HOT cards

This year has already started off in an interesting way. It's only been three weeks and I've already started having problems with some of my kids and homework. I used to do sticker charts with my previous kids. I'd leave the charts up in front of everyone so the students could see each others' progress. I'd seen these things called HOT cards in the Scholastic catalogs and decided to try to use these things to see if they'd work for my kids. One of the pros of this is that it's helping me stay on top of collecting and checking the homework. I have one of the students collect the cards and I stamp the cards as I check the homework. With the sticker charts, I didn't really keep up with them and would forget to give the kids stickers to put on.

I was thinking of adding a checkbook incentive program as well. I'm going to try and read up about it online and see what I can find out.

Survival

I survived the first week of school. It was hard having to go in today since most of the Fridays last year were furlough days. I think it's better with this group though since they need lots of attention and help. They are so chatty and can't seem to focus on whatever they need to do. I shouldn't say that about all of them though...there are a handful who are good and usually finish all their things on time. It'll be easier once I put them in pods since I'll be able to zigzag through them easily to see what they're doing.

New Year 2010-2011

It's that time again...new school year! I can't believe that it's already the beginning of a new year. I'm not as excited this year, but that may change in a few hours. There was a mistake on my ESIS roster and I know that the office is going to be swamped. I guess all I should do is redo my list so that the other child is on there as well. Wheatie woke me up around 4 this morning, so I missed an hour of sleep. Hopefully I won't crash and burn this afternoon since I work at WK too. :(