Sunrise

This morning's sunrise was gorgeous.  I wouldn't have noticed (since it was still mostly dark when I got to school), but the school nurse bustled in all excited about 7:35 and asked if I had a minute. Sure!  She waved me over to the door and led me outside, gesturing to the fluffy pink clouds hovering to the east.  "Look what a beautiful day it is! Let's start the morning right!" And then she gave me a hug and practically waltzed back into the building.  I stood outside a few more moments, admiring the view, and then work called me back into my classroom.

I passed out BINGO prizes today.  The lab table was covered in prizes, and yet, only three kids earned bingos this quarter.  One got three, the rest got only one.  Some of the 5th graders didn't understand the concept that they had to have the books written down.  Many hadn't even looked at their bingo sheets since the first few weeks of school; they didn't remember which books they read way back then.  Proof they should write books in their Reading Notebooks as soon as they finish! Hopefully next quarter they'll be better about keeping up with that.

We tried the talking game again today... it wasn't a great success the second time around.  It started off fine; we did boys vs. girls.  They were neck and neck for a while, but then the boys kept forgetting and they were ahead by 50 words and they gave up and kept talking.  And everyone pointed fingers at each other and it was just kind of a mess.  So in between Daily 5 rounds, we had a discussion about what they liked from the quiet game and what they didn't like.  Everyone kind of said the same thing: they liked that the room was quiet, they didn't like the pointing fingers/blaming everyone. Where to go from here? They/we decided that (now that they know they can be quiet) they will be quiet during Daily 5 so everyone can concentrate.  If their voices get above a level three, a marble gets taken out of the jar.  If it gets above a level four, we play the talking game again.  Sounds fair to me!