anger button

I escaped to my mentor's classroom today for a moment, referral in hand. She blinked in surprise; I hardly ever use office referrals, and usually only after a huge incident. It had been quiet.

It's (student,) I said, he's sassy, rude, and defiant today. This particular child, dear to my heart like all of them, has improved a lot this year. He's normally anxious and sad when he acts inappropriately, not measured and cruel-tounged. I have less sympathy for it, I told her.

She grinned, and I thought it was just because she's the complete opposite of me in what kinds of kids with emotional disabilities she works best with. She pulled out a sheet from one of her socio-emotional lessons entitled "Angry Button." It was illustrated with a surly child. "That's (student) right now. And that's your angry button." She laughed, but it was true. I have more patience with children who are completely out of control or are obviously upset, but get annoyed with ones who are hurtful or defiant with calm intention.

I'm trying to get better at it quickly, because I know my reaction is part of the problem.

Above is one of the pictures from our DonorsChoose Thank You projects. We finally got all of our materials back (on time!) I put in another project, but it hasn't been approved yet. I had enough points to do a special request, so I'm asking for an iPad. 

For our St. Patrick's Day display, my mentor and I used the pots of gold activity from The Teacher Wife. The littles (and her kids, the bigs?) wrote about a person who is worth more to them than gold. I loved how cute it looks in the hallway, and we managed to hit goals for all of our kiddos from grades 1-5 in one swoop.

Some of my littles also made these leprechauns from The First Grade Parade and wrote about a time they felt lucky. One of my littles had the hardest time pounding out one sentence for this, but most of them were pretty motivated by the craft.

We read Julia Cook's My Mouth is a Volcano and did this cute activity from Mrs. Miner's Kindergarten Monkey Business.

We're going over contractions right now, so we made these contraction kites I found at The Weekly Hive. I'm kind of conflicted about teaching them (and some of our word wall words) because our reading program will not cover them for a while. I'm also conflicted about doing spelling with our word wall words because they are words my kids absolutely cannot read. I spend more time each week teaching them to read the words, rather than have them memorize the spelling. Plus, our WWWs aren't grouped in a logical (to me) way.

Tomorrow I have a professional day, so I left some pretty cool plans. I'm hoping they have fun.