The Daily Log
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Reported by Mrs. Goehring
Welcome fine, new fifth graders to the wonderful world of fifth grade.
My name is Mrs. Goehring. My name is pronounced like a gear on a car and a ring. If it is too difficult to pronounce, then feel free to call me Mrs. G. Let me tell you a little about myself. This is my fourth year teaching fifth grade. Before that, I taught high school, mainly at Science Hill High School in Johnson City. I have taught first grade, second grade, elementary special education classes, and high school special education classes. I love teaching! It is one of my favorite things to do.
My family consists of my husband, my son, one dog, one cat, and two hermit crabs. My husband is the swim coach at Milligan College. Our son, Cory, is 25 years old and is working as an interpretive guide in Yosemite National Park in California. Our dog's name is Canela ( that is the Spanish word for cinnamon). She is a two year old chocolate lab that loves to chew on things she is not supposed to chew on. She ate my couch!!! My cat's name is Tokyo. She lays around in the sun spots of our house. The hermit crabs are now in our classroom, as you can see. We will learn a lot about these fascinating little critters. They were named Mr. Bubbles and Kokimo by last year's class.
My family loves to travel. In fact, that is one thing Mrs. Smith and I have in common. When Cory was about your age, we started traveling around the United States with him. When he started high school, we started traveling all over the world. Three years ago, my husband and I lived on a tropical island in the middle of a huge lake, in the middle of Nicaragua, in the middle of Central America. Traveling and meeting new people are my passions!
This year, I have many exciting things planned for our class. We are going to experience being immigrants, explore the amazing micro-worlds of plants, go camping at Camp Explore, and learn many new things that will help you on your exciting journeys through life.
I hope that you enjoy 5th grade as much as I do! I know that we will have a great year together. Remember, this is your classroom and we will all help one another to be the best that we can be! So, with that being said....let's start our adventures in learning together! :-)
Now, to tell you about our first day of school:
We all entered the classroom ready to begin an exciting first day of fifth grade. At first, we worked on our Breakfast for Our Brain. We filled out a student interest survey and a note card with our birthdays, two hobbies, and our favorite school subject. One of the students asked, "Can I put lunch as my favorite subject?"
Today was Annie's birthday! We sang happy birthday and then we learned the procedures for putting our backpacks and lunches in the locker room.
Next, we held our first morning meeting. We greeted with a cheerleading greeting. It was a new greeting for me! After that, we went to gym. Upon returning from gym, we made our math journals and glued the math vocabulary for 5th grade into our math journals. I read, "The Math Curse" to the class and we tried to solve a math problem for extra credit. Here's the problem: How many M&Ms does it take to line them the length of the Mississippi River? We learned that the Mississippi River is 4,000 kilometers long. One M&M is 1 centimeter long.
Before we knew it, it was time for lunch. We all went outside and had a picnic lunch. Then, when we returned to the classroom, we made our class job wheels and started to work on our goal books that will be placed in our goal quilt.
Then, it was time for music. We met Mrs. Alysson, our new music teacher. After music class, Annie's Mom and Dad came into the room and brought us birthday treats. We ate cupcakes and popcorn (from Mrs. Cradic) and drank juice. Then, it was time for our favorite part of the day....recess! We played on the new tire swing.
Finally, we returned to the room to pack up our belongings and get ready to go home. It was a fabulous first day of school. I can't wait to see what tomorrow brings! :-)