Mrs. Ruiz’s Blog

Hey everyone! It has been over a week since I blogged last!  What a bad blogger I am!  There has just been so much going on!  As is with life in general there are ups and downs.  So as always I will focus on teaching here. 

Having a combination class is a lot of work.  I am not complaining, I am just stating a fact.  I strive to deliver quality instruction that meets state standards and utilize the district approved curriculum, in a way that will engage, enrich, and motivate my students.  This is no small task.  I know I can’t teach perfectly all the time and it frustrates me when a lesson doesn’t come together as I would have liked.  I have learned to reflect on my teaching to refine my practices and sometimes I need more reflection time than others.  I feel as thought the class is coming into a rhythm now that the new school year is into it’s second full week.  We will have Response to Instruction starting August 25th, which will change things a bit more for our class rhythm, but I know it will be for the better.  I will have more opportunities to work with each grade level in isolation and be more like a small 4th grade (12 students) or small 5th grade (17 students) class.  I feel strengthened by the fact that I know my administration is behind me and looking out for my combination class as much as possible.  Finding the balance between 2 grade levels curriculum’s has proven to be a challenge, but it is not impossible.  I believe it is just challenging my imagination more than it has been challenged in the past.  I am having to find creative ways to blend the material or creative ways to keep one grade level meaningfully engaged in a relevant task while I work with the other grade level.  Fortunately for me I have technology on my side and I am drawing on the many things I have learned from the DEN.  My students are just crazy about blogging and so much more than any other class I have had.  The love to post, reply to forum topics, vote in polls, and upload and comment on their favorite photos.  They will be webquesting soon as well and I look forward to the projects they will create. 

Overall there is so much to think about as a teacher in planning for your class, and for the combination class there is even more.

Our district has adopted a new math curriculum - Houghton Mifflin California Math.  I am not at all used to it and haven’t been to an orientation on it yet, so using it today was a little uncomfortable.  It isn’t that I don’t know the material, but rather how the text lays it out and what is expected of the kids.  So today’s math lesson was a little bumpy and I am hoping the kids didn’t get confused.  If so, I have updated my class website with some links to math videos on today’s concepts on the “Math” link.  We will be revisiting today’s lessons tomorrow and checking for understanding.

I feel so blessed this school year!  I have gotten such positive feedback on my classroom from my students, their parents, and other teachers, that I am floored!  I hope all this positivity carries me through the school year!  I guess it is nice to find your hard work and effort is noticed!

I am very excited to be working with the group of students I have this year.  My 5th graders are very bright and well mannered.  They are outstanding role models for my 4th graders.  I am so pleased with my 4th graders too!  They are also very well mannered and handling being in the same room with 5th graders very well.  Both grade levels are working very well together, so much so that it is hard to remember who is a 4th grader!  They are all lovely children and I am glad to call them my class!  I am not sure how many actually read this, but I want to thank all the students, parents, and teachers who have been gracious enough to share there thoughts with me about this combination class. I take it all to heart and it definitely helps shape my teaching.  Thank you all!

P.S.  Feel free to comment to my blog so I know you are out there!

What a day!  We have continued our positive start to the school year.  We started off by looking at the calendar in DE streaming and found it was JK Rowling’s birthday!  So we read the related article and viewed a short movie on the fantasy genre.  The students really seemed to enjoy this and are looking forward to what tomorrow has in store!  I spoke to the class further about blogging and our SchoolBlog site, then they got to spend some time there responding to polls, answering my forum question about books and reading, uploading photos, and creating blog posts of their own choosing.  We also did some critical reading of a newspaper article selected by one of the table groups, we also discussed it as a class, and responded to it in writing.  Those were just some of the things we did today!

Today was our first day of school and it went very well.  I was excited to meet all my new students and I think they might have been a little excited to meet me too.  We spent the better part of the morning going over all the classroom essentials ranging from getting to know me and Fiona to supplies and textbooks.  We also spent a bit of time talking about technology of course and the kids were very excited.  I showed them our class website and our ePals SchoolBlog.  There was some minor technical difficulties getting everyone logged in at first, but it all came together in the end.  I hope to see more use of the class website this year, and this class seems to be just the kids to do that!