I'm a Survivor!

First week of teaching: check. 

Wow we got a lot accomplished today!  We practiced Read-to-Self, learned how to Read-to-Someone, looked at Interesting Words (and wrote them on our Word Wall), and a whole bunch of other stuff. 

At noon recess my 6th grade girls decided to look for the frog again.  They want to keep him/her as a class pet if we get a tank.  My only question is, "What are we going to feed it?"  They thought I should catch moths or flies to feed to it.  Right.  In my spare time. 

After catching it and letting it go, they spotted some shelf mushrooms on a tree.  They are currently sitting on the printer in my classroom, drying out.  Eventually I'm going to borrow a stereoscope from the science teacher at Nicollet so we can look at it up close (she said she could even drop it off at school and pick it up again!).

I'm really glad those girls are showing an interest in science.  One of them brought me a dead bee she found somewhere in the classroom.  Yep.  I saved that too.  It's in a cup in my cupboard.  Soon I'm going to need a big cabinet to keep all this cool science stuff.

The 7th and 8th graders have been better at recess, but I think my time with them in the afternoon is going to be more of a struggle.  It could've been because of the long upcoming weekend.  It could've been the move from the rest of the hot school into my air conditioned room.  Or it could've been because of the all school assembly in a half an hour.  Whatever it was, the 7th and 8th graders were really pushing my buttons today. 

The same two boys from yesterday sat by each other again today.  I asked them at the beginning of class to make a wise seating choice, but they argued, "We need to prove to you that we can sit by each other without messing around."  I said, "This is your absolute last chance.  Any messing around and you are not sitting by each other for the rest of the year."  Guess what?  Halfway through the lesson, one of them yells out, "Miss Heintz! He took my paper." 

Less than five seconds later they were sitting in the front row, far away from each other.   The whole class period was loud and crazy.  The 7th and 8th graders were blurting out answers and yelling when they didn't know what was going on.  I think we're going to have to get a seating chart.  And have a discussion about how to treat others' desks.  Hopefully next week things will be a little more settled. 

A ventriloquist visited our school for the last 45 minutes of the day.  She talked about being on God's Team (our theme for the year), and not being a bully.  It was very interesting to watch.  She had one of the biggest 8th graders be her "puppet."  She tapped him on the shoulder when she wanted him to open his mouth.  Of course she gave him a high, squeaky voice.  He could barely stand up straight from laughing so hard.  The little ones were dying of laughter.  We followed the presentation up with freezies donated by one of the school board families. 

In a few minutes I have to go pick up the keys to my new apartment.  I get to spend the long weekend moving.  One of my students is going bear hunting!  I bet he'll have some amazing stories to tell on Tuesday!