Crunch Time

Today felt like crunch time.  We're halfway through the first quarter, which means midterm grades need to be sent out soon.  My class had a bunch of assignments due today that they were all scrambling to complete.  Most complained yesterday that they wouldn't have enough time to do their homework (because there was a soccer game), but only the first half of the soccer game was played. The second half got rained out.  So they had plenty of time to do their work.  Most came to school with their assignments ready to hand in... now the quality of those assignments on the other hand, well, I'm a little scared to grade some of them. But it's midterms, so what can you do?

The 7th and 8th graders had a somewhat similar problem, but this time it was me who was feeling the crunch time.  Fridays this year have been frustrating for me because it takes us SO LONG to correct the spelling books.  It takes us at least 45-50 minutes to correct five pages of 7th grade spelling, five pages of 8th grade spelling, and take both grades' spelling tests.  That give me maybe 10 minutes to do something else.  That's not enough time to practice bells or do a lab or much of anything substantial.  Sometimes I do read-aloud.  Sometimes we practice for our map test.  Sometimes they do other homework. (But more often than not they forget to bring other homework).

This Friday, I still had five people who needed to present their geography projects. Normally I'd just say, wait to present until Monday.  But since it's midterms and I need to get their grades to Mr. E so he can put together their grade sheet, I wanted to get them done today.  But what about correcting spelling?  Hmm...

I ended up correcting the books myself throughout the day when I had moments to spare.  I also felt rushed for time since some of them wanted to take their books home over the weekend to work on next week's assignments.  It turned out to be a good week to do that; the words this week are all homophones, so correcting aloud would've taken even longer.

One kid, the poor guy, forgot his spelling book at home and his presentation for geography got erased off the computer.  He's going to do it over the weekend and email it to me so I can correct it before Monday. Then Monday he can present it to the class and get those last few points.  There were a few other boys who didn't have their presentations quite done, but their excuses were not so good... one boy had been on vacation, but he knew he'd have to present Friday, so he had plenty of time to get it done.  He tried to cram waaaay too much info in his five minutes of presenting.  And his powerpoint wasn't finished, or in the right order, so it was a bit convoluted.  The other guy, everyone was ragging on him saying he copied and pasted his whole report from the internet.  I guess I'll have to look into that.  But they still shouldn't be fussing at him, after all, they aren't the teachers.  I told his classmates that I have a plagiarism detector in my head; every teacher gets one when she graduates.  They believed me for maybe a minute!

My weekend plans: visit Fulda, hang out with the fam, maybe go see the corn maze in Edgerton... otherwise, correct papers and get my grades ready to go!