Oh, my aching head.

Today was a pretty decent day, actually. The students used thesauri to continue finding synonyms for good, nice, and bad in descriptions.

I so love Class B in the mornings. First period reading workshop has gone extremely smoothly this week with them. In writing workshop, though, things aren't so smooth. Most kids are on task, but some of them 'wake up' and get talky and off task.

Except for one child slapping another across the face with his rolled up plastic bag (to hold the writing notebooks) (I sent his delinquent ass right to the dean. He went yesterday too), they were not too bad.

Right away I had Class A third period writing workshop. Ms F was in and out for that one, but even without her they were okay. "Trouble" was talking but not too loudly, so I ignored him. Three other boys who can be very disruptive did very well today, and I made sure to tell them so.

Then I had three periods off. Tralala! Thursdays rock. I hung out in the teacher center, chatting with other teachers. There's another first year teacher Ms C who's fun and a kindred spirit. We share ideas and stories, it's neat. While we talked, I finally got the tests graded, from two Fridays ago, to see how they kids did in each skill. Nearly all of them missed the making predictions, drawing inferences, and interpreting figurative language questions.

Instead of actually doing the new groupings for test prep tomorrow, I will give them some response to literature/open-ended questions to work with. For writing workshop, I think we'll just do creative writing. I suppose I'll have to see what they think.

Some time during 6th period, when I was in the teacher's lounge finishing up the marking, I developed a nasty headache. My whole head felt like it was under pressure, and my eyeballs ached. Ugh.

Class C did fine. Ooh, I have a fun story. The read aloud today was chapter 3 in Fantastic Mr Fox (which is proving to be a wonderfully perfect to teach from; plus the chapters are very short meaning we can read a whole one each day), entitled "The Shooting." Normally, when I do read-alouds, I stroll around the room. And I love seeing all the children's eyes on me. But with my headache this afternoon with Class C, I just perched on my desk. All eyes were on me. (Love that!) I read in a normal reading voice, with inflection and everything. But when it got to the part where the farmers started shooting at Mr Fox, I suddenly got up and started moving, talking faster and louder. I totally scared them, when I bolted up I could see the whole class jump. They kind of tittered and whispered in their surprise. It was awesome! I kept reading, but I heard one kid go, "You should be in plays, that's what you should do." Weird, but neat.

Also, I finally used the overhead! I figured out where to put it yesterday, and the inclusion teacher lent me some transparencies and pens, so I could write their shared synonyms on that instead of the board. Fun toy! Can't wait to use it more.