Thursday, December 25, 2008

VACATION

I'm happy to be on vacation, but the piles of work next to my computer continue to glare at me every day. I got done with one huge pile today and have it ready to return to my classroom. I went yesterday to drop off my Fisher supplies and I realized that I left the room a mess on Friday afternoon. I ended up cleaning one corner of the room, but still have to tackle my desk.

One positive thing is that I was able to rearrange the desks so that I have 6 little groups now instead of 5 huge ones. Losing those 8 students made a huge difference to the setup of my classroom. I'm hoping they'll be ok, but kids are resilient and I'm sure they'll be fine. Now I feel like I'll be able to do a lot more with less students and I'll be able to stay more on top of things.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Breaking News to Kids

Tomorrow will be the day my grade level tells the students about the new class. I'm wondering how the kids will take it. Several of them had to deal with a transition last year as well. I know I'm looking forward to having a smaller class (especially around the weeks before breaks), but I'm not looking forward to some of the kids' faces. It'll be the talk of recess, I'm sure!

I should have finished my Christmas gifts earlier...now we're scrambling to finish everything!

I'm just counting down the days until vacation is official....2 and 1/2 more days.

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Rainy Day

Today's rain was the worst I've seen in a while. The sidewalk by my room was pretty much flooded by the time I arrived at school this morning. I was not a happy camper sloshing around in my slippers in the rain. Thank goodness I was wearing jeans.

I figured that not many students would come in today due to terrible traffic and weather. By the time I had to turn in my attendance, I had 17 present. My GLC calls me sounding extremely happy asking me how many students I had. I told her and she exclaimed, "I win! I only have 9." I couldn't believe it! I figured the majority of my kids would be there...after a while, I had 20 kids, so 11 were absent. I don't think I've ever had 11 kids absent since I've started teaching.

Having those 11 gone really made a difference, so I'm really looking forward to having 8 of my students removed to the new class. The classroom was just really different, even with my naughty ones present. I think it's just the amount of bodies in the room at one time. There was some noise today, but at least it was working noise.

I'm really looking forward to vacation. Hopefully tomorrow will go by quickly. Maybe it'll rain again....

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

ALL DONE!

I am finally finished with my three portfolios. It's such a relief since I have another course online that started this week and I want to focus all my energy on to that one.

I keep telling myself I won't be a procrastinator, but I never seem to follow through. My hand felt like it was going to fall off this afternoon since I needed to hand-write my final portfolio. The instructor hadn't provided a computer template. :( But, I guess it's better that way since I could just write big and fill in as much space as possible.

One More to Go

I finished my second portfolio this afternoon and I am debating whether or not to make the trek to drop it off tomorrow. I probably won't go since I didn't get as much of my final one done as I wanted to tonight. I do have PE during the last block, so maybe I can do more then...oh and I have my quarterly assessment tomorrow, so I'll be able to do my portfolio during that time. I have to remember to have my kids move their desks into columns tomorrow. Time to hit the sack!