I'm hopeful that this wont be like normal staff meetings. At an average staff meeting, about 1% of the information is important for the entire staff to know, and the other 99% is about testing strategies and the like. Being a teacher of a subject that isn't tested, (both awesome and frustrating, don't have to teach to the test, but music also isn't given the validity of a tested subject) I don't have any need or desire to go to staff meetings. And... Because I only get paid for my time with the kids, I'm not required to go to staff meetings.
But, I get to go to our pre-school staff meeting. I'm pretty sure that we're actually going to be getting information about important dates, any new policies or procedures (we have a new principal), or class lists. That's right, I said class lists. School starts on Wednesday, and none of the teachers have any idea yet who is going to be in their classes. I can't imagine! I know that I'm seeing everyone, so that's easy, but I can't imagine trying to get ready for a specific set of kids, and have no idea even how many kids are going to be in my class. Oh well, I'm sure their doing fine. I'm just super excited to get started tomorrow and really get things rolling.
I have been doing a lot of prep to get ready for the year. Including moving my classroom all around, but that's definitely not done yet. I put up my first bulletin board, but there's nothing on it yet. I am going to use and abuse my school's die-cutting and laminating machine tomorrow to fix that! It's going to be for my 4th graders to keep track of their Recorder Karate progress. Pictures once I get it all together. But in the mean time, speaking of recorders:
Oh yeah. Those are a bunch of recorders. In my dishwasher. I am awesome!
The 4th graders last year were horrified by the idea that other kids were going to use the same recorders as them. I have enough for each kid to get their own for the year, but I am definitely reusing!!! Rather than trying to clean each of the recorders with alcohol wipes or something, I just ran them all through the dishwasher. I figure it's the same as forks or plates, and I'm hoping the kids don't give me too much hassle about it. If they do, I'll just tell them that they can buy their own darn recorders!
Another project that I put together with the help of my dad is:
Hula Hoops!!!!! I'm going to use them for some "conducting" games where each hoop will represent a different instrument group, rhythm, or maybe even melody. Anyways, I discovered that hula hoops are really expensive! And because I'm not going to be using them for actually hooping, I looked up if I could make my own. It turns out I can! Luckily my dad had some extra irrigation piping laying around, so I just had to buy the connectors and some electrical tape. We cut the pipe, linked it together, cleaned it up, and I put different colored tape around each one. I think they turned out pretty good. They are all about the same size, not perfect, but I'll live with it.
I also printed a bunch of stuff out, and I am planning on laminating it and hanging it all up tomorrow or Tuesday. Really really I'll take pictures to preserve the posterity of my classroom at some point this week! Yay!
Our school has ran low on budget so I was going to buy some and then do this for my class end of this year too. Its a great idea to wash them in the dishwasher!
ReplyDeleteHow did you label them? did you write their names on the recorder? What will happen next year with the names still on the recorder? Did you have kids that chewed on the recorder and will it last long enough for two or three batches of kids?