Interactive Notebook freak out!

Wow, I am sorry I have been away for so long.  I have not quite found that mysterious work/life balance I keep hearing about.

We are four weeks into school and schedules are finally settled to a manageable level and I have finally been able to start on the interactive science notebooks.  I was not about to hand out those babies only to have the kids transferred out of my class and take their notebooks with them. I do not know how all of you other teachers do it with the notebooks.  This is my first year trying interactive notebooks and I teach what I like to believe are functioning human beings that should be able to follow basic instructions.  OMG!  After going over a power point on the purpose of the notebooks including explaining left side/right side, grading, and showing them examples of other notebooks from the web we began...

Assignment 1:  Students were given at least 20 minutes in class after writing down the instruction below and then two nights to complete it.

• number all the pages in the notebook, front and back 1-140 in pencil.
• Glue the rubric to the inside of the front cover
• Glue a cover page to page 1
• Glue an about the author page to page 2
• Glue an output ideas page to page 3
• Glue a list of "Big Money Science Words" to page 4
• Glue 8 copies of the table of contents to pages 5-12
• Glue an envelope to the inside of the back cover to hold scraps
• All papers need to be cut out on their outlines to fit on the pages

Well apparently that assignment was not as simple as I thought it should be for 6th, 7th, and 8th graders.  

Problems that I saw:

• Pages mis-numbered in pen!
• Pages glued onto the wrong page numbers
• Pages missing completely ( "You never gave that to me")
• Pages glued together because of the massive amounts of glue that were used
• My Favorite:  Pages glued in without being cut out so they are sticking out all over the place

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Help me!  Some of the things I saw could only be fixed by starting over with a completely new notebook!

Advise me please, 

Mrs. Ocean

I feel like a first year teacher all over again!

2 weeks of school down 34 more weeks to go but who is counting?  I am exhausted.  I have been back in my classroom for 2 weeks and I already feel like I am weeks behind.  I am teaching 7 periods, 3 preps, and my largest class is 30 6th graders.  I know it doesn't seem like a lot but my classroom only has 3 large lab tables that each seat 8 students, and they are attached to the floor.  So I really don't have a lot of space to rearrange my furninture.  I lhave to move furniture in between classes and I have one student sitting at the fish tank.  Oh and did I mention that our students are getting all new schedules on Tuesday, so I will have new classes.  I teach at a magnet academy inside of a regular middle school.  When our numbers don't balance out they recruit students who don't want ot go to our school from the regular middle school.  I will probably has another 25-50 students come Tuesday pushing my total numbers to over 175 students.  I haven't even been able to start teaching science because I knew that changes like this would be coming and I wanted to hold off handing out all the supplies I bought for my students (only 150 of each so I have more shopping to do).  My daughter was in preschool for 4 days before she got sick and passed it on to me.  I actually lost my voice last week.  It was pretty ridiculous actually, I taought by using the speak functionm on my iPad.  The kids had a blast with my robot voice and they were really considerate of me feeling badly.  I really can't complain my kids are great!  The only reason I am able to write this right now is because poor Mr. Ocean is sick in bed and Little Ocean is in her room, in bed, but not asleep.  This is the first "me" time I have had in a while.

I really do love my job.  I really shouldn't complain there are teachers at my school that have it so much worse than I do but I am still allowed to feel stressed by my own predicament, aren't I?

I know that I am truly blessed though.  I have an incredible family and circle of coworker-friends.  I am teaching my dream subject and I have a great group of students.  My daughter is turning 5 on Sunday and even though I am sad that she isn't my little girl any more she is such an incredible kid who is bright, funny, and so compassionate.  She knew her daddy wasn't feeling good tonight so she brought him one of her favorite stuffed animals and her blanket to sleep with tonight.

Well it felt great to finally vent to a community of fellow teachers whom I know could understand.  I know we are all going through the same things right now.  Education is not the field it was when I was in school but it is what it is and I can handle it as long as I focus on my students!

Thanks for listening!
Mrs. Ocean

Teacher Week: Let's talk about me Monday

I am linking up with Bloghoppin' on her Teacher Week 2013.  This will be my first year teaching and blogging at the same time so I am really excited about this linky.

I would normally do Made It Monday but today was my first day back at work (pre-planning week) and I made it through the day.  I don't quite think that counts.

The schedule for this linky is here:

So let's talk about me:

1.  I was born in Californian, grew up in Michigan with my summers in Texas, and now I live in Florida.  I spent the most time in Michigan but it never felt like home, Florida feels like home to me.  I feel like just smelling the salt air and seeing the big sky refreshes my soul.

2. I have been married for almost 8 years but my husband and I have been together for almost 14 years!  Yikes.  He still makes me laugh, especially when I don't want to.

3. I am an only child and I am raising an only child.  One and Done!  We were planning on having 2 but once we had our daughter, we knew our family was complete and I haven't wanted a baby since.

4. I was horribly terrified of sharks as a child.  I couldn't close my eyes in the shower without hearing the jaws music and freaking out.  That was until my husband convinced me to take up SCUBA diving (I can't pass up a good deal) and they are one of my favorite animals.

5.  I am constantly getting hurt because I think I am more capable of doing things than I really am.  "Hey I can jump over that log that is 4 feet off the ground!"  No I can't I am only 5 ft. tall.

6.  I am runner.  I have run 3 half marathons and I am doing 1-2 more this school year. I am definitely doing the Walt Disney World Princess Half Marathon this year.  In fact I am running the princess 10K the day before so that I can get my pictures taken with the characters and not feel guilty for stopping during the half.  I have a very Ricky Bobby mind set on running, if I am not great then I suck.  Trying to work through that one!

7.  I have a dog ( my first ever) a black lab named Parker and an orange tabby cat named Hemi.  The get along fantastically, in fact Hemi loves Parker the most out of anyone in the family, unless he is hungry and then he loves who ever is in the kitchen.

8. I used to be a magazine junky until I started blogging and following blogs this summer.  I can't remeber the last time I read a magazine.

9.  I originally wanted to be a marine biologist and train dolphins at Seaworld.  I was three years into my marine biology degree when I realized it was not the life I wanted and changed majors to education focusing on science.  I have taught Earth/Space science, Biology, and Physical Science.  Last year was my first year teaching Marine Science and I am in love.  I get to spend almost every day sharing my love of the ocean with kids who may have never even been to the beach even though we live in Florida.  I truly have my dream job, no matter what drama comes from working in education.

10.  If money were no object I would love to own a little nautical boutique.  Chevrons, anchors, and sea shells everywhere.  I almost got an anchor tattoo last year but realized Miley Cyrus had the same one so I vetoed that real quick.  I remain tattoo free, but at one time I did have 11 holes in my ears alone.

I can't wait to share more of my classroom with you tomorrow.

Mrs. Ocean

( Fact 11, my real name is Lauren)

My First Saturday Snapshots

Well I am trying to join up with more Linky's to try to connect with more people.  Today I am doing my first Saturday Snapshot linking up with Run! Mrs. Nelson's got the camera (great name by the way).  I am going to do a two parter with my pics today.

First before and afters of my classroom:

My room is a lab so my lab desks seat 8 and are attached to the floor, plus I have 5 large fish tanks in my room so there is not a lot of furniture to move around, but it was just Blah!  Very streile feeling.

These photos are roughly the same areas as in the first colage but you can see I added a little girly touch.  I bought a bar height directors chair from Pier1 and I decided to use my podium instead of my large demo counter.  The top right photo is my new bookcase that I found about to be taken away from another classroom.  I took fabric and covered the back side.  I have ribbon that I cam going to use to trim it.  The colors were inspired by my Thirty-One File Box sitting on it.  The bottom right is my new demo table/desk.  I took a large table that was low enough to go in front of my smartboard, and wrapped it with fabric to hide the fact that there are strorage bins under it. 

The book case that is in left picture was another find, this one however came from the side of the road across the street from my school.  The No Name paper board was inspired by pinterest.  I decided to use a bulletin board instead of the clothes pins the were on the original post becaused middle schoolers tend to get rough, and I think I need more space (they also tend to forget things like putting their name on their papers).  The top right is a close up of my team tubs, and the bootom right are two signs I had made.  These were all inspired by my Kagan training this summer.  The Mr. Ray one is to remind my students how to "coach" during Kagan structures (tip, tip, teach, try again).  The bottom one is to give them a place to put questions or comments that they have during class that may not need to be answered or shared right away.  It is my question parking lot.  Hopefully it will cut down on the things that the students like to share that interrupt class or may just pertain to them personally.  Middle schoolers love to share, sometimes it is not appropriate and it is so hard to get class back on track afterwards depending on what is shared!

Second are more personal.  My family took a trip to the Florida Aquarium today to help calm me down before school starts, if you read my post yesterday you know why I was stressed.  If not click here.  I had originally intended this blog to be pretty anonymous but after reading so many of your blogs and loving the personal touches you all put into them I wanted to share more of myself.

 The upper left is my daughter and I standing in front of this beautiful sea horse on the wall.  She is pretending to be a flamingo!  From Top Right clockwise are super adorable otter, little ocean playing with the jelly fish, a sand tiger shark (Hey it is Shark Week after all), me trying to cuddle up with a sting ray, and the same otter yawning (look at those teeth!).

The trip did its job and I am far more relaxed.  Tomorrow I am just going to try and get the house in slight order, get my lunch and dinner menus planned for the week and get my grocery chopping done.  Luckily for me I have the greatest husband who declares every Sunday "laundry day" and does it all!

Thanks for being a part of my life!

Mrs. Ocean

Five for Friday

I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for their Five for Friday!

I could probably write way more than 5 things right now!  I have so much on my mind.  For the first time since I returned to teaching I am nervous.  Like really nervous.  So I am devoting this linky to things that have me on edge right now.

1. There have been a lot of staff changes at my school this year.  I have met many of the new teachers and they seem great but we were a really close team last year and I am nervous about how we will all work together.
2. I will be teaching three different courses at the same time with about 150 students in total.  This will be the most preps I have ever had.
3. I have a ton of great ideas floating around in my head but I am having a hard time turning these ideas into a plan or even an outline of a plan.  I feel like my head is spinning.  I have mommy brain all over again, not that it ever went away completely.
4. I have honestly been spending a ton of time "working" this summer but I don't feel like I have actually done anything concrete, just a lot of fluff.  I have a really cute planner, that I am still not sure is the one I want (I can't get the Erin Condren Planner will not get out of my head), I have an adorable teacher toolbox now that I made, and my classroom looks great.  But I do not have the three syllabi that I will need, my plans for implementing and teaching my procedures (or what they all are, yikes), I do not have my paperwork ready for orientation,  or even plans for the first few weeks of school.
5. Our school grade dropped and I am worried not only about the county interventions that must be on their way but also for the decreased morale at our school which was already really low at the end of last year.  

I know I shouldn't be stressed about all these things since I can only really take care of # 3 and #4, but I am and it is taking its toll on me.  My face looks like it did when I was a teenager, like a pepperoni pizza.  I have been eating poorly just to enjoy something, I have been snapping at my family, and I am not sleeping well.

Anyone else out in the blogosphere having a back to school panic attack?

Thanks for letting me vent, 

Mrs. Ocean

August Currently

Well so much for my posting every week day and not on the weekends.  I had grand plans and good intentions this week and they didn't really happen fully.

Here is my first Currently, thank you Farely for letting me link up with you!

Listening:  My husband keeps switching between three different soccer games on TV.  I love the sounds of the crowds at soccer games.  The drums and chanting just have a flow to it that sucks me in.

Loving:  I was loving the fact that I thought my daughter was asleep.  The key word being thought.  No sooner had I saved this but I hear her little voice from her room telling stories and singing songs to her stuffed animals.  Then she came out of her room, yelled at the cat, started a pet stampede and was run over by our 14 pound cat and chased by our 60 pound dog.  Hysterical crying and much mommy calming ensued.  She is a trip.  So I guess I am loving that we still have baby gates even though she is 4 so that she won't come out again.

Thinking:  I am bordering on a panic attack about school.  In my county teachers start onMonday  the 12th, we have orientation Thursday night, and hte students come back on the 19th.  We never know how many meeting and trainings we will be in that first week until we have our first faculty meeting on Monday.  In the lovely state of Florida our schools are graded based on a high stakes test that the students take.  Our school dropped a letter grade for the second year in a row which means that we will have lots of school board interventions this year which I can only assume will startthe first week.  I am freaking out a little bit because I was hoping to have time to get my classroom together but I am thinking that won't be happening so I will have to go into school early next week and lose time with my daughter :(

Wanting:  I have been toying with the idea of selling 31 gifts.  I sold Avon for a while and didn't have much luck with it.  I don't really need another job for money but I think it would be nice to connect with people in a new way and the discount would be great since I am slightly bag obsessed.  Any input/advice would be great.  I have been praying on it and so far have recieved mixed signals!

Needing:  To finish my personal teacher planner.  I made a generic teacher planner for my Teachers Pay Teachers store and I like it but it is not what I want.  I am in the process of making myself one and I am hanving a hard time deciding exactly what I want to go in it.  The calendar pages are a no brainer but do I want to put actual detailed lesson plan pages in it?  We use a new lesson plan template every year at our school and I would like to have my own detailed plans that are in a similar format to what we use at school so that I am not doing twice the work.  Maybe I will make a whole separate plan book.  Here is a picture of one of the four covers for my planner on TpT.

Must Haves: 1. Diet Mountain Dew.  I need caffeine and I don't want the calories, enough said!  2. I bought the chevron utility tote form 31 that I have been eying and went to the container store to get a file box to put in it so that I can use it to bring papers to and from school.  It is adorable!  I am so glad I bought it.  3. I am not a sitting teacher.  I stand almost all day, I just cannot sit.  Last year on awards night I had been on my feet for over 11 hours in the cutests pair of gold strappy flat sandals!  I limped for 3 days afterwards.  I need to take better care of my feet and I have fallen in love with Birkenstocks.  I plan to get a new pair every year.  This year I am hoping to get this pair of Gizehs!

Well time to get back to my planner!

Thanks, 

Mrs. Ocean

Monday Made It!

Well I am trying to blog daily on the week days so that my posts don't end up being week long ramblings.  To start I decided to link up with 4th Grade Frolics Monday Made It!  Here is the link to her site:

I made this last week while I was working on my white boards but I saved it just for this Monday Made It!

I saw this on Pinterest and took a wooden frame and spray painted it this pretty teal color and then printed the quote onto cardstock and now I have a great little reminder to keep on my desk of why I do what I do!

See you all tomorrow!

Mrs. Ocean

P.S.

I am working on some more cute classroom things for tomorrow!

Sometimes I just need to mind my own business!

Okay, I admit it, I am one of those teachers who loves to hang out in the front office and get all of the latest dirt on what is going on in our school and who is involved in the latest drama.  Last year the drama was GOOD-at first.  Then the situations started to affect the way our team functioned to the point of sabotage and alienation.  Sometimes I wonder if teachers ever truly leave the drama of school behind.  I was so ready for summer and to just step away from the drama.  However I found more!  I am a Libra, and I like balance and fairness.  I don't necessarily want to see people who work hard get special rewards as much as I want to see consequences for those who don't do what they are supposed to and then make life harder for everyone else.  If you are a teacher you know what I am talking about and I bet you have a person in your mind right now!  I am also one of those people who wants to solve other peoples' problems for them.  I have a good friend and co-worker who has unfairly been given the run around by some higher ups at our school and it has been really wearing me down.  You see, I LOVE my job and I LOVE my school.  I literally have my dream job: imagine Jimmy Buffett in the movie HOOT but in khakis and a cardigan!  So it hurts me when anything negative is associated with my school or my co-workers.  On top of that we cannot get a straight answer on what our schedule will even look like next year, people are quiting and people are coming back, we need more teachers and the county says no, so needless to say my need to solve the problems of my little world have been going into overdrive lately and it is affecting me at home.  Whomever said teachers get the whole summer off must never have actually known a teacher!  I cannot go on like this because the reality is I CANNOT FIX EVERTHING and honestly none of it really affects what I will be doing in my classroom with my students next year so I need to fucus on what I can fix, insert serentiy prayer here!  I was reading a post by Middle School Minions, she is great by the way, that really hit me.  It was this quote from Thesselonians 4:11

So that has been my focus this week.  To mind my own business and work with my hands, and boy have I!  I attended Kagan training and really like all the thinks you could do with the students have individual white boards.  I could not afford to buy theirs so I decided to design my own, with a little ocean theme!  Check them out.

The blue side is blank and the green side has a light grid pattern on it so that the kids can use them to do graphs or anything that needs corners or straight lines.  I printed each one on its own piece of cardstock and then put the two pieces together to laminate them.  Having two pieces of card stock made them have more stability.  You could also put them into a plastic sheet protector if you wanted to.  They are available on my Teachers Pay Teachers store, enjoy!  I have also been working on my team tubs, again Kagan inspired but they will also serve as the location for all of the interactive notebook supplies as well.  They are coming along but I still need a few items.

I wil keep you updated as I get more things in them.  I am also designing an ocean themed planner to use next year that I will be making available for Teacher Pay Teachers.  I hope to be finished with that next week.  However I am going to be living a quiet life this weekend on the beach with Mr. Ocean and Little Ocean.  Have a great weekend!

-Mrs. Ocean

Kagan Day 1 and a BAG!

When I first started teaching I went to a two day Kagan training on Cooperative Learning and I loved it!  As a new teacher I felt so impowered with these amazing tools and then I remember the car ride home at the end...I cried.  I was so overwhelmed.  I knew the the Kagan structures would nwork in my classroom but my head was already so overfilled with the things I learned in school and now I just felt like I had more piled on top of my plate.  Fast forward to my training today, which was mostly a light overview of the cooperative learning structures, and I realized that as my teaching style has evolved I have incorporated a lot of those structures into my classes.  This realization was followed by a little internal "Whoot Whoot" and happy dance. Yay me!  If anything this review day has served to remind me how to best use the structures.  I cannot wait until we get into more science specific activities tomorrow.  You know it must be good for so many teachers to give up a weekend over summer vacation.

Okay so now onto fun stuff.  If you haven't noticed I have become a little obsessed with chevrons and as I was scoping out other blogs I saw this bag from thirtyone gifts that I am now in love with.  In addition to that I can get this cute file box to go inside of it to take home my papers to grade.  I really don't need another bag considereing I have a massive slight obsession with Vera Bradley and Coach, and lately my eyes have been wandering towards Michael Kors... So I guess what I want to know is, should this impulsive blogger get the bag and file box and be adorablym matchy every day at school, or not?

A butterfly flapped it's wings...

Well my day started off with a total butterfly effect moment, literally.  Little Ocean and I were walking out the door (which we always lock from the inside) when a butterfly flew into our kitchen and our cat immediately started chasing it.  I had to put down all of things (including my keys) and climb onto the kitchen counter and beat my cat to the butterfly.  I caught the butterfly and released it outside on Little Ocean's command and then she did the most responsible and horrible thing at that moment, she shut the door and locked us out of the house.  After 10 minutes of me trying to break into my own house and call the multiple people who have copies of my house key and Little Ocean getting attacked by mosquitos we got back in.  Benadryl, Claritin, and a lot of hydrocortisone cream later and we were finally out the door laughing about our crazy adventure.  After that I definitely earned my trip to Hobby Lobby with my mom and then Chick-Fil-A.

While Little Ocean was napping I was able to get some more design work done and just uploaded some really cute binder covers to my Teachers Pay Teachers store.  They are editable and nautical and chevron cuteness!  Here are some pictures of the ones that I personalized for myself.

The yellow one is a mini binder that I made to use as a journal/list book.  I still need to tweak it a bit before I put it up for sale though, so maybe next week...

Thanks For Reading!

Mrs. Ocean

Happily a glutton for punishment!

I am in a unique position as a teacher.  I am currently teaching a course that no other teacher in my county is teaching.  In my county, we have county created curriculum maps complete with units, concepts, and essential questions that we must directly link our lesson plans to as well as post in our classrooms.  There has never been a whole lot of freedom in this area, which I get.  I teach in a very transient area so they want students to be able to attend any school in the county and be able to pick up fairly close to where they left off academically at their old schools.  Marine Science is a High School level science class.  However we are a marine schience and engineering academy so I teach Marine Science in Middle School over the course of three years, each one building on the other.  Last year I simply took the county curriculum map for the High School course and split it between two years.  This year I will be teaching a third year that I have to completely create myself.  But that isn't enough work for me, oh no!  I chose a new textbook that I love, it follows the 5E's and has so many resources, it is AWESOME!  But it has it's own format that does not really mesh with the High School curriculum...so what do I do?  I decide to rewrite all three years!!! Why I do these things to myself I do not know!

This week I have been able to design (cause they have to be cute) and write half of my curriculum maps.  I have also been stalking Teachers Pay Teachers downloading as much as I can about Interactive Scientific Notebooks (that is right I am not only teaching/writing 3 brand new courses of curriculum BUT I am also trying to implement a completely new teaching aid, luckily my book has a notebook correllation) and planners that I can download and use next year as I did not win the Erin Condren planner.  After looking at all the amazing things that other teachers have created I decided that "I can do that!"  SO I started a Teachers Pay Teachers store and uploaded my first item this morning.  Check out my lesson plan binder cover, it is FREE:  http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Mrs-Ocean

I am working on some other items that I will put up in the next couple of days.

See Ya!
Mrs. Ocean

Erin Condren Teacher Planner

I just found out the Tori's Teacher Tips is giving away $50 towards Erin Condren products, which I am in love with.  I first sashes teacher planner on Pinterest and have been going back and fourth about whether I want to spend $59 on one or not. I really do but I just keep thinking how much I could get for my classroom with that money...  Well we will see how I do, wish me luck!  I have added Tori's button to my page so be sure to check her out!

Like a fish, I am HOOKED!

I am so glad I started this blog in the summer.  I have been working on the look of my blog all day.  I am pretty tech savy as far as what I use in my classroom and home but start talking about web design, and coding and I am completely lost.  But not anymore, well not completely anymore!  Just for some background I do not use any sort of photo editing programs and I make most of my classroom materials on Word.  I just discovered Publisher this last school year and couldn't even use that correctly...  Today I downloaded GIMP, which is really cool, made my own blog header thanks to an awesome tutorial from Mommy Moment, downloaded a free background for my blog from LeeLou Blogs and created my own button, thanks again to Mommy Moment.  There is no way that that I could possibly get this all done during the school year!

I also joined the Middle Grades Bloglovin Bloghop.  This is my first attempt at reaching out into the world of other bloggers and claiming to be one myself.

I even did some actual school work today...well sort of!  I downloaded some useful tools from Teachers Pay Teachers from The Clutter Free Classroom, The Science Penguin, and Tracee Orman.  So a big thank you to them for being way more creative and computer savy than I am, so far.  I also orderd a book on how to use interactive science notebooks in my classroom.  It should be here Tuesday!  After everything that I was able to learn today just from other teacher divas out there, I think there may be hope for me.  I have even added other people's buttons on my blog so that I can spread the love.

Now that I have a button, please grab it!

Bloglovin

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Classic Stall Tactics

So Little Ocean is napping which means that is really my only "me" time during the entire day and what I should be doing is reading my new textbook and figuring out what information needs to go in each year of my 3 year curriculum and what am I doing?  Watching Alien on TV and writing this post.

Random fact about me:  I love watching scary movies in the middle of the day alone!  The more inappropriate for Little Ocean the better.  It feels so indulgent!

So here is my to do list for next year:  

~Outline all three year of curriculum

~Read about implementing Interactive Science Notebooks.  Do I want to use them all three years or just 6th grade?

~Plan classroom set-up, rules, and procedures

~Plan how to teach procedures ( I have not been very effective in this area in the past)

~My supply list and student supply list

~Mrs. Ocean's Classroom Blog (hello!)

~Kagan training and incorporation

~What do I want to do the first days of school?  New psychology book?

~Create absent bin and everyday papers bin

~ Email: staff about jars and milk crates (beg for stuff), coral restoration foundation about collaboration and dive magazine with their article, and plant-a-fish for possible collaboration

~Match resources to units including Vernier manuals

~Research virtual field trips

~Edit power points from last year, or change to SMART Notebook for better outlines

~Create beginning of school power points or iMovie to introduce myself to the students, rules, and procedures

~ Do I want to use Edmodo this year or is that too much change in one year?

~What resources are available on the Wyland website?

~Explore the Teach Aquaculture site

So I guess I really don't have too much to do!  OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!