CropLife

We had a guest speaker today from the CropLife Ambassador program.  I've used this program for a number of years.  At first, it took forever to get a speaker because there weren't any who lived in the area.  One year we got someone who lives/works up near the Cities and we had to coordinate a time for when she was in Mankato for meetings.  Thankfully, last year, someone interested in speaking to kids about agriculture moved to the area and now it's not so complicated!  Stephanie works for Dow out of Mankato and this was her second time speaking with my class.  This year, she talked about the different areas of agriculture and how every part of our lives is touched by ag.  My kids were amazed by all the products made from parts of soybeans and corn!

I've been jamming our days at school with as much as possible... I think perhaps a bit too much... we don't have time to fit everything in!  This afternoon, the 5th and 6th graders took a science test and we were going to do Mystery Class too (something I've been a bit lax about having them do... but in my defense, we've missed the past few Fridays which are the days scheduled to do MC), but there wasn't enough time before recess.  And the 5th grade girls had puberty ed with the nurse at 1:45.  Since they only had 15 minutes to do their test, none of them finished.  Now I have to find time for them to do it next week.  One of the 5th graders is going to be gone the whole week (her uncle in Arizona is getting married), so she'll have to wait until she gets back.  And next week is Iowa Testing, so she'll have to make up all of that too!  Plus there's a history test.  *wince* that's a lot of tests to make up.

The 7th graders had a test today too.  They were complaining because I didn't put the page numbers on the study guide.  I did put the page range of the information covered on the test, but they wanted me to put the page numbers where the information could be found for each question.  Their other complaint was that we didn't go over the study guide in class.  And their final complaint was that I didn't give them five minutes to use the study guide/notes on their test.  I gave them two minutes, but they were upset stating that I ALWAYS give them five whole minutes.  Not true. Sigh.  I think they have short term memory loss...  that and they don't take the time to study.  I have all their papers to correct this weekend so we'll see how they did...