First week of fourth grade!!!!

This was my first week in the 4th grade classroom. It started off with 2 staff development days, which consisted of a lot of meetings that really opened my eyes to all of the decisions teachers actually have a say in. The third day was used to get the classroom ready for the children and figure out the scheduling details. Valley has had a lot of changes since last year, we hired a new principal and our school day is an hour longer this year, students start school at 7:50 and are released at 3:15. By the fourth day I was very anxious to finally meet the 25 little fourth graders that I would be spending this semester with. The students finally arriving to the classroom was very exciting, especially because when I first came to Valley I started with two second grade classes, I then moved into a third grade classroom that consisted of a mix of the two second grade classes that I previously had. I am now in the fourth grade with some of the same students that I started off with. It has been really interesting to see the students grow over the past two years and I am looking forward to what this semester has in store. I have learned so much from being with the Valley faculty and the students. The students that I have had over the past two years were really happy to see me and have me apart of their classroom again. All of the changes that I mentioned above brought upon many questions that were still in the process of being answered the day before school started. It seemed to be a bit hectic for the faculty but the first day for students went very well. In attempt to make the end of the day pick up/busses to run more smoothly several faculty members and myself tagged children as they were getting dropped off at the "kiss and drop". We tagged the children by asking guardians what the plan was for arrival in the a.m. and departure in the p.m.. If the child was supposed to go on a bus we wrote down the bus number on the sticker, if the child was supposed to be picked up we wrote pick up and then put the sticker on the child's shirt. They were to were the sticker all day so that at the end of the day teachers and bus drivers were aware of where the child was supposed to be going. Over all, I believe the tagging really did help to make the end of the day go more smoothly but there was still a little bit of chaos. Being apart of this first week of preparing has been a wonderful learning experience that I am happy to have been apart of.