Category: Celebrate This Week

Join this fabulous group of bloggers as we celebrate our weeks. You can link up on Ruth Ayres blog at www.ruthayreswrites.com

This was a crazy, chaotic, exhausting, celebratory week.  The end of the school year is always exhausting, but this one is especially busy with thinking about packing up to move to a new classroom.

Here are a few highlights from my week:

Monday and Tuesday my students stepped up to help me clean.  At one point, I had half the class working in harmony to take down all the bulletin boards.  I had asked one student to start and they all joined in to get the job done.  This is one of the reasons that I will miss this group of students. Here are some selfies with a few students:

 

On Monday, I also brought in some books to give away to the students.  I had bought a box of books at the Scholastic sale so that I could give one to each student.  I put the box out on a table and told them that they could come get one if they wanted.  I did not plan it better because I did not expect the whole class to clamor for a book.  It was a stampede!  I love that these 8th graders have learned to appreciate reading and to be excited for a free book.

Wednesday, we went to Buffalo Wild Wings for lunch and then to the bowling alley.  I had called the restaurant ahead of time, and the manager offered to give the kids a free soda with their lunch. We had a lot of fun, and I love how the students were conscientious and asking for help with calculating tips for our servers.

Then, after school on Wednesday, I picked my mom up from the airport and she came to school with me to decorate for the 8th grade completion ceremony.  She just returned from visiting my sister in California and decided to stay here an extra day so she could help in my classroom.  I had a good time with her.

Thursday, the tears were flowing at our completion ceremony.  The 8th graders looked so snazzy! We celebrated the years that these kids were with us.  It was great to see the families and some older siblings that are former students.  After their ceremony was finished, the students left with their families and I had time to work in my classroom with just my mom for company.

On Friday, my students did not have to come to school.  The rest of the school is in session, but the 8th graders get an extra day off.  8 of my students showed up to school anyway so that they could help me.  I didn’t ask them to do this, and I was not expecting it.  They just weren’t ready to say goodbye.  I love that I made such an impression that these kids felt they should come to help. Also, I appreciate all the help they gave me.  I am in really good shape for finishing my move to the new classroom.

I also put the World Cup games on in my classroom on Friday.  I invited any students who wanted to see the games into my classroom.  Since Mexico was playing in the first game of the day and it was the last day of school, I had quite a full house.  I love watching the World Cup and I was happy to share this experience with students.  Don’t ask me anything about the second game of the day…I don’t want to talk about it. (My husband is from Spain)

My experiences this week were a perfect way to say goodbye to teaching middle school, quit while you’re ahead.  I will miss some of the ways I built relationships with my middle school students, but I am ecstatic to go back to 4th grade.  I am much more of an elementary school teacher at heart.

Lastly, I am celebrating that summer is just about to start.  I have two more teacher work days and then my vacation begins.

Join this fabulous group of bloggers as we celebrate our weeks. You can link up on Ruth Ayres blog at www.ruthayreswrites.com
Today I am celebrating this crazy, busy time of reflection and goodbyes and new beginnings.

Next week, my 8th grade students will have their completion ceremony and move on to high school.  There are so many details to take care of.  We celebrate the years that these kids have been at this school…some since 4-year-old kindergarten.  It is fun putting together the slide show for this ceremony.

I finished my report cards!!!!!

I spent time in my classroom cleaning and boxing things up.  The task is much bigger this year because I will move to a different classroom next year.  I also need to sort through all of my books and weed out the ones that are not appropriate for 4th grade.  Although it is a big task, my heart is light and it is easy to do.  I am so excited to be an elementary school teacher again.

I shared the news with the middle school students that I won’t be their teacher next year.  Although I hated to disappoint them, it really pulled on my heartstrings to see how upset they were. I have had a love/hate relationship with my role as a middle school teacher and I celebrate the fact that I have been able to become a teacher they want to have.

I got a surprise visit from two young men who just graduated high school.  They were students in my very first 8th grade class and I haven’t heard from either of them since then.  It was so nice to see that they are doing well and heading off to the Marines.  Both of these young men were very challenging to teach as 8th graders and it was wonderful to see that they are successful young adults who now can appreciate the help and advice that we gave them in 8th grade.

I had my writing classes write reflections about their year in ELA class.  I love reading about how they have grown this year.  I plan to write a blog post to share some of their insights.

My teacher planner from Erin Condren arrived this week. As soon as I heard I would be teaching 4th grade, I celebrated by ordering a planner.  I love these planners and am so excited to have it over the summer while I am working on learning the 4th grade curriculum. (If you don’t know about these planners, you need to go to their website and check them out…pricey, but completely worth it)

We had a nice dinner out with our student council group this week.  It was fun to celebrate our year of working together by having some great food together.

What do you have to celebrate this week?  I would love to hear from you in the comments!

Join this fabulous group of bloggers as we celebrate our weeks. You can link up on Ruth Ayres blog at www.ruthayreswrites.com

Join this fabulous group of bloggers as we celebrate our weeks. You can link up on Ruth Ayres blog at www.ruthayreswrites.com

3. Last week, they installed a new bulletin board in the hallway outside of my classroom.  It is something I have been asking for, and there finally was money in the budget for it.  I can’t wait to make great displays on the new board.

4. There are so many new businesses opening up in my neighborhood.  I am excited to be able to give my business to local, small businesses.  The best one lately is a bakery that has amazing treats!  This morning I had a delicious bacon and cheddar croissant that my husband brought me as a surprise.  YUM!

5. In my search for lessons to go with my Romeo and Juliet unit, I stumbled across the PBS series Shakespeare Uncovered.  The English major nerd in me is so excited to watch this series and learn more about some of his works.

As we approach the end of the school year, my days at school require more patience and more energy (especially with the 8th grade students).  I am so happy to have this habit of looking for things to celebrate so that I can keep focusing on the positive.  I hope you all have a fabulous week!

Join this fabulous group of bloggers as we celebrate our weeks. You can link up on Ruth Ayres blog at www.ruthayreswrites.com

How did it get to be May already? Lots of small celebrations all around make the week a happy one.

 1. I forgot to celebrate the fun book giving of World Book Night last week. I had so much fun handing out copies of Code Name Verity to students. The thing to celebrate this week was the fact that I saw multiple students starting to read that book right away. I can’t wait to talk to some of them about it!

 2. I love seeing my students reading. So many of them are choosing to read during study hall or free time in class. It is so amazing to really have created this environment in which everyone knows to respect the reading space of classmates.

 3. After a week of rainy days, the sun is out today.

 4. On Wednesday, the student council hosted a Teacher Appreciation breakfast. I love the way our staff responded to this nice gesture. These students are such a great group of kids and I love working with them. They wanted to do so much more for the teachers, but setting up the breakfast and being there to thank the teachers was enough.

 5. One of my less structured lessons this week was the one in which students picked groups or decided to work on their own to prepare a spoken word poem. They all had handed in a poem to me ahead of time, so they had to choose one of their poems to perform. I also gave them the option of finding a poem if they didn’t want to use one of their own. I was amazed at the good work that was happening. Students were spontaneously revising and editing poems, combining poems to make a new one, and working hard to figure out how to perform. There was one group of boys in particular that I couldn’t believe were working so well together. They usually play around and don’t get their work done, but they all worked and were keeping each other in check as they figured everything out.

 6. After some disappointment in the job search, it was nice to start thinking about our plans for next year. I really do have some great colleagues and I think we have a great plan for the coming school year. I am working on figuring out a way to be able to teach reading and language arts to all four seventh and eighth grade classes. It will take some tricky scheduling, but I would love the flexibility of only planning for these subjects and the ability to really connect the lessons. Right now, I teach language arts to three classes, but only have one of those classes for reading. My principal has come up with a schedule for our switching that would give me all four classes for language arts and now we just have to figure out the morning and how to make the reading work. I am thankful for colleagues who see that this would be a good idea and are willing to work with me to make it happen.

Join this fabulous group of bloggers as we celebrate our weeks. You can link up on Ruth Ayres blog at www.ruthayreswrites.com

Tuesday I had fun checking in with my students and their reading over break.  One girl greeted me with, “Ms. Payan, I finished 3 books over break!” I love it that this student is reading so voraciously now.  She is one who made all kinds of excuses about how she couldn’t find time to read at home because of helping to take care of siblings.  We worked out a plan to start the reading habit and now she is voracious and finishes books really quickly.

Wednesday I started the unit about Shakespeare.  I showed the students this TedEd video about insults in Shakespeare.

They spent the rest of the week biting their thumbs at each other.  Then, I had them work on a webquest about Shakespeare and his times.  The students figured out that it was Shakespeare’s birthday that day and they got a kick out of the fact that his wife was named Anne Hathaway.  The best was when a few of my students cheered to find out that they were doing a unit on Shakespeare.

Thursday I had a few great conferences during reading workshop.  The best was a girl who is reading The Summer of Letting Go by Gae Polisner.  I asked her how it was going and she jumped right into talking about the characters.  She said, “I like how she thinks that her brother’s spirit is in the little boy.” I love that my students are getting really great at talking about books without prompts.  I also like that this is what she is picking up on in this amazing story.  I also had a great talk with a student about whether the Legend trilogy or the Divergent trilogy is better.

Friday we watched the 1996 movie version of Romeo and Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes.  I wish I would have recorded the students’ reactions to the end of the movie.  It was obvious that most of them did not know what happened in the play.  They were yelling at the screen telling Juliet to say something to Romeo so he wouldn’t drink the poison.  It was so much fun to hear them reacting.

Today I had a great time at my nephew’s 3rd birthday party.  It was nice to see family and to enjoy the antics of young children.  My husband had his belt test today and earned his brown belt in Suikido.  I am so proud of him!

What do you have to celebrate this week? I would love to hear from you in the comments! Have a great week!

Join this fabulous group of bloggers as we celebrate our weeks.  You can link up on Ruth Ayres blog at www.ruthayreswrites.com

This week was a nice week of relaxation and rejuvenation.  I was able to cross some things off of the to-do list as well.  Spring break came at just the right time this year.

These are a few of my celebrations from this week:

1. We went to a friend’s house for game night last Saturday night. It was so much fun.  We played the game Munchkin and had a blast with it.  My husband and I went out and bought the game so we can play it at home too.  It is hilarious!

2. We discovered a new Chinese restaurant that delivers to our house.  It has been years since we ordered delivery because the restaurants we knew about do not really have great reputations for cleanliness.  I was so happy to be able to order yummy Chinese food!  We ordered it twice this week.

3. I worked out almost every day this week.  Hooray for getting back into the routine!

4. Doggie cuddles! My dog has loved the fact that we are home this week.  She weighs 60 lbs. but that does not stop her from being a lap dog!  I enjoy the opportunities to cuddle with her as I read.
5. We cleaned part of the basement this week.  It was long overdue and we need to do more, but it felt good to accomplish this task.

6. Family Time: I got to spend some time with my mother this week.  She came to Milwaukee and we had lunch and spent a few hours together.  Also, during my FaceTime call with my sister, my 1-year-old niece was babbling like crazy and waving at me.  I swear she had some great things to tell me!

What do you have to celebrate this week?  I would love to hear from you in the comments.

This is a fabulous idea from Ruth Ayres in which we write about something to celebrate each Saturday. I love participating in this link up each week and hearing about the awesome things happening in everyone’s classrooms and lives.

This week, I am particularly thankful for this weekly tradition. It was a struggle for me to shift my mindset to the positive after a few big disappointments, but seeking out those celebrations did wonders!

1. It has been sunny and springlike all week! 

2. On Thursday, I got to talk to some former students and found out they are doing well.  I love when they make an effort to come back to talk to us.  

3. On that same night, I went to get frozen yogurt and another former student was working at the yogurt place.  I was able to see that she is doing well and she gave me the friends and family discount.  Double the fun!

4. My husband’s students put together a surprise party for his birthday.  They put so much thought into planning the party.  They even sent me a note asking me to contact his family in Spain to send a message for him.  I was so touched that they did this for him.  This is his first year teaching and it is difficult sometimes since it is so overwhelming in the first year.  I love that his students love him so much that they would do this for him.  One of the girls even made him this special minion cake and cupcakes since they all know how much he loves Despicable Me.  

5. Planning for Spring Break with my students on Friday was so fun.  I should have taken pictures of the vacation book stacks.  I love that some of my students knew that they needed a book stack to get through the week away from the class library.  

6. Last night, at our favorite bar, a stranger asked the bartender for a daisy out of the flower arrangement on the bar and then proceeded to give it to me for no reason at all.  (I should mention that this was a woman who was there with her husband and I was with my husband so it was not an attempt to hit on me, just a small act of kindness) Let’s hear it for random acts of kindness. This one put a smile on my face.  

7. This weekend we have some fun plans to get together with friends.  Tonight is game night with some friends we haven’t seen in a while and tomorrow we are having dinner at another friend’s house.  What a great way to start out our Spring Break!

8. I am really thankful for the generosity of my colleagues and friends.  I will be doing Walk MS in Milwaukee in May and I already have so many generous pledges!  (If you are interested in donating you can go to my Walk MS page)

9. I am so looking forward to being a book giver on World Book Night.  My box of books is at the library and ready for me to pick up on Monday.  I am so excited to hand out copies of Code Name Verity at my school and my husband’s school.  

What do you have to celebrate this week?  I would love to hear from you in the comments.  Have an excellent week!