short week :)

Yay for 3 day weeks! Even though today is Monday, tomorrow will be like Thursday, and Wednesday will be like Friday. Trying to teach anything this week is really quite pointless, but I'm running out of time to teach them all they need to know for the CRT's (the big standardized test).

Last week was Spirit Week. It was quite eventful and fun. I dressed up for every day,except Friday (Pajama Day). For hat day, I wore a big red and white jester hat with yellow balls on the ends that light up (see picture below). The kids thought it was great; I had students all day trying to buy it off me for $20. Yes, this picture was taken with my cell phone and so it's not the greatest of qualities...not to mention I look quite ridiculous.

Today is the very last yearbook deadline. I just submitted the last of the pages and it feels great. I'm excited to see my 'baby' here in a few weeks complete and (hopefully) well put together. The kids seemed excited today when I told them we were all done. Our yearbook rep from Josten's promised a pizza party if we made the deadline and we did (er, I did anyway).

Last Friday, we gave out the April Fool's edition of our newspaper. It was quite the hit...though I'm still nervous I may get some parent phone calls because of some of the articles. The kids had a great time writing articles such as, "Move to be filmed at West Lake," "Famous Rapper (Chris Brown) to visit West Lake," "Pet day coming soon," "School uniforms," "The creature above us," (this one's about a phantom living in the auditorium, my favorite article of the issue). I wrote a little piece on the front page explaining why we celebrate April Fool's and cautioned the reader to "Read at your own Risk." After school on Friday, I was walking in the hall and saw several students completely flipping out at the fact that Chris Brown was coming. Then, the thing that made me smile so much today was that on my way back from the copy room before school started, I had a line of students at my door wanting clarification on Pet day. They told me that the article mentioned that pet day was on the 15th, and asked, did I know the 15th was on a Sunday. I responded with a smile and pointed to the tiny 4 inch font at the bottom of the article that said "April Fools." They were disappointed. I had several teachers comment on what a fun issue it was. We are now planning on our last issue of the year, to be distributed mid-May. We're gonna make this one a big issue full of all sorts of fun stuff.

I haven't mentioned it much on here, but those who talk to me on a regular basis know that my 6th period has recently been my challenge class. It used to be 5th, but I changed my attitude about them and they became one of my favorites, though the talking is still an issue. Anyway, 6th period has been challenging because of one student...who I'll refer to as the Instigator. He responded to everyone, if they talked to him or not. He swore like a freakin' sailor, and it seems I was talking to him in the hall daily or taking him to another room just so I could teach. He threw pencils across the room, spit wads on my walls, and always complained that school is boring. He just recently took a turn for the much worse. I gave all classes a new seating chart and set him in the way back where he is surrounded by no one. It helped immensely...well, I also had a good talk with him about his behavior and threatened further severe punishment. He did not show up to class last Wednesday or Thursday; I just assumed he was sick or sluffing. Then, on Friday he came in to check out of my class. He moved to another school. I hate saying this but...YAY!!! Today, 6th period was like a total night and day difference to what it was like last week. The kids noticed it, too, and I had several comment on how much better the class was. I wish this particular student luck and hope perhaps his other school is more exciting than WL.

Today and tomorrow we are talking about punctuating dialogue. I find this topic to be a good one because it's fairly straight forward, easy. I made a Power Point and had them take some notes today. Then, I gave each student a card with a single word or punctuation mark, then they had to put them together to form a sentence. It went quite well, even though I know it wasn't as exciting as it could have been. I keep telling them that these are important things they are learning but I understand they aren't necessarily fun. I also tell them that I seriously wrack my brain every night thinking about a creative, fun way to teach grammar, of all things. Wednesday I'd like to do something fun and light since it is the last day before Spring Break, but I haven't figured that out yet. Another part of me knows there is still plenty to learn before CRT's. I suppose we'll see.

Yup. That's all for today.