Off and Running on a Monday

Update: I wrote this post on Monday, but am linking up with Curious Firsties for their "Wednesday Wow" linky party to share my excitement!

I have a few things to celebrate after a very long day.

First, today we had the Assistant Secretary for the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, U.S. Department of Education visit our building today. That title is quite a mouthful! I had the opportunity to present a group, including her, as well as other education leaders in our district and community, sharing ways I use technology in my classroom. I think this is the first time I felt relatively calm about speaking in front of a group. As another staff member said, "you just shared your story". I felt very comfortable talking about technology and sharing all the things my students have accomplished using technology.  

The group that was in the presentation then broke into smaller groups and toured classrooms. My students did a great job as our visitors asked them questions! They were engaged in their centers and were excited to talk about what they are doing in centers.


My next celebration is the progress a couple of my kiddos have made in the 3 weeks we've been in school. Our curriculum teaches letter sounds prior to letter ID. I checked all of my students on letter sounds before I started introducing them as prescribed by the curriculum. Many of my students only knew 6 or fewer letter sounds. In fact, there were only 4 students out of 23 that knew more than 6 letter sounds. Today I started retesting and found that the 2 kiddos I tested today jumped by about 10 sounds. Happy teacher- right here! The kiddos were pretty proud of their work too!


My final celebration was a happy ending to my day. Back in July while on vacation, I had the opportunity to see a mama turtle lay her nest. You can read about that here. Well, the nest hatched this week and all but one hatchling survived. The part that made my day was that the turtle coordinator, who I met on vacation, is a teacher and her class got to experience her doing the nest evacuation. Pretty cool stuff!

What do you have to celebrate in your classroom? I've love to hear about your celebrations, big or small!