My second first day of 5th Grade

...meaning I went to 5th Grade back in the day and now I'm back as a teacher! Crazy. The weird thing is I wasn't nervous on the first day AT ALL. I was lucky because I had about half of my class move up with me when I student taught in that same school. Teaching feels so natural and I really enjoy it. I enjoy all of it: the planning, the present the information, the being with the kids, the thinking through details of everything. Now don't get me wrong it is not all butterflies and rainbows. It's hard. I have never been so exhausted in my life. Sometimes lessons do not go as well as I would have hoped but other times they go better than I thought they would. It has been such a learning experience for me and I am hoping to do exactly what I tell my students "it's okay to make a mistake as long as we learn from it and become better." I am definitely in that learning to be better process. The following is my favorite project we have been working on thus far. The kids love it and I love it.

* A BIG project we've been working on is running for president just like the president of the United States would run. We made political parties with platforms. We had some speeches and campaigning. We modeled the difference between popular votes and electoral votes. We had each kid pick a state and vote using those state's electoral votes. On Monday our president is going to take the oath of office (that we will write together) and become the president for the next few weeks.

Anyways here are some pictures of the room

and week 2 starts tomorrow!