Ms. Donahue has a raspy voice

10/5/10

Today I made my triumphant return to class.  Ms. Wink told me that the students were asking about me over the past two class days.  Awwww...so cute!  In the morning, the students all filed in to the hallway and asked me how I was doing.  My voice was a little raspy from the cold, which actually ended up helping me to get them to quiet down throughout the day. 

One student updated me on her status with the Boston Ballet's Nutcracker auditions.  Since the beginning of the school she had been updating me about he love of ballet, her 2008 & 2009 parts, and her excitement to try out.  

Two weekends ago she auditioned, and she found out over the wee

kend that I was sick.  She was thrilled to announce that she 

received TWO parts (literally bouncing up and down with excitement and flashing a huge smile)!  She will play a mouse and a Bon-Bon (one of the children who comes out from under Mother Ginger's dress).  She'll dance in 11 of the performances, and I promised her that I would go to one of the performances.   

I led the morning meeting today - a last minute decision because Ms. Wink had to go to a meeting unexpectedly.  It wasn't the best meeting, the students were very talkative and didn't fully participate.  They did like the activity - we had a pile of index cards in the middle of the room with a student's name on each card.  The students picked up a card, then walked over to that student and said "Good morning, (insert name)."  They loved the activity - it was the second time that they did the activity, so I had them explain the instructions to me because I was teaching a lesson in another class when they first tried it.  It was great to see the students take ownership of the morning meeting activity - and I think that they loved teaching the teacher.

In math, we reviewed material that was going to be on the test.  The class split up into groups for specific instruction - I was given Cartesian Coordinates.  YES!  I helped out 5 students and walked them through the graph construction process.  I reviewed how to title, label, and display intervals on the graph.  I stressed that these are all important parts of the Cartesian Coordinate graph, and even if they forget how to graph the provided data, they will get partial credit for titling, labeling, and placing the intervals on the x and y axis.  Additionally, once they have all of that information on the graph, the provided ordered pairs (x, y) are just points to plot on the graph.  They already did all of the hard work.  We practiced plotting points, and the students got to draw the points on the white board, which they loved.

On a funny memory note - a student was absent today for growing pains.  Growing pains!  Oh, how I forgot about that terrible pain!  I'm fairly short, so I didn't have the pains for long, but I do remember the pain that growing does cause.  I also remember my 6'5" brother growing inches overnight and being in excruciating pain.  Bodies are amazing...and a little weird!