What day is it?

I went to name the post 'day 5' or 'day 7'. However, I have no idea what day it is and I am too tired to figure it out. I think that is a good thing! We are so busy and there is so much going on that I can't keep track of the day of the week, the date or how long we have been here. It's also a little harder because our work week is Sunday-Thursday. That will be a bit strange, but I am sure I will get use to it quickly and forget that it is not the norm where we come from.

On with today's activities...It started with another healthy breakfast and some classroom work time. Nothing too exciting there, but lots of time well spent. After lunch I had a refresher in Reader's Workshop. I have said it before, but I will say it again- the organization at this school is so amazing! We use Lucy Calkins Reader's and Writer's Workshop. I love Lucy. I mean LOVE Lucy. I think her work is fantastic and it really works with my students. I am so happy that we are using her program exclusively and that there is a written plan of which units and lessons we will do. As a team we can modify and change as needed, but we have something to work from right away. In addition to this, we also have a Learning Coach. She is unbelievable! She will be coming into classrooms to help us teach, model for us, co-teach, whatever will work for us. This is so nice to have and she is a very valuable resource to have, I can tell already! Literacy is my thing and I am so excited for it this year!

Another thing I want to brag about, before I go on to the rest of the day, is our Educational Assistants (EA). I have never had an EA in grades higher than Kindergarten. The two EAs we have in second grade are awesome. They are hard working and have already done so much for me. I can't wait to have them all year! Today they organized and distributed all of our Everyday Math (another exciting thing for me!) materials. It is so nice to not have to do that stuff and to have things brought to my room.

One more thing to brag about- SCIS teachers you will appreciate this one. I have 1200 books (approximately) in my classroom library. They are checked out to me, but I don't have to go and get them. They are in my room and then someone comes to me to check them out and back in. No walking up and down the stairs to the warehouse! To be fair, the resource room is on the second floor and my room is on the first floor, so I will be doing some hauling of books and materials. ;)

I lied, one more thing...We work in trimesters this year! That means only 3 report cards and I am pretty sure conferences are at a different time than reports. I am so happy about this! It makes sense for younger kids and it makes planning all of our units easier! Also, we get a half day to write the reports! Yahooooooo!

Ok, on with the day. We had another wellness session to go to today. I went to something called T25. It was a high impact cardio workout that lasted 25 minutes. Let me tell you, it was the longest 25 minutes of my life! Not really, but it was pretty intense. I am not sure if any of you have done it, but I really like the one we did today. It was hard, I was dripping in sweat and I was done in 25 minutes plus a 2 minute stretch.

Thanks to that workout, I reached 10,000 steps on my fitbit by 4pm today! Yesterday the only workout I did was yoga, but I walked around so much I also hit 10,000 steps. This summer the only way I reached 10,000 was when I went for a 3 mile run. That is just to give you an idea of how much walking I am doing and just how big the campus is!

That is all for now. My next task for today or tomorrow is to try and figure out how to do the ALS challenge when we don't have cold water! It's luke warm. I have some ice cubes, so I will have to be creative. I have to say I had mixed feelings about this challenge because it seems to be a little silly to waste clean water to raise money. However, a friend pointed out that at least it is raising awareness. My plan is to use just a small bucket since we are in the desert and I don't believe in wasting water. I will also donate money to help the cause! Those of you that have donated to the cause, congrats!

Ciao!
C