Week ?

Ok,

So the end of another week. This week in reading we were working on the letter "t" which makes the /t/ sound, blending the letters 's', 'a', and 't' together to say the word sat, and writing (drawing/scribbling) about different vehicles.

This is how it went. Apparently the letter t not only makes the /t/ sound, it also makes the /s/, /p/, "he hit me", "I'm bleeding", "BA" and "MR. RUSHING" sounds. Even though I never taught any of those other sounds they really seemed to catch on to those parts of the letter t. There were 4 students (out of 20) who successfully blended the word sam, while the others attempted to do so by re-arranging my library, taking things off of my desk, un-tieing their shoes, taking off their shoes, smelling their shoes, throwing their shoes, writing on their shoes, or hitting their neighbor. I really fee like they got the idea of blending by the end of the week it was wonderful! Oh and our vehicles! Our vehicles were actually pretty good. Kemon, who rarely ceases to impress me, drew a picture of himself on a school bus colored yellow, in the lines, with uncolored windows and tires colored black. He wrote the words, "I can see the str" on the top. Str stands for store, which I did prompt the class beforehand, but I was still impressed. Karissa decided to draw a picture of herself and her mom, that was also great.

Today was especially crazy for me for some reason. I went into the day expecting to give an assessment to my students on how to order numbers between 1 and 10 counting both forward and backward

It went fairly smoothly until my first 3 finished and still 7 hadn't started yet. So while I'm trying to help the ones that havn't started yet get on their feet, the three that have finished begin to get out of their seats. This leads to their idea that they can run around my classroom and steal pencils from other people who are still trying to take their test. This is problem number one, but its also leads to problem number two, when the other student screams, "gimme back my pencil!!!" and starts grabbing and hitting the theif. So I take away the thief's recess, and the theif then begins to cry a piercing cry that I'd swear matches the sound that wolf cubs make when they have been lost in the arctic desert and know that the only way to reach their parents is by creating the most annoying sound possible. Maybe my kids are trying to reach their parents.... Anyways, then Caitlin decides to get out of her desk and take her test on another desk, Deandre sticks his tongue out at Arial who just got her pencil stolen, Arial screams, "DEANDRE IS MAKING FUN OF ME," and Tanyjah decides she's done, walks over to my desk and begins re-arranging the pictures that are sitting on top of my desk. So in order to curtail some of the madness, I decide to say forcefully, "sit down with your heads on your desks," which worked for a bit.

There was one good part of the day though, during calendar math I had about 90% of my students with their pointer fingers up counting with me. It was pretty good. That's one party of the day that things are starting to work. The kids come in, put up their homework folders, put up their backpacks, sit down and start writing. Its actually pretty cool and I can have them quiet for the first 20 minutes of the day which is amazing. If only I could cut and paste that part of the day to the rest of the day it would be awesome. Anyways, that's what's going on with me now. It's tough, and I feel lost most of the time, but we're making it work. Next Monday is a new day right?