Big changes this week

     So our new second grade teacher started this week. She spent most of the week setting up her classroom, planning, getting caught up on school/county policies, and pushing into the existing classrooms so the kids could get familiar with her. Families were notified on Thursday if their child was moving to the new classroom and was also Back to School Night. Our principal decided not to have her host her own "presentation" for Back to School night since the families hadn't had much time to process the news. She was in her room and we encouraged families to go up and meet her, more like an Open House thing. Today, her kids spent most of the day with us and then she took them for the last 45 mins of the day to do some class-bonding stuff. I'm sure that was interesting because the room still doesn't have desks....
     We moved our kids' desks to the new room after school today and they will start fresh with their new teacher on Monday. I lost 6 children to the new class, which will put me at a FABULOUS 20 students!!! I can't wait to get started with this new, smaller group!

     On another note, I've got some new information on my sticky fingers girlie. Apparently she isn't stealing due to a lack of "things" at home. She actually always has the latest pop culture gadget and is covered head to toe in Beiber-related paraphernalia. Her stealing is an attention-seeking behavior. She has an older brother at home who gives mom an extremely hard time. Mom is preoccupied with the older brother and compensates by giving my little one material things. Really what she needs is some quality time. I started her on a behavior program her teacher used last year and her rewards are not material. She can earn computer time, go help the art teacher, visit another teacher as a helper, eat lunch with a friend, etc. She craves social interaction and I'm using that to motivate her at school. I hope this works!

     I know this is turning out to be the world's longest post but I have one more interesting story for the week... I'm not sure if you're familiar with it, but our county uses the Math Investigations program for math. It's a hands-on, inquiry based program that has a tendency to stir up some controversy among the more conservative schools. I have a student who moved here from out of state and her parents made sure to tell me she is gifted and needs to be challenged in math. I thought, no problem. Investigations has differentiation built in and makes it easy to extend lesson for high students. Well, at back to school night, the mom says to me, "I knew we would be repeating some math but I didn't think we would be repeating an entire book." And she pulls out the same student work book we use in second grade. In first grade, her class used the same exact book we are using now.... Uh oh. So now we have to have a meeting with admin and the parents to figure out what to do for her. Her parents want her to go to a 3rd grade class for math but my principal is against it. Somehow I have a feeling this is going to create a lot of extra work for me... sigh. Oh well, add it to the To-do list :)