The students loved the new set up of the room, but were a little dramatic about the change..."How will I know where to sit?!" (The tables are labeled.)
Today we had our first math test! It was interesting how the teachers work the tests. In Early Morning Activity (EMA) Ms. Wink gave the explanation of how math tests work. She also switched the seats of students so that there were no more than 2 people at a four-person desk - unless there was a study carroll present. Students were given an hour to work on the test, and were allowed to stay later if they needed the extra time. This time cut into math class, but students were given a multiplication assessment in that class, so they weren't missing any instruction. If students finished early, they had to sit for a half hour without doing anything - no reading, no free write. This was to encourage the students to take their time, read the directions thoroughly, and to double and triple-check their work.
When the students finished, I corrected their vocabulary-matching portion of the test with Ms. Salas. Most nailed the vocab, earning 18 points towards the final score. All of the tests went to Dr. Morse, who was in a small room correcting all three of the classes' tests.
Math was taught by the intern, Ms. Elias. The students took a multiplication assessment on math facts from the 0s through the 12s. The facts were scrambled about so that the students couldn't just add numbers to get the answers. I corrected my class, Ms. Elias corrected her class, and we split the other class. It took FOREVER to correct those sheets! There were something like 160 problems - multiplied by 36 kids - that's 5,760 questions - YIKES! I managed to correct them by the end of the day - thank goodness!
I sat in on a PLC meeting today, which ended up being a discussion about a grammar assessment. Because we haven't started a new math lesson yet, we're going to use the PLC time for a grammar assessment. Awesome! I hope that I get possessive/plural nouns! (Dr. Morse was still correcting tests.) We also talked about the Morning Meeting messages. Ms. Conrad had created the messages for the first 5 weeks of school, so it was now our turn to create messages. They split up the days of the week: Ms. Wink - Monday; Ms. Conrad - Tuesday; Dr. Morse - Wednesday, Mrs. Callahan - Thursday. Hmmmm, what to do with Friday? Let's give it to Emily! YES! I'm so excited to be part of the MM creation team! I did a term project on the Responsive Classroom, so I feel like I am qualified to participate in the process. Bring it on.
For the second day in a row, the fifth grade students had very poor behavior in the lunch room. The lunch monitor had chocolate milk spilled all over her. Unacceptable. Ms. Wink had another discussion with the students and brought the principal in to have a discussion about the behavior of the students. Tomorrow she will speak to the whole fifth grade team.
Math test were handed back to students today - I am amazed that Dr. Morse was able to get it all done! Ms. Wink went over appropriate test score viewing reactions. Students were told that they could not share scores on school property, because frankly, it's not their business. Also, it can hurt the feelings of other students if they did not get the grade that they wanted. I am happy to report that the student who at the beginning of the year responded that she found "EVERYTHING" about math challenging, got a 100% on the test!
I met with Ms. Wink again today after school to amend my schedule - things change quite quickly in this team! It's great experience for me to learn how to roll with the punches, be flexible, and still find time to meet all of the minutes requirements for on-task, on-topic learning. We also reviewed the math test scores, and were very impressed at how many of our students performed on the test - some of the students who we were concerned about got scores in the 90s and even a few 100s!
Happy 28th birthday to my brother, Ryan!
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