say the least, but it is a wonderful feeling to finally accomplish the main goal of becoming an elementary teacher, that took five long years to reach. 


Not only did I get hired, but it is at a school 1.8 miles from my house, which beats the heck out of the 18 miles one way that I am driving now. I am fortunate enough to have the pleasure of working with three friends at the same school as me! I will be teaching third grade and two of my friends and former USF classmates will be on the same team as me, and then the other friend will be teaching 4th grade.  I could have not wished/hoped for a better first year of teaching scenario.  To put the icing on the cake the principal and staff that I have met seem to be amazing!