Wednesday WOW 1/14/14

I'm linking up with Em @ Curious Firsties for her weekly linky party Wednesday WOW.

For the first time since school started, all of my students were able to have their own computer in the computer lab. Last year when we had moved from the main building so it could be renovated, all of the computers from the computer lab had been divided and put into all of the classrooms. I'm not sure what happened, but when they were moved back into the computer lab, mice, cords, keyboards, etc... were missing. We only had eighteen out of thirty computers working. I just had everyone work with a partner. When I got the kinders, we never went as a class. 

So Friday we went to the computer lab for the first time after moving students back to their original classes. I was looking forward to all of the firsties having their own computer, but most of them were not able to log in since by themselves, so spent the entire time helping them to log in. I gave them each a card with their log in info on it, but they still had problems. Hopefully once we start going regularly, they will get it. 

One of our kdg teachers refuses to help her kids, she says they need to do it by themselves, some spend the entire time trying to get on. I just don't have the heart to do that. 

I tried something a little different at least for me last week. I was reading Sara at School's blog, actually catching up on some older posts. She was talking about having a fluency center. I had read about one somewhere on some blog before, but never did anything. Anyway, I needed an activity to for my early finishers to do when they finished their writing center. I just spur of the moment gave them a sand timer and a letter sound fluency page to work on. They really seemed to like it. I decided I am going to keep it rather informal for now. I will have a couple of sand timers, sound fluency pages, sight word practice, and some reading passages.

We are just starting our midyear testing, I'm afraid I am going to have a lot of firsties scoring "at rick" or "low". Several that left my room needed RTI started on them, but it didn't happen so I'm getting ready to start that process. I was thinking about starting some after-school tutoring, but since I have to leave ASAP to pick up Delaney, I wasn't sure how it would work. I was talking to one of our evening custodians today, I asked her if she thought parents would be willing to bring the kids back at 4 so I could tutor them. She cares so much about our school and the kids that she offered to watch them after school until I get back to school from picking up Delaney. WOW!!!

One more little chuckle, I just read this on my sister's FB. She is a school secretary.

"A mom spelling her son's name to me on the phone today: J as in jump; a as in apple, apostrophe as in semi-colon..."