Growing Garden

Mrs. Taylor told me to expect some friendly letters from our students soon. I can't wait to read them all. She also passed along that the class has already posted ELA and Math learning standards on our garden themed bulletin boards. 

 "Watch Our Literacy Garden Grow"

 "Watch Our Numeracy Garden Grow"

One of our students even called out "look everyone ... Our garden is growing!" ahhhh music to her teachers ears. We love knowing that our students are understanding the reason behind what we teach and WHY things are posted in the room. From the first day of school our students expected to take ownership of their learning. Having the learning standards posted in the classroom as we introduce them give our learners a visual of exactly what they responsible for knowing.

Just as we expect for our students ... We also find it important to take the reins in our own learning. For those of you that do not know I am in business with 2 of my friends and colleagues... Mrs. Taylor, Miss Markle and I are "The Work Wives". We focus on supporting teachers and students through the Common Core State Standards. As we discover and unpack our standards for learning we found it important to share our experience and methods with fellow educators. For more information on our business adventures visit workwives.blogspot.com

Happy Friday!

Love It

I hope all my students enjoyed a fun filled Spring Recess. I am looking forward to seeing all my Busy Bee's tomorrow!! We will have a lot to share and our routine of activities to get back to.

PS: Just before break I decided to announce to my very curious class that I was expecting a baby girl. Of course the teacher in me couldn't just blurt out what my husband and I are expecting... We took a survey (Do you think Mrs. Meyer is having a boy or a girl?) and represented our data as a class. Each student also had a reason as to why they chose their answer :o)  Only after an impromptu math lesson did I announce that Mr. Meyer and I would be expecting a baby girl in August. The enthusiasm when collecting our data and creating our graph was priceless.

 LOVE IT <3

Meet The Teacher Monday!

Hello fellow Byron-Bergen Families, Friends and Bloggers. I have linked up today with 

Blog Hoppin' hoping to connect with educators. Today is Meet the Teacher Monday so here is a bit about myself...

This is my sixth year of teaching here at Byron-Bergen (located in Western, NY) and my 3rd year teaching First Grade. I received my undergraduate degree in English from the University at Buffalo and my Masters degree in Elementary and Special Education from Roberts Wesleyan. My husband and I have been married for almost 2 years just welcomed our first baby, Miles, in April. We also have 2 dogs, Oscar & Zoey, that I often use as inspiration during Writer's Workshop :o)

 I have many hobbies that I love to incorporate in my classroom. I am a self proclaimed book worm and love showing my students that I enjoy to read. This will come into play during our Daily Five and C.A.F.E time. This is a structure that helps students develop the daily habits of reading, writing, and working independently that will lead to a lifetime of literacy independence. 

My love for music and my curiosity for new technology is a large part of our classroom environment. We use our SMART board(an interactive white board) , Smart Response Clickers , SMART Table, ipods and a classroom ipad pretty much everyday. We also have laptops for each student to use. I also have been wanting to SKYPE with classrooms all over our country and around the world. Please click on the About Us link at the top of the page for more information. I look forward to adding more pages to this blog. This year I will be posting student work and I would like each of my students to post on their own page. If you know an easy way to do this please let me know. I will also be adding a teacher page where I will post pictures, share lessons/ideas and useful items. I hope that you will find this blog useful , helpful and as entertaining as I have found some of yours to be. 
Best Wishes for a Successful 2011-2012 School Year!