Linky Party!

My first ever linky party... how exciting!! 

Saw this on Adventures of a Third Grade Teacher and figured since I have plenty of practice reflecting on Grad School, why not reflect on regular school!! Here is an opportunity to reflect on the good and the bad this year:


The Good:
Without a doubt my students! They crack me up daily with the hilarious things they say and are honest to goodness the sweetest things imaginable. The end of this year is bittersweet. I am proud they will all be so successful in first grade but sad to see them go!


Creating my own blog!! Creating this little blog and stalking following so many other blogs has helped me SO much this year. When I have had those days where I feel drained and like I just can't make it one more day before the weekend, I get an e-mail update that I have a new comment to read on here and it gives me an all new energy :) Having so many other experienced teachers online that are just one click away from my blog has helped me to become a much better teacher. I wish I had taken the time to look at teacher blogs my first two years of teaching!!


My favorite of all was watching my kids come in not knowing how to hold a pencil and not knowing their letters or sounds and now having each and every one of them able to READ AND WRITE LIKE CRAZY!!!  I am so proud of my little ones and how hard they worked this year! I love to see their love for reading and writing every day in my class!!


The Not-So-Good (these are much harder to come up with, thank the Lord!!):
The amount of stress I had this year with it being my first year in kindergarten and my first year of grad school- whew! I am happy to say I am sticking in the same grade next year and will not have to worry about all new lesson plans while doing grad school homework at the same time!


I feel like so many teachers say this but I did not do nearly enough social studies this year. I did integrate it into our lessons occasionally but not enough as I should have. But one of the perks of reflecting is knowing what I will be sure to work on over the summer! I will probably end up purchasing Julie Lee's Community Helpers lesson from TPT for next year, it is one of the MANY lessons on my wish list!


I know it is crazy that this year hasn't even ended and I am already looking forward to planning for next year. Whenever people say "you get the summers off" they have noooooooo idea!! How about any of you?? I would LOVE to see your reflections on this year!!!