Monday- Day 1 and Tuesday- Day 2 of In-Service

Day 1: This day went pretty well. During the morning session we had Kathy Smith as our speaker. She spoke to us about using visuals in the classroom and gave us some really great ideas for hands-on activities. After that session, a group of us went to lunch and chatted about anything and everything. It was great to get to sit and just chat with the teachers. They are all really nice and I'm looking forward to being "one of them" (almost) this Fall. After lunch we had some time to work in the room and get things a little organized. The hall theme for this year is "Under the Sea" and I just have to say, our display is AWESOME! I drew a submarine and we decorated with ocean-backdrop paper and ocean-y cut outs. It's really cute:



After a while of working on the room we went to the computer lab for a Webinar on how to use the new textbooks (Huckabay adopted new ELA textbooks this year). The textbooks have some really great activities and ideas as well as great extensions online. I'm excited about getting to teach from that book.


Day 2: This day started off kind of rough. My car wouldn't start (battery died) so I had to call my school and let them know I was going to be running late (perfect that my battery was dead on the second day-- at least it wasn't the first day!). I called my roommate to come home from work and jump my car. I also called my dad (because they know EVERYTHING!) and he told me to jump it and head to Autozone after school. Luckily it was only my battery and my car started with some help and I was off to Huckabay. I got there right at 9 (when the workshop started... I was supposed to be there at 8:45). There was an email training (the school got a new email service) and then a District Improvement Plan group discussion session. I thought it was really neat that the teachers were involved in the process of editing and giving their input on the District Improvement Plan... I had no idea teachers were involved in that process... it makes sence and I'm glad I got to sit in on that discussion. After that meeting we all went and had lunch again and then spent the rest of the afternoon working on the classrooms. My teacher and I spent most of our time working on our hallway display:



And this is the Kindergarten hall display... I thought it was REALLY neat and that's wehre I'm going to be doing my student teaching for my second placement (I think... we're still trying to figure that one out).