Monday

Tomorrow I start tutoring.  It’s an official district program for students who are ELL.  I work Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2:15 to 3:45 (school gets out at 2:06, but we can’t leave before three anyway).  Hopefully after they take out taxes they’ll leave me something!

In the meantime, every Wednesday staff meeting they give us some new thing to do.  Now we have to do these 2-page lesson plans for writing, science, and math — that’s 30 pages a week, on top of the SFA (reading) lesson plans.  Yeah, nothing like lots of extra work!  It was practically a mutiny at the staff meeting last week!  You know me, though.  I was walking back to the office afterwards and the principal and one of the assistants ended up walking back at the same time.  They made a comment about the meeting, so I said “Well, at least I stopped dozing off during the meetings!”  So they got a good laugh out of that.  I told them that just the night before in my class we were talking about the book Who Moved My Cheese. They said they even had a video of it! I guess no one’s seen it in a while!

What happens when you have a room full of children who don’t believe in coughing or sneezing into anything but mid-air? Yeah, what fun. I had a sore throat starting Thursday and ending some time Saturday. Now it’s the constant sneezing and sniffling. I went nowhere further than taking out the trash over the weekend, though. I need to be healthy for this weekend coming up!

In science today we made flashlights. (see photos above) We made switches out of brass fasteners, f-clips, and paper clips. They also had bulbs and bulb holders, batteries and battery holders, wires, and construction paper. We didn’t get anywhere near this far in the science kit last year! This is my favorite of the science units I think. I’ve learned a lot as well! And face it — how often do you get to make a flashlight? The only problem is that all the equipment goes back in a couple of weeks. Bummer. But they refill the kit as needed and then ship it off to another school. I don’t remember what our next science unit is. We only have two left — the one with seeds and plants and the one with the sand table and erosion.

-2, -21, +20, -700, O, Frindle

No, it’s not the stock exchange. But I can tell you’re dying to know! (or at least remotely curious)

-2
I am now down two students from my original 27. One totally disappeared. I suspected she may have been eaten by tigers (an obvious risk in a desert city!), but I found out yesterday that she merely moved to another school. If she moves back to our part of town and our school, she’ll be mine again. That’s fine. The second one I lost yesterday. I actually got paperwork on him. I expected him to go; he’s missed at least a month of school — and I think really a couple of weeks more than a month. He missed the first part because his mother had major medical issues that she was having taken care of in Mexico. Eventually she sent him back up here to stay with a relative so he wouldn’t miss any more school here. He was back maybe two days — and got appendicitis. So he missed a lot more school, then came back for two or three days. Then he was gone again. We do our attendance on a district-wide computer program, so every morning I watched my student count. When I did attendance after lunch yesterday, his name was gone. This wasn’t a surprise. He transferred schools, so I’m guessing he’s at the school near where his aunt lives.

-21, +20
October 9th was the last day of the first quarter, and the tenth was grading day. Monday the 13th started the new quarter, and the gods smiled upon me. I got a great new group for SFA (reading). This group is 3rd and 4th graders who are in 4.1 (first half of fourth grade reading level). Last time I had fourth and fifth graders in 3.1 — first half of third grade — and some were only there because they’d been in 2.2 for so long that they had to move them. They weren’t as advanced as 3.1 yet. This group actually follows directions more or less and no one’s thrown anything at me. In fact, there’s no one who seems likely to throw anything at me. I like that! I also have my very first student who has the same first name as I do. So while my days are still exhausting, it isn’t the students causing the stress!

-700
Yeah, that’s the biggie. Because I’m on year-round pay now, I’m taking home $700 less a month! I tried to meet with the person in charge of the tutoring program on Friday, but she left early. Last year they did it the second half of the year. Certain students are “invited” to the program, and it’s a regular program, not like if a teacher stays after and tutors someone. I’ll let you know Monday if I get signed up. That’d mean working either one extra hour three days a week or one and a half hours two days a week. We can’t leave before 3 anyway, so it’s not keeping me after school but rather mandating how that time is spent two or three days a week. Anyway, I’ll let you know.

O
It’s amazing how easy it is to forget names at my age! At the end of last year, a new student arrived. I’m sure I wrote about him. He certainly consumed the majority of my time! I see him this year — but could never remember his name!! Well, I saw it on the whiteboard by the staff mailboxes yesterday because he was the boy from our school who placed the highest at the inter-school track meet. I knew the name as soon as I saw it! (It starts with O)

Frindle
There are lists, written and unwritten, of famous children’s books. These are books that “everyone” tends to read or have read to them. One of those is Because of Winn Dixie, which I read to one of my third grade classes. I hated it. I read it because the movie was coming out, and because “everyone” reads it to their third graders. I didn’t like the characters, plot — there was nothing I liked about it. Another of those is Island of the Blue Dolphin. I was reading that with my very first class, because one of the other sixth grade teachers declared we should all read it with our students. We hated it. My whole class and I. When I found out that we were going to also see the movie, I declared that life is too short to read books we hate, and we’d finish the book by watching the movie instead. Honestly, the best actor in the movie was the dog. The lines and the acting were as awful as the book.

So I am not impressed with “must-read” books, and tend to avoid them. However, there was a sale on Frindle in the book orders so I got a class set. I read it with last term’s SFA group. Honestly — I totally loved it. I liked the characters, the story, the ending — everything. Well, except for one chapter being incredibly long, which means I had to stop in the midst of it twice so that it took me three days to read instead of the usual chapter a day. I’d heard of it, of course, and knew the basic story. It was still awesome.
http://tinyurl.com/63wnun

Going swimming this afternoon. This will probably be the last weekend with 90-degree weather (should go up to 94), especially since it’s only supposed to be in the 80s now.

Is it that time already?

Well, yes, it is. First of all, for those new to the insanity of my world, the above widget (if it comes out right) is the widget that shows how many words I’ve written for NaNoWriMo. It should be at zero at the moment, since NaNoWriMo http://www.nanowrimo.org/ doesn’t actually start until November first.

My first attempt at it was in 2004, and if you got a book from me for Christmas, that’s when I wrote it. I did fix it up a bit, but it was my first attempt at NaNoWriMo and I loved it! The book was also great fun to write. The second year I didn’t finish. I’m not sure how far I got. Part of it was fun and interesting, but I couldn’t get 50,000 words out of that idea. I got stuck. Someday I’ll unstick it. The following year was my last in Wisconsin, and I got the people so far, but then they encountered something and they’ve been staring at it for nearly two years now! In trying to think of an idea, I came up with one that I think can actually pick up where that one left off. That means when I do my word count chart, I need to make sure the words I wrote that year are deducted from the total. Technically, you’re supposed to start from scratch each year, but heck. I think I can make this work. Last year I did finish, but that one needs work and I think perhaps some research as well. Last year I was able to attend regional writing times (like a bunch of us got together in coffee shops and typed, etc.). This year it’s going to be tricky, because I’m also taking classes. So I don’t actually anticipate finishing this year, but we’ll see. On the plus side, the limited time may make me more efficient. We’ll see.

Another “that time” is report card time. Our first quarter has ended. Ours are done on a computer program through the district. I have a few grades left — science and the behavior ones, but then I have to go and put in a comment in each subject. It doesn’t let you exit and print the report cards otherwise! Then I have to do the envelopes and stuff them with the regular report cards (which I’ll print at school), the SFA report cards, and whatever else they give us to throw in the envelopes.

Our schedules change at school on Monday. Before we were doing 1.5 hours of SFA and then an additional half hour with the same kids for reading intervention. That was way too much togetherness, believe me! Now instead we’ll do reading intervention with the kids we have “first period” and spend more time with them. That’s fine with me. That’s a great class, and it’s also the class I’m held responsible for. We’d talked about that — how it’s weird to give me data on my class when I only had one of them for reading, and then expect me somehow to do something about the data.

Speaking of data, I was so upset this week that I wrote an e-mail to one of the assistant principals. The math person gives her all our test data, and then she (asst prin) sends us e-mails on how badly we’re doing and we have to fix it, etc. Every single test. Last year and this year. I got fed up. For the current test 19% scored in the Falls Far Behind range. So I pointed out that 38% are in the English language program in the morning, so they get no math outside of the 75-minute block, unlike the rest of the class, who get another half hour of review and intervention. Thus if they don’t get it the first day it’s taught, they don’t get it. There’s no other time to work with them. I also have four students who go to RTI (a math intervention sort of program) DURING math, which means that they are getting the help they need on the basics, but missing most of the lesson and practice. I pointed out that I hadn’t pulled them from the program because I believed that in the long run that would help them, but if it was her preference I would pull them. That was Thursday.

At the end of the day right before the students left, the RTI person (who’s also the person who reports the math data) was in my classroom to talk to me immediately after the kids left. She is frustrated too, by the way things are going at the school and how it’s evolved that reading is what matters and the whole focus of the school, yet we get chastised for the kids not doing well in math with less instruction time than last year. Oh, and let’s throw in that over 2/3 of the class was below level on the AIMS last year — so they should suddenly be doing math on grade level? Anyway, at the moment the best we can do is that the RTI kids will go half an hour later, so they’re there for the instruction part. She’ll also modify their tests for them and administer them herself.

We started division on Thursday (remember, this is 4th grade, so they also multiplied and divided last year). I also gave them a timed multiplication test. I reminded them about multiplying by ones and zeros before the test. One child ONLY answered those — he knew no other multiplication facts, and wouldn’t have known those if I hadn’t mentioned it before the test. Could this be? So in the afternoon when I had the whole class there and they were working on math, I called them to my desk and had them skip-count by 2s. About a third couldn’t. One of the Luises (I have 3): 2, 4, 6, 6, 6, 8, 10, 10, 10, …. So I sent the ones who couldn’t do it outside (and in my classroom, opening the door is literally going outside) with someone else to teach them to skip-count by 2s. Are you wondering if they’ll pass the next math test on multiplication and division on the 21st? Are you wondering if I’ll get another stupid e-mail asking why so many kids didn’t pass?