Today was so sunshiney and nice! I opened all the shades in the classroom to let the light in (sometimes when it's really cold I keep two of the shades down to keep in the heat). Since it was so nice, the 5th graders wanted to go outside for recess. One problem. Only two of them had their snow stuff. We decided to just go for it. One of the girls had to stay inside for ten minutes to work on her math since she was dinking around in actual math class. She was very upset. So I made a deal with her: if she worked the whole time, she could come outside at 2:00 and still have ten minutes of recess. And if she did it without complaining or whining, then we'd stay out for an extra five minutes. Ten minutes later this student came out all bundled up, ready to sled.
One of the boys and I shoveled snow to make ramps and sledding paths. The other two/three 5th graders took turns on the sleds we had. (That was a pretty big source of conflict... but we got it figured out). They all wanted me to take a turn, so I told them I'd be the very last person to sled before we went in. They were so excited. It was ridiculous.
When we got back inside, we had about ten minutes of school left. I wanted to practice our tone chime song (the complicated one where nobody knows which notes they play). So we got all the books out and everyone grabbed the right notes... and one student was positive someone had taken her note. I was 90% sure everyone had the notes they were supposed to, so I told her we were going to play and see what it sounded like. Well, her note was correct, but someone else's was wrong. Of course, this student kept shouting, "See, I was right! My note is wrong! Someone else has it!" The other 5th graders were trying to keep cool, but I could tell they were about to lose their tempers with her. Sigh. We tried the song a couple of times, but it still didn't sound right (and every time this same student would make a snarky comment about her note being wrong). It was super annoying. By the time we got everything put away, we didn't have time for a video. Instead, we went over our memory work for this week. This put her in an even worse mood!
The other tortuous thing I did today was in 5th grade science. We did a mini-review game to study for the test. I had them in pairs to find the answers on the study guides and then I asked them questions from the study guide to earn points for their teams. Cranky girl was still cranky and didn't want to be with her partner. He didn't want to be with Miss Cranky-pants anyway. Once we got that conflict sorted out then the other team complained that I wasn't asking them any of the questions they knew (it was good-natured complaining). I kept asking question after question that they hadn't found in their notes/books, so one girl shouted, "Miss H! Why are you torturing us!" She said it with a smile, so I don't think she was too upset.
In the game, I made them spell the words correctly or they wouldn't get a point. This was also torture. And then we were down to the last question. I told them their answers had to be spelled correctly or they wouldn't count. The question was: what are the planets in our solar system (in order). I didn't say anything about capitalization, hoping they'd do it automatically. Well. They didn't. A few were capitalized, but most weren't. So then I was torturing them again when I wouldn't give them points for the planets that weren't capitalized. Oh what a horrible teacher I am!
Another storm is coming... they say on Thursday we're supposed to get 40mph winds and lots of snow. All I know is that my knees were aching today. And when that happens, we usually get snow. Dun, dun, dun!
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