Sunday, November 30, 2008

One DOWN!

I finally finished one of my portfolios. I couldn't believe I typed so much crap in one day. I'm not as fast as BSing as I was before though.

I'm going to print it out tomorrow at work and attempt to finish my other portfolio tomorrow evening. I'm just glad there's no observations required.

Procrastination

I have no one to blame but myself for not working on my portfolios earlier. I have 3 to finish...1 by Thursday and 2 by Friday. I have about 7 more pages to do for one due on Friday. I think I'm about a third done with the one due on Thursday. I'm not sure how far along I am with the other due on Friday though...I better check it later. I just want to take a nap.

Friday, November 28, 2008

Black Friday Madness

I wasn't sure if I wanted to go to any Black Friday sales this year until I looked at the actual ads in the paper yesterday. BFC is back from Hilo for Thanksgiving weekend and I figured it'd be something for us to do together since he hadn't really experienced Black Friday shopping before. I went over to his place around 12:30 this morning and we went down to Waikele. As we were passing the area where Steve and Barry's is, I noticed a sign that said "Valet $5." BFC said, "There's no way they would make people pay money to park in a public lot." I thought the same thing, but we were both wrong. People were lined up just to park in the lots with money in hand! We ended up parking above the outlets and walking down. Some of the stores didn't open until 5 and there were already lines forming outside of them. BFC bought some shoes from Skechers, where they were having a good deal: Buy one pair and get the second one for 1 cent. The LeSportSac and Coach lines were too long and I didn't want to wait. Also went to some other clothing stores where I found nothing.

Off to Wal-Mart next. We got into the parking lot at 3:15 and the store didn't open until 5. The line was down the sidewalk. We ended up falling asleep for about an hour in the car and got up, but didn't get in line until 5 on the dot. That was a mistake since we should have gotten in to the line when we got there. The line was now snaking around the parking lot and we ended up getting to the store (finally) at 7. The sun was already coming out by the time we walked in and everything was already sold out. Very disappointing. BFC ended up buying an MP3 player for himself, which was steal (8GB for $40).

Next, we went to Pearlridge. Circuit City was comfortably crowded and there was still tons of merchandise to purchase. I was finally able to get some more DVDs I wanted. BFC bought a camera and another MP3 player for his brother. We walked around the mall afterwards, but didn't have enough energy to look around anywhere in particular.

Ended up taking him home and I went out with friends for lunch. Came home and crashed for two hours. I think I'll be ok now, but I have to do work. Back to reality...

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Jerky Turkey

Tomorrow we have our school's Turkey Trot. It's basically a way to promote physical fitness among the students and promote collaboration and teamwork. Students have to pair up and come up with first and last name for their turkey (a turkey worksheet) and run around the campus to various stations. The previous school I'd been at hadn't done this, so I'm interested in seeing how they do.

We went to the computer lab this afternoon since the kids needed to finish their simple PowerPoint presentations about Thanksgiving. Some of their presentations came out really cute and I'm happy with how they turned out. What amazed me though was the number of students who didn't know how to close the program. I cannot understand how they wouldn't be able to do so without reminders...I'll have to get it into their heads eventually.

During artic today, my HTT mentioned that he may be moving to another grade level because we'll be getting a new teacher. Now, my boss has been saying she'd been trying to get someone new because our numbers are so heavy (all three of us on the grade level are at 31). We'll be able to give 8 of our students to the new teacher. I'm not sure if this is the truth or if things won't change. I admit I'm not happy with the amount of students I have or the amount of chatter that goes on, but overall, I like my students and I know that they've adjusted to the schedule and how I run things. However, change would be good...we'll see what happens.

Monday, November 24, 2008

Field Trip #2

Today, we had a field trip to the Arizona Memorial and Battleship Missouri museum. I wasn't looking forward to this field trip (honestly I don't look forward to any field trip), but I rolled out of bed this morning at 5:15 to buy my lunch from Kabuki. I was happy there was no line there.

When I got to school, I was concerned that the kids would have to put their lunches in boxes since we were probably going to eat lunch there. I had to dig around my classroom to find suitable boxes. I was fortunate to find a few that weren't too dusty. The kids were excited to see me since I had been out on Friday and I found a note from some of my girls stating that some of the boys were out of line and misbehaving.

The bus left at 8, but our tour didn't start until 9. It doesn't take an hour to drive from my school to Pearl Harbor, but I'm sure traffic was taken into consideration. The movie before the boat ride was interesting, but when we got on to the memorial, there were some kiddies who felt the need to run around, even after the people at the memorial said NOT to run. Anyway, then we went off to the Missouri museum...but we couldn't get on to Ford Island because we didn't have a pass. Imagine sitting with 41 10-year-olds on a bus for 20 minutes! They were all complaining about how they had to go to the bathroom, drink water, or dying of starvation.

So we finally get on to the boat (LATE and by then I'm starting to feel hunger pangs as well) and we have this older guy as our tour guide. When we get into the boat itself, he got frustrated with my students b/c they weren't listening to his spiel...but he had just told me that it was ok if the kids went around and touched things around the museum. So I had to talk with my students about being respectful, etc. in the middle of the museum...I was not a happy camper. The tour went well after "the talk" though.

After the tour and lunch, we got back to school and I realized we had Hawaiian Studies, so I flagged down our Kumu and got to relax for 15 minutes. My back and feet were killing me...I need a massage. I'm so not looking forward to Wednesday (Field Trip #3).

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Thanksgiving Week

I'm so glad there are only 3 days this week. Out of the 3 days, we'll be going on 2 field trips, so I'll hardly be teaching. After this week, there are only 3 weeks left until Christmas break. As I was thinking about it today, I realized that I needed to get cracking on the Christmas gifts.

For the past 3 years, I've had my students do 3 different projects for their parents' Christmas gifts: string art of a snowman, a puzzle wreath ornament, and a poinsettia plant for their gift envelope. I think I usually started it after Thanksgiving. I really should write these things down.

Along with the "fun" things, I wanted to have my students start on a PowerPoint presentation for Social Studies, which means I'll need to go into the lab quite often in the next 3 weeks. I wish I could have the kids work on the laptops, but like I mentioned before, I only have 10. Fortunately, they all have access to the wireless now b/c the tech guy came in a fixed the settings.

Hopefully I won't lose my head before the 19th.

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Sub Days

I used to worry a lot about leaving my students with substitutes. Then I got a little better as time went on because I would usually call the same people to sub for me, so they knew my routines and what was expected. Now that I'm no longer in the same district as my subs, I've had to just put my job on to TSEAS and let whoever take it.

I usually receive all the gritty details from students about which subs they liked and which ones they didn't. I tell them that I don't choose who I want to come in to sub for me, so they would just have to behave no matter who comes in. The only real downside of having a sub is making sub plans. I've found it easier just to make a generic sub plan and write in the details.

Even with taking the day off yesterday, I got nothing accomplished. My math papers have seem to pile up close the ceiling...well I haven't tried piling it ALL up yet, but I'm sure if I did, it'd be pretty close to the ceiling. I'm so looking forward to vacation...it's too bad my portfolios (3 of them) are all due on the same day...before vacation. :(

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Tech Life

Today was the first time I've ever used laptops with my students. I thought I was being pretty smart going through all the LTs ahead of time to put the link of the Math website (Johnnie's Math Page) on to the Favorites. I even went through the website on each of the LTs to make sure it ran smoothly. Once we were able to get the LTs set up, 2 of the 9 LTs my students were using decided not to connect to the wireless. This caused a mini-commotion, but we were able to get everyone into pairs to work on the website. I thought the website was pretty useful because it helped my students see how to use a protractor (which is one of the benchmarks for my grade level). I let the students play the different angle games for 45 minutes or so and had them work on book work. The majority of them were able to apply what they had learned from the computer to the actual thing, which was good, but some had trouble drawing angles. We need to practice that more...I need to find more worksheets that require them to draw angles and measure them.