New Classroom Set-Up

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I recently changed my classroom layout! My students have been really chatty lately, so I broke up some of my table groups and now have 4 rows of 4 desks each with 2 groups of 6 in the back of the room!

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Moving Schools

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I am officially moving from Newport --> Woodridge Elementary. I am leaving Newport because as a first year teacher you're last to get an assignment and teachers with continuing contract get priority. I will be teaching 5th grade math & science at Woodridge and doing the expertise model (this is where I partner with an ELA/social studies 5th grade teacher and we share 2 classes of kids who switch mid-day). Sad to leave Newport, but excited for new opportunities!!
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GLAD Strategy: Sequence Pattern Chart

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GLAD stands for Guided Language Acquisition Design and are strategies to help ELL students and struggling readers. I was first introduced to GLAD when I was getting my MA/credential at UC Irvine. When you think about it- most students are English language learners in the sense that they are learning new academic vocabulary! One GLAD strategy I tried was a Sequence Pattern Chart. This chart helps students recognize parts of speech and use a writing resource. I used this because I wanted to help students create interesting descriptive sentences for a personal narrative we were working on. To make a sequence pattern chart you create 5 categories- adjectives, nouns, verbs, adverbs, and prepositional phrases. As a class we picked one noun we wanted to focus on and then filled in the rest of the chart based on our noun. For our example the class decided they wanted to talk about "porta-potties"- we had a good time making creative stories about aliens using space traveling porta-p...
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Kids Are Kids Anywhere!

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 At the end of the 21/22 school year I decided to leave the district I had been at for my entire career (6 years!). I went to a neighboring district and I have been so happy that I made this change. Change is hard- but today I want to share why change may also be just the thing you need. I remember when I got my first teaching job. I was so excited! I had a lot of big life changes coming up and really needed a job- I was moving from California to Washington, getting married, and starting my career! During my time in my district there were so many celebrations- I made some of my best friends, I learned so much as a teacher, and I earned my special education credential. There were also big challenges- I moved buildings a lot (being new/low seniority), it was a big learning curve to work at a title 1 school, and special education was a really big/hard transition. Last year I felt that there wasn't enough support for my high needs students and I felt that the district's and I's...
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