Time is flying!

Patience is a virtue, but time is a commodity

This week is flying by and I can't seem to get myself on top of it all! I was blessed with a cold at the end of last week and it took me down most of the weekend. Friday night I slept for 10 hours and Saturday after I went to Zumba (invited to a new place by RM-- Thank you!) I came home and slept another four hours! I don't think I have slept that much in over a year. Obviously I needed it. 

Monday I took over morning work. Every morning when the students come in they have two or three things that they know to work on. This is called their morning work. They work on this while the teacher settles anything that is going on, takes attendance and lunch count, and prepares for any last minute lessons that are going to happen. We review morning work together (there is math and language arts) so that was my first thing I took over. I was a little nervous Monday but it went fast and everything went perfectly. 
We had another round of NWEA testing on Monday as well- this time it was math. Everyone but one child finished this time- which was great considering we had half the class not finish the reading section. 
I introduced their vocabulary on Monday and taught a lesson on how to use a glossary. I taught them the difference between a dictionary and a glossary, how everything is in alphabetical order, where to find the glossary, what guide words are, and the different parts of a definition (how to pronounce the word, what part of speech it is, the actual definition). I created a worksheet to go along with it and had the students fill out the worksheet finding the vocabulary word, what page they found it on, and what the guide words are for that page. Many of the students did not finish it but we kept it at school and will finish them on Tuesday. 
I met with RM on Monday to figure out what lessons to plan for the rest of the week. This way I was able to go home and work on several in one sitting and then not have to worry about doing this several times during the week. 

Tuesday was my second day of reviewing morning work. We built an I-chart for writing workshop Daily Five. We read our story "Come Back, Jack!" After they read the story they had some time to finish their glossary worksheet from the previous day. Some of the kids were able to do the lesson without assistance but many needed a lot of guidance. 

I taught another math lesson- this one went MUCH better than the first. I taught them about how to jump numbers on a number line and how to write a number sentence with the information they have on the number line. About half of the class left the room in the middle of my lesson to finish up their NWEA reading tests. With the half of the class we had left we worked on the workbooks and handouts. It was nice to have a smaller amount of students- I could really get to them and help them when they had questions. 

One of our students became an "island" about a week ago. We are having problems with him bothering his peers no matter where he is sitting so we moved him to be alone. His desk is right by where I sit. It was working ok at first- he was chatty with the boy that sits right next to where his desk was but that ceased. Now, he has decided that he wants to sit at my table instead of at his desk. Normally I wouldn't mind but he has a terrible cold and is very busy- oy. I have had to redirect him several times every lesson- but he is just not able to sit still. Hopefully we will find some happy medium and he will be able to keep himself still- or I will find a way to stop noticing...