I got to school before Ms. Wink today at about 7:30 am. Usually she's in around that time, so I was getting a bit nervous when it was 7:50 and she hadn't shown up yet. She busted in at 7:55 and was running in a million directions. I tried to help as much as I could to get things together for her. I feel so bad - she works so hard, but it's just never enough - there's just too much for one person to do per day!
There was a parent/teacher meeting for the ballerina student. She's such a great student, there really wasn't much to talk about - just how great she is!
I held the students outside of the classroom until the parents left. I then ran around the classroom and tried to pull together the classroom as Ms. Wink checked in homework. I even managed to hold a morning meeting! One student suggested that we play "what's up?" where you greet the person next to you and then as, "what's up?" the student answers with a quick fact about their life. I was surprised by the variety of answers - from getting a new pet, to a fish dying, to an upcoming trip to NYC, the students were eager to share about their lives. I allowed for a few follow up questions, then we were off to chorus - but wait! Chorus was cancelled because the teacher was absent - so the students all watched a movie because 3/4 teachers were in parent/teacher conferences.
I taught math today - Scientific Notation. It was a great concept, and the students seemed to catch on pretty quickly. I also reviewed standard notation (2, 346), and expanded notation (2000+300+40+6). All great things to use in higher level math. Especially scientific notation.
I began the new read aloud book, Morning Girl, which is meant to be a companion piece to the Social Studies unit on Native Americans. We're only a few pages in, but they seem to be liking it! I asked a lot of questions about what the students think about the characters - where do they live, how old is the main character, what nationality is she? They were able to make some great inferences about the story's characters, setting, and demographic information - based on 5 pages. The main character is Native American, and the students nailed it right away. Great job, scholars!
At the end of the day, the students had a challenge ticket drawing. There were lots of tchotchkes donated by the parents, and you'd be surprised how crazy students can get over pencils, erasers, and finger puppets. The Asperger's student (who we'll call Merp from now on) had been working since the beginning of the year to tabulate the challenge ticket winnings. He had the number of individuals' tickets as well as the corresponding percentage chance of winning, all planned out. When a student's name was drawn from the challenge bin, he would say "Emily Donahue had 35 tickets and a 9% chance of winning. Congratulations." He sounded just like the Emmy/Oscar announcers who say things like "this is the third nomination and first win for so-and-so." It was cracking me up! Merp really is a funny kid!
At the end of the day, Amy said to me, "you know, I was thinking last night - what am I going to do with out Emily next semester - I realized that I'm going to be all alone with them! It's going to be tough without you!" Well, that was sweet!
No comments:
Post a Comment