Accomplished

I feel like I got a lot accomplished today, and yet, when I think back over my day to find things to write about, I'm kinda drawing a blank...

A few kiddos said their memory work this morning, I got all the 7th and 8th grade presentations corrected... except one of the smartest kids in class plagiarized everything that was on his brochure. When I first looked at his project (a brochure on famous places in Italy), I was impressed with how professional it looked! But after I read a bit of it, I realized the text had been copied and pasted from Wikipedia.  It even had all the highlighted blue hyperlinks. I was so sad.  So I wrote a note on his grading sheet that said that copying and pasting (and not giving credit for your work) is considered plagiarizing and results in an F. If he wants a better grade, redo it and hand it in by Monday.  So we'll see what he does.  I didn't say anything to Mr. E about it, I guess I'm waiting to see how it all turns out.  I didn't ever talk to the student face to face, just the note on his paper, but I know he read it since he was at his desk when I handed their projects back.

On a more positive note, the bell songs made great progress today! I think we'll be all right for our rapidly approaching performance date.  Speaking of bells, a lady who works for an assisted living home in New Ulm attended our Christmas program this year.  She left a message at school asking about having our bell choir coming to play for the residents there.  I was kind of dreading calling her back because it would be a HUGE hassle to get everything over there. But once I explained, she agreed. So we came up with a different plan... at first we thought maybe the residents should bus over to us and we could put on a concert in the gym.  Then I brought up the Spring Talent Show... ding, ding, ding! We have a winner!  She thought that was a fabulous idea and we are tentatively expecting them to come to the show.  Yay, no extra planning for me!

Oh, one last thing I forgot to tell about yesterday... There was a kid in my class getting into mischief. Not big stuff, just doing things that annoyed his classmates like kicking at their chair area, flipping his eraser over and over, stuff like that.  Each time I saw him doing something, I turned back to my work and said (without looking at him), "[student] please stop [insert annoying behavior]." He was shocked, "Miss H! How did you know I was [annoying behavior]?!"  He must not have seen me looking at him before.  So I said, "Oh, I'm like an owl, I can see out of the corners of my eyes." Another kid piped up, "Were you raised by owls?" My answer, "Yes, yes I was. That's also why I love books so much. They read lots of books."  A few hours later, the same thing happened again, the whole looking-without-looking-then-chastising-and-being-shocked-at-my-peripheral-vision thing.  I don't think he ever caught on to the fact that he just wasn't catching me looking at him.  And each time the other kids reminded him that I had been raised by owls.