Free lunch

We had a potluck in the teacher's lounge today. Mm, food!

Today really wasn't bad. It wasn't great or anything, but it wasn't bad either. How awful that my standards are so low.

I did a four square review and taught connector words. The sandwich idea from another teacher seemed to be clever enough to work. I told the kids, don't forget those olives! And toothpicks/commas! (Got a teeny bit of grammar in there, too, from another teacher's comment.) I had them do a Halloween four square and they were excited about that.

I made a bit of a gaffe today. The principal asked me how everything was going, we had a quick chat, and I said, jokingly, you know that I have no idea what I'm doing, right? He waited a beat, and said, we've all been there. God, I am dumb. Anyway, it got me thinking. I think I'm beginning to feel fairly comfortable in the classroom. Obviously my lessons need a lot of help, but I'm doing okay, I think, for a clueless first year teacher.

Yesterday and today I introduced Catherine, Called Birdy as a read-aloud. I'm only three pages in, but the students seem to like it, or at least don't hate it. Today I read it and stopped to define all the weird, old-fashioned words. Hurrah for expanding their vocabularies!

On the ride home, I was thinking about the digital camera that's on sale at Staples right now. I'd already decided to just buy it, and today I decided to go buy it right now. I got there and looked at a few other cameras too, but with the help of the guy, decided my original choice was best. However, they were all out of stock! I was really bummed. The guy told me to try back tomorrow after an order comes in.

Then, after I got home, I spent a good chunk of time with a fabulous grading program. A teacher mentioned it today after school; you just input the numbers and percentages and it calculates everything. Whee! What a blast. It changes the student's grade with each number you put it. It's fun. And it really is alarming how many of my students are failing. Oh well, most of them deserve it.

Now I have to get started grading those reports. Argh. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to fill out a rubric sheet for each one, or just give a score? I'm going to start with just a final score, because I can't print out eighty rubric sheets from my little printer.