The Best (or Worst) of 4th Grade

Hello wonderful readers!  The flu has hit Whitney's house, so Brenda has been at school without her other half of the team.  The students have been little angels while they wait for their teacher to return have acted like most students do with a sub...try to get away with anything they can!  Luckily, this sub was used to our classes last year and this one is like heaven compared to those!

Anyway, the real reason for this post is to join the Best (or Worst) linky party with 3AM Creations.  

Brenda:

1. Grade Level I Currently teach: 4th grade...this is my 7th year (5 years all subjects, 2 years of Math, Science, and Social Studies only)

2. This grade has its ups and downs.  The kids are at a level that they are starting to understand sarcastic comments and jokes, but they are still kids.  They soak up anything new and still think school can be fun.  The downfall seems to be that there is a lot of brand new material that kids have not been exposed to.  Also, parents can be a help or a hindrance at this age as well!

3. Two years ago, I had "that class" that everybody knew about...in a good way though.  Kids were great...parents were great.  Well, our National Honor Society hosted a Pull Tab Drive for the Ronald McDonald House.  One teacher made a comment that she was going to beat our class and there was no way we could keep up with her.  Now I am by no means competitive one of the most competitive when it comes to competition of classes.  This teacher had not learned her lesson when she made the same comment about the canned food drive at Christmas (which we won by having about 400 cans to her about 100).  Well, we started out a little slow on the pull tabs.  A few came in here and there, but then my class parents got wind of the heated competition.  We suddenly had pull tabs coming in from everywhere and we had to count each one.  We ended up having 5 paper boxes filled with pull tabs (over 100,000).  Let's just say that that teacher left our class alone after that.  

I shared this story because I think it is important to build a sense of community with your students...especially at this level.  They can help you by helping each other, or they can make your life miserable when everyone is on their own.  Sometimes we get bogged down with the curriculum, testing, etc, and we forget those life lessons that they need too.

Whitney(Finally, over this Flu mess)

1. Grade I currently teach: 4th Grade Reading/Language Arts (3rd year(total) in 4th, 2nd departmentalized)

2. THE BEST!  When I first started in the Teacher Ed Program, I wanted the little babies, but then I student taught in fourth grade... and that all changed!  I love 4th graders for many reasons, but mainly because they are young enough to still want their teacher to help them and to learn from them, but they are old enough to be independent on many things.  I have been blessed with classes that have a great sense of humor!

3. Memories!  Last year, I had my son around this time and had to take my maternity leave until spring break.  The students knew I would be back when they got back.  That morning, the librarian came up to me and told me that everyone looked so down to be back at school, except for my students. She had to slow them down as they were running down the hall at the sound of the morning bell.   Talk about feeling like a rockstar! Plus, that was a hard day for me leaving my little bundle, and I needed that reassurance that they still liked me.  Now, just need that feeling to last 27 more years LOL!

Now it is your turn, go link up with the 3AM Creations and tell us about your grade!