Apple Glyph

So it's finally here! I'm finally part TPT and trying to share my *ammature* teaching work with everyone. I've been working on this for an entire week longer than expected, but here it is! Hope you enjoy. I promise my next thing will be much better looking than this, but it's still a great resource and my students LOVED doing it. Check out my tpt and get your free apple glyph/book!

Help me get my business off the ground

Hi there! I finally finished setting up "shop" and I'm ready to sell, sell, SELL! I am a ThirtyOne gifts consultant! As a teacher, I obviously don't make much money, and now I'm being docked an extra $60/paycheck! I've tried to get an explanation but all my payroll lady keeps saying is "it's taxes". It's frustrating because I could really use that $60, but I'm trying to suck it up and understand. I'll be talking to my girl again on Monday. Anyhow, prior to learning about this paycut, I've decided on purchasing a new car! I'm not complaining about my small paychecks because I chose to be a teacher because I love it, not because I want money. So, here it goes, I'm working hard on selling these FABULOUS handbags and gifts from thirtyone and I would love if you would shop (and tell everyone and their mothers about me!) and help me get my goal. These bags are truely beautiful and I've been playing with my show set all the time. The bags are good quality (no lie, I'm a coach girl and I LOVE these bags) and there are so many to choose from. As a teacher, I love bags even more because I take things back and forth all the time. They have awesome personalization (gifts anyone) that is very decently priced. I'd love if you would take a look and let me know your thoughts. I wont be mad if you don't buy, but I'd be super happy if you'd just send the word around. Thanks a bunch!! You can find my store at Shana's Bags. If you have any questions, please comment here or shoot me an email at shananicoleteaches@gmail.com HAPPY SHOPPING!

Applesauce. Apple Glyph, Apple Poem... APPLES

This week was a short week at my school since today Is Yom Kippur. (Sometimes having holidays ALL the time benefits the tired teacher, haha). My students also filled up their Fish Bowls (an incentive chart that once they get 50 fish in their charts they get to have a party) so we had a party on Friday. I decided to turn our party into a complete learning experience. Since Fall is here and so much fun (by far my favorite season!!!) I decided to do a bunch of leaf and apple activities. Because of the religious factor of the school, I can't do pumpkins or anything related to Halloween. I can't even read my favorite "Charlie Brown's Halloween" that I used to read every year when I was in elementary school. This week we made an Apple Book. In the book we wrote a poem about picking apples, we included a recipe for applesauce and we made an apple glyph! I've decided I am going to give away my first Friday Freebie!!! I am going to put together a document on my Apple Books. I will hopefully have it completed by the evening but the Freebie Friday may become a Freebie Saturday. haha. Keep your eyes peeled (hehe, no pun intended) for my Apple Book if you're interested!

i made a BUTTON!

Thanks to the wonderful Ms. M on TBA, I created my own blog button!!! I don't think I've ever jumped out of my seat so high! I am so excited this worked!!! Okay, my name is Shana and I am OFFICIALLY a blogging ADDICT!


Look! Isn't it pretty?

<center><a href="www.shananicoleteaches.blogspot.com"><img border="0" src="http://i655.photobucket.com/albums/uu277/shana_banana21/blogbutton.png"/></a></center>

Follow me on Facebook!

Thanks to the lovely , I've decided to make a Facebook blog page as well. Please go be my friend! I mean please go like me! I'm hoping this will really get me started. I need to blog more often!!

Thanks!

Pictures

My best friend in the whole wide world keeps telling me she can't see my pictures, so I'm going to put them all here. Enjoy! (I LOVE looking at other teacher's pictures, so please comment with your link if you have pictures!)

This is the view from my desk. My room is VERY narrow, but I deal.

 This is the most awesome investment ever! This shelf has all of the "extra" supplies. There are crayons, pencils, markers, etc. It has saved me SO much shelf space (as you can see, I don't have much space as is).

 Here's my desk space, or ask my coworker calls it "my office". HAHA! I love it. The door is directly in front of my desk.

 Great idea for a bulletin board! I have a laundry pin on each of those construction paper pieces. I but the kids work on it. This was before school started so there were no samples up yet.

 That door is the door between my room and the room next door. I have cubbies that break up the desk area and carpet/entrance.

 Here's my calendar board. It's not quite done, but there will be a months of the year and days of the week poster on it too.

 That's my working word wall! It say "surfin' spelling" and each letter is on a surfboard.

 Word wall and addition pocket chart. The easel is not there.

 There's a full room view. Yep, my room is THAT small!

 This is my pride and joy! My library <3. It's not much, but I love my little corner.

 My behavior chart. LOVEEE this.

 Job chart! It's hanging on one of the doors between my class and my neighboring class.

 This was in between organized and just walked into my mess. Believe it or not, this is half done!

It's been a while, sorry!

I've had a wild first few weeks of school! I've got tons of adorable little ones running around my room. I've had many funny and not-so-funny moments. I've had my ups and downs, pushes and pulls, but I love my job. I'm sitting on a Saturday night grading papers, I don't like THIS part of my job, haha, but it's work. I already have complaints from parents who don't think I'm good enough, and at first I was really, I mean REALLY, upset about it. Now that I've had a few days to think about it, I realize that I should take this as a challenge, like I do all other complaints I've had about myself. I'm going to challenge myself to fix (or change) one thing every week with gradual goals. This weeks goal is going to be: instead of getting upset with talkers, I am going to direct them to their pins (the behavior clip chart that I adore) with as few words as possible. The kids know they're not supposed to talk when I talk, it was a rule that THEY created, so why waste my breath on telling them why they shouldn't be talking? They know they shouldn't talk, I'll tell them they're moving their pin because of talking, but I'm not going to explain why talking is so disruptive.

Now, forget about the bad/sad/mad stuff, haha. I'm SO excited to introduce the "I'm Done!" jar! I came up with 20 things to do when they finish their work. Nothing is FUN but nothing is tedious either. I was sick of sending 14 kids to read when they finished their work before time was up and I found this fabulous idea (while blog stalking). Unfortunately I can't remember who I saw it on but someone out there deserves the credit! I love the idea and I really hope it works! I've put together a little shelf (I'll take a picture Monday if I remember) that has all of the necessary supplies. Some of the ideas I've chosen are "write a thank you card to someone who did something nice for you", "read in the library", "practice math facts with counting cubes", "create a pattern using the foam shapes", etc. A few of the ideas I have 2 sticks in the jar for because I figured it would be good to have more than 1 person working on a project, though it's not necessary.


I've been having SO much fun as a first grade teacher. I love having my own class and my own spin on everything! Some of my students are just so sweet, too! I told them about my surgery because they saw me limping and holding my back and they were just so caring and interested. They ask me how I feel all the time. One of my old students always ask if she can give me a massage to feel better, HAHA, so cute!

First Day and pictures!!

Today was an AWESOME first day. I have some of the cutest little firsties!!! Though my back was absolutely killing and I had to sit most of the time, though I sat in the front of the room and stayed with the kids, I felt awful that I had to sit :(. I wish this surgery nonsense would hurry and go away!

I never had the chance to upload pictures so here are the pictures from my classroom. 1 of the photos are from when my room was half way organized (even though it looks completely awful) and the rest are of ALMOST complete. I still have a few things to clean up, but for the most part it's done.

Click here to see the rest of the photos on my picasa.

Now for some adorable stories from the day! At my school our students are split up by gender. In the Jewish Orthodox religious it is inappropriate to put males and females together when they are learning or praying. There is reason why but I honestly am not sure 100% what it is. I just work there :p lol. So I have my girls in the morning and my boys in the afternoon. For our getting to know each other project we did a project where students answered a few questions about themselves and made a person to look like them. One of the questions was "I like to ________." One of my adorable little ones wrote something I couldn't read so I asked her to read it to me. She said "I like to feed turkey monsters." I said "Turkey Monsters? What are those?" She says "You know Ms. R, those ducks that we feed bread to!" SO CUTE! Then in the afternoon I had my boys and of course they had to be cute, too! I look very young and often get told that I don't seem my age. My parents often question my age because they don't believe I am old enough to teach. Anyhow, one of my students today, while they were doing work, jumps up from his seat and says "Ms. R, you look like a child!" I couldn't help but laugh, but I did have to tell him jumping up was inappropriate and if he wanted to tell me something he had to raise his hand. 
So day one of my first year opening my own classroom ever is DONE and it was an AWESOME day. Not nearly as bad as people say :p haha.

Don't forget to check out other pics of awesome teacher's classrooms at TBA!

Meet the teacher Monday!

Yay for meeting teachers JUST LIKE ME!!

something about me...

I am 23 years old. I graduated from FAU in December 2010. I've always wanted to be a teacher. In second grade my teacher, Miss Stepanek, asked all of us what we wanted to be, I said teacher and made that come true. I live in South Florida though I was born in Ohio and spent the first half of my short life up there. Over the summer I had back surgery because I had a pars fracture in my lower back. The doctor was concerned about my healing because the surgery was far more complicated than expected. I had back surgery in 2005 also for Scoliosis. Thankfull my healing is going well and even though I am not completely healed yet, today was the first day for teachers and I made it!

how long/short I've been teaching...

I started working on March 1st, this year so Im a new teacher. I took over a class for a teacher that was let go because she was absent too often due to illness. They liked me enough to ask me to come back this year, haha! I teach at a private Jewish school in first grade and it's quite the culture shock because I am not nearly as religious as my students. 

you might not know I...

I was a HORRIBLE student in school. I was a major behavior problem, was suspended multiple times and nearly didnt graduate high school because my gpa was low and I had no motivation to do work. I was put in honors English because I had great Reading scores but because I refused to pay attention, I failed and was put in remediation. Despite my hate for school as a child, I love teaching and wouldn't change my profession for all the money in the world.

I'm really looking forward to...

My first full year as a teacher!! woohoo!! Im looking forward to everything I am going to learn as a new teacher and expanding my knowledge and skill.

I should really work on...

Procrastination. I wait until last minute for everything and I learned last year that its a huge mistake to put anything off. I should live by the quote "Why wait until tomorrow when you can do it today?" 

I simply *cannot* live without...

Skinny markers, notecards, sticky notes, labels, binders, pencils, construction paper andddd my cellphone, internet and car, lol. 

You've now learned about me because of the awesome blog:Blog Hoppin'!

  

First day back...

Today I went back to school for a New Teacher meeting, even though I'm technically not new. The meeting was fine, no big deal, I went to my room after to see ALL my furniture was on the carpet and they cleaned my nasty tile! WOOHOO! Then I start looking through boxes that I have no idea where they came from and I've got new books OH YAH!!! I have science and social studies books! I didn't have that last year! WOOOO!
Now for a little tearjerker... I went to Michael's to pick up some last minute things and I started talking to the cashier. He was giving me my teacher discount when he said "I used to be a teacher." I asked him why he's working at Michael's if he was once a teacher and he told me he got into a really bad car accident that gave him extreme brain damage and he can no longer be a teacher. He seemed fairly young, maybe late 20s early 30s. It was really sad to hear. He said after his accident they expected him to be a vegetable because of the severity of his brain damage. After all of that he finished with "but at least I wake up and open my eyes every day." It was so touching that he could turn such an unfortunate event into something so positive. He was a nice guy and I feel bad for him, but it's nice to know he doesn't feel bad for himself. He's happy he gets up, he has a job (though not his dream job of course) and he can stand on his own two feet, open his mouth and speak, use his hands, and open his eyes in the morning. What an inspiration.

Crayon Wreath!

Thanks to all of the wonderful bloggers that I found through Teaching Blog Addicts, I saw this project and fell in love with it. I made it yesterday and absolutely ADORE it! I've been having so much fun finding new things to do to make my classroom awesome. The only problem I have is some people think it looks like a Christmas wreath and I work in a Jewish School so I don't want any parents to get angry. Hopefully that won't be the case.
I start work tomorrow (Friday) and I'm nervous!! I have so many things in my mind that I need to do but I don't know how I am going to do it all. I have a lot of ideas for decorating but I can't stand on tables like I usually do, haha. I am excited to get back into school and start my year!

Classroom Helpers, Blogging, Venturing... OH MY!

First, I worked on my classroom helper board and though it doesn't look like what it looked like in my head (last minute changes) I'm happy with it. Problem is, I can't think of what to call it! I thought "Fishing for Helpers", "Gold(fish) Helpers", "Waves of Good Help" (even though there are no waves), "School of Helpers" or "School of Workers"... but as fair as some of them are I feel like I could come up with better. Any ideas? (Some of the ideas above were posted as recommendations by friends on Facebook so I can't take all the credit).
Second, Hi, my name is Shana and I am a blogging addict. Holy crap, I've been spending the majority of my waking hours reading other teacher blogs. I've become instantly obsessed! Maybe it's because I'm stuck in bed, maybe it's cause I'm bored, I think it's just because I am extremely excited to finally be a teacher. I've always wanted to be a teacher, since I could remember, so this is like a dream come true. I'm sure some of you other teachers understand where I am coming from. Remember playing teacher with your dolls? Anyone? I did!
And finally, I've found a venture to pursue and I'm kind of excited! Okay, kind of is DEFINITELY an understatement. I saw another blogger post her store for a bag/accessory shop that I really liked looking at. I could definitely use some extra money so I think I am going to make this small investment and work on starting my own business. First year teaching and starting my own SMALL business all in one year? Hey, I can do it!

Yep, Shana Nicole Teaches, for sure!

Day 1: Dear Diary...

If massively overwhelmed had a definition in the dictionary, my name would be the example. Today is the 7th, I go back to school the 22nd. I am going to see a doctor on Monday the 8th to to give me some shots to make the pain go away. I see my surgeon again on the 15th to start physical therapy. After the surgery I had just a little over a month ago, there's this miserable pain on my left side that puts tears in my eyes every time I turn, sit, stand, lay, walk, and move my left leg. I'm terrified I won't be ready to go back to work on the 22nd because of this pain which would be really bad. This is my first year as a teacher starting from the beginning. Last year even though I took over the first grade class in March, I don't look at that as any part of my first year because it was so disorganized and such a mess that I look at as more of a long term subbing job. Now I'm walking into this room with my ideas and only my ideas that have to be enforced. I'm excited, but again, overwhelmed. I have tons of ideas and I plan on implementing most, if not all, of my ideas, but they're like a big jumble in my head. I have a couple ideas for behavior management, classroom setup, a few different lessons, but where do I start? All I know for sure is my classroom is going to be FISHY THEMED! Can you tell I'm excited for that?