Throwback Thursday – 9/17/15

  
  
  
  
  

Pajama Day — 9/16/15

Oh, how I LOVE pajama day!! What is better than working in pajamas?! Not much!!! Lots of happy faces today!!!

  
  
         

Camo Day — 9/14/15

Can’t Hide our Pride!!

  
  

  

Random Updates — Lunchroom and Perfect Attendance Achievement

It’s been a great week at HES!! We have lots of exciting things happening so I wanted to do a blog post. This will be pretty random.

First of all, next week is Homecoming Week for Haleyville City Schools. This is one of my favorite weeks of the school year. We have lots of fun with our themes. I am posting right below this the picture of our themes. HES is different than HMS and HHS due to our picture day — those with older siblings may get a little confused. Also, my homeroom kiddos are to wear 70’s clothing on Thursday for dress from another decade day. I will explain why later on in the post — it’s a good one!! I will be snapping pictures of the kiddos dressed throughout the week — and I will add them to the blog and our 4th grade Instagram page — which is @hes4thgrade.

  
Next up .. our lunchroom!! I have been SUPER impressed with our lunchroom this year. Our students are getting a choice for the first time EVER!! Students can choose to eat at the hot bar, pizza bar, or a grab-and-go lunch each day. The grab and go lunch is available as supplies last — it looks great! I had one parent stop me at Wal-Mart to say that the lunchroom choices this year has been the best thing to ever happen to them at school! Her child is such a picky eater (her words), but he has been super happy having a choice in our lunchroom this year. I found the cutest idea on a teacher facebook page I follow. I adapted it to fit into our classroom and voila! The kids LOVE putting their popsicle sticks in the correct bucket each day — brought lunch, hot bar, or pizza bar. This also brought about the start of classroom jobs. The kids would beg to let them put the popsicle sticks back in the name bucket — so I made a classroom jobs list so everyone could help out in the afternoon!

  

Not only do we love lunch choice this year — but we also love our fruit and veggie program. The kids are supplied a free fruit or veggie 3 days a week — and they are SO excited each time they see the containers! It is SO nice for our kids to try new healthy foods. This week we had green bell peppers, grapes, and bananas. The kids LOVED them all! I posted the cutest video on Instagram of a few volunteers trying out the bell peppers. Is this not the cutest thing ever?!

https://instagram.com/p/7bRNC1MZi4/?taken-by=kgoggans2
Continuing on with my random updates, I had to sign a 20 day attendance report one day last week at school. Every 20 days we have to check attendance and sign it to update in the computer. My sheet was surprisingly blank of check-ins, tardies, or absences. I know it is the beginning of the year, but when you have 18 kids in a homeroom – it happens! Why was my page so blank? I have a couple of reasons that I believe my students are being so present this year. The number one reason is my bestie Draco. Our new classroom critter is a great motivation to come to school to see his pretty face each day. The one day I didn’t bring him with me because I had a doctor appointment right after school was super sad EVEN FOR ME. I’m so used to looking over and seeing him in his terrarium … and it was empty. Not seeing his little eyes watching the kiddos and me was just sad. How did I teach for 12 years without him? I have no clue. I will be doing a post very soon on my thoughts about having a class pet. 

  
 The other reason I think my kiddos are coming to school so well this year is also because of a cool idea I saw on Pinterest during the summer. Each day that my homeroom are all present, we add a letter to our board. We are spelling the words perfect attendance. To increase the competition, we invited several classrooms to join in and compete against us to see who would win first. When we spell the words perfect attendance, we celebrate and also begin again. I thought we would probably do a popcorn party to begin with — but my homeroom had a different idea. A disco party was what these kids wanted to do. I’m not sure why they wanted this — but how cool are they to want something so out of the box?! I love their personalities!! So … on Thursday of this coming week we will celebrate with a disco party! Even though we made our goal on Wednesday, we are prolonging our celebration because of Homecoming. Thursday’s theme is to dress from another decade — which is perfect for us! We will dress like the 70’s, I have borrowed a disco ball, and I’m planning a disco party during snack time!! I’m sure it will be groovy!! And of course … I will snap pictures for us to have forever!! 🙂

I will be blogging very soon about my classes beginning Class Dojo (LOVE!!),  and my many feelings on having a class pet. I’m going to get some quotes from my kiddos to include!!

Love,

Mrs. Goggans

Red, White, and Blue Day — 9/11/15

Friday was so hectic that I may have let a couple of classes slip by me without snapping a picture. The kids are pretty good though at reminding me!!

To show respect and honor to the anniversary of Sept. 11 we wore red, white, and blue to school.

  
Next week is Homecoming so I’ll be posting pictures daily of our kiddos dressed up!! 🙂

Fourth Grade Fun Day — 5/8/15

Fourth Grade Fun Day on May 8th was a huge success!!

First, we had Alabama History Stations in the library that morning. We had three stations that all of our six classes visited. Big thanks goes to all these wonderful people that volunteered their time to enrich our students. Mr. Ward and his father’s station was about the Native Americans that lived here long ago. They had artifacts from that era, and they also had photographs of different trees in the area that were used as markers for traveling people to find their way.

Next, students visited one of our student’s fathers at his station. He is a highly decorated member of our Army. He told us stories about Homeland Security and protecting our nation from harm.

Our last station was about a local legend, Aunt Jenny Johnson. Mrs. Carla Waldrop, our local librarian, always does a fantastic job telling us about the history of Aunt Jenny. Very fascinating!

 Next up — we went to the Dixie Theater. We watched Meet the Robinsons, and had a midmorning snack of a drink and popcorn. Meet the Robinsons is one of my very favorite movies!

After the movie, we went back to our classrooms for lunch. We had pizza from Pizza Hut, chips, drink, and a sweet. We ended the day with extra time on the playground.

I thought the day was a success, and I hope our kids all enjoyed! This year has went by so fast — seems like we just started school yesterday!!

Tacky Christmas Sweater Day — 12/17/14

Yesterday was Puzzle Races .. and today is design a tacky Christmas sweater day!! 🙂

I pulled up some examples I’d found on the Internet of examples. Here are 2 of my faves. 😬

I was very impressed all day by the creativity of the t-shirts. Great job, 4th graders!!!

Here are some pics of our tacky Christmas t-shirts!!

My phone ran out of storage during 5th (ugh IPhones) so you may notice that I’m missing pictures of my afternoon classes. Sorry!! Deleting pictures as I type this!! 😜

The Great Puzzle Race — 12/16/14

‘Twas the week before Christmas
And all through the school
Was an army of energetic students
And a few overwhelmed teachers.

Gotta love the week before Christmas!! Grades are due, Christmas parties are coming, and all the teachers are trying to contain the calm before the storm. Today I decided would be a perfect day for a puzzle race. Teamwork and fun were our buzzwords for the day.

Each group got a 100 piece puzzle (hello Dollar Tree) and the class period to assemble them. The first group to finish or get the most assembled won bragging rights and their picture on the blog. I saw LOTS of great teamwork today!!

Here are some pics of my homeroom working together. Seeing my kids getting along and working together makes this teacher’s heart VERY happy!!

Here are pics of my winners throughout the day! 🙂

Hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed seeing the teamwork involved today!! This is a necessary component of readying our students for the future. They have to be able to work together peacefully to complete tasks.

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!

Love,

Mrs. Goggans

Halloween Science Activities — 10/31/14

We incorporated a pumpkin into our Science class on Halloween. First, we learned about the life cycle of the pumpkin. We completed a sheet from teachers pay teachers that is located here. Then, we watched a short video clip of a pumpkin farm. The video was fantastic — I’m also including the link here.

Afterward, I had students estimate the number of pumpkin seeds that came out of the pumpkin. Surprisingly, our actual number was 505! Several students said 500 — they were VERY close!!

Next up .. We erupted our pumpkin!! The kids loved it, and I’m including the instructions here.

Black Out the Aggies!! — 10/10/14

4th grade loves Football Friday’s!!