A Mostly Wonderful, a Little Bit Terrible Week

Yes, I know it is Monday and a little late. We had a church meeting that kept me happily busy for the week. Now back to last week, fortunately for me the wonderful outweighs the terrible. The best part of week, besides being refreshed each night at church,  was knowing it was our last week before my 2 week Spring Break. ; D I am teaching intersession the first week, but it is good pay, I will only have 9 of my students each day and we do lots of fun learning activities. Several of my high kids were disappointed that they weren't able to attend. ; P

I'll tell some more wonderful later so I can end on a positive note. I have a student  that has been having some behavior problems. Mom doesn't seem to know what's going on and I surely don't. If I correct him at all, he will start sulking and then start acting out. On Thursday, he and another boy were playing instead of reading so I told them both to go back to their desks. He went, but then he kept standing up and then he knocked a basket of books off of a shelf. I told him to move the table. He scooted his chair to the table, got on another chair and then turned the other chair over. One of the other students picked up the chair and put it back. He then got a chair from the table and started turning it over, picking it up and turning it over again. I thought that if I ignored him he would stop. WRONG. He continued doing it and I guess since he wasn't getting any attention, he decided he needed to do something more. The next thing I knew, he threw the chair about 8 feet across the room and hit a file cabinet (fortunately none of the other children were close by). I sent a student to get the principal and then he threw the chair back the other way. When the principal got there, he refused to go with her, so she asked me to take the rest of the class out. I took them out for a recess for 15-20 minutes to give her time to get him out, when we came back they were still in the room so I had to find someplace for us to go. As I have said before, we are currently under construction, so space is kind of limited. I ended up having them sit in the entry of the building. As I am trying to keep them quiet, I looked out and saw the spy for the admin building coming up the sidewalk. The kids were great and as she walked in, I was giving them an impromptu lesson about the history of the school. A little after that, the boy who was having the problem's mother came up and again the class did great. We were out of our class around 45 minutes. when we went back, we found a mess. The boy had thrown the kids work folders around so all of their pages were mixed up. I have some of those mats that snapped together and he tore them all apart. It took another 20-30 minutes to get the mats and papers straightened up. Once it was straightened up, we got back to work and some wonderful things happened.

I have always felt like my weakest area of teaching is writing. I have always felt unsure of how to go through the whole editing process. Well, all of our school was supposed to be teaching about US history in Core Knowledge and the principal wanted to see samples of writing that had gone through the editing process. Yikes! I told the kids they were going to do a 4 Square writing on either George Washington, Abraham Lincoln or Ben Franklin. We reviewed what we had learned about them. I told the them they could not write, "He had a wife.  He had children.  He was nice.  He died." When we wrote about Ben Franklin earlier, I got several that were that generic. I told them this wouldn't work because we wouldn't know which one they were talking about. We were running very short on time, but all of the kids wrote and I helped them edit it. I probably did too much of the editing, but next time, I won't be so rushed. Here are a few of my favorites.           

This one tells about a story from the book "Abe Lincoln's Hat".

Abe Lincoln had letters in his hat. When he was walking, some kids hid to make his hat come off. when the hat came off all of the the letters fell out. Then Abe laughed.

I thought he did a great job!

I loved this one!

Ben Franklin invented a birdbath. He invented those little glasses that help people to look up and down. He gave some food to people that were hungry.

I love the description of bifocals! It cracks me up every time I read it!
: D

Ben Franklin lived in  Boston. He always made new toys. I know because I read lots of books about him. I know he made a bird bath. I know he made some glasses. I know he made up counting by 5s.

I love that she learned all of this from books!

 

George Washington fought in a war. He won the war. He was happy. All of the people went home. All of the people went home to finish their gardens.


Haha,  I'm so glad they were able to go home and finish their gardens! I don't think that was in any of the books we read. ; P



This boy also wrote about a incident from "Abe Lincoln's Hat".

A boy and a boy were fighting over a colt. One boy said, "This is my horse." The other said, "No, this is my horse." Abraham Lincoln said, "Let the horse run to it's mother." He solved the problem.

I suggested to write two boys instead of "a boy and a boy" but he didn't want to change it. lol

We also wrote some "important papers to put in the Abe Lincoln hats we made. I told the kids they could write a letter to someone they loved, make a birthday list, a wish list, etc.. , This is one I got! This boy is only 7, my daughter is getting ready to turn 10 and is just now asking for cash. lol

The hats have an envelope on the back to put their important papers in.

I don't know why my format got messed up, oh well. We had our first day of intersession. I had 7 kids, we did a lot of reading and making words. They all had a good time and want to come back!
Hope you have a great week!