Mondays

Oh Mondays... my kiddos are so chatty on Mondays! We got eight blurts today, which means that three people have sentences. Yikes! I told them their sentence assignments would be on their desks tomorrow, and my intention was to have them written down before I left school today, however, another teacher was feeling chatty and someone stopped in for their silent auction items, and I had to leave school early to get to our second to last volleyball game on time, so I did not write them down.

The games went well. The A squad played great, as always. The B squad didn't go for the ball nearly enough, as always. B= lost all three, A= won all three. After the game we went out to eat as a team as our end of the year volleyball party. Only one more practice, one more game, and one more tournament... all this week! I will be glad once it's all over. Hopefully I'll have time to focus on other things, like writing.

We started preparing for NaNoWriMo today, writing a list of Good Books and Gross Books. We also analyzed why the books are good or gross and talked about how to make our own books good instead of gross. They gave me suggestions on what to teach them for NaNo, like how to start a story, how to end it, how to make it suspenseful or exciting, so now I have plenty of ideas for November. We even updated our class NaNo page (it's a site where students have accounts and can write their stories online wherever they have internet, at home or at school). Now they want to start writing! But they have to wait to write this story. Only 22 more days! I'm excited and at the same time I'm slightly dreading it... how am I going to have time to write my story??? My teacher goal is 30,000 words, same as last year. 1000 words per day.

Our practice fire drill and other fire drill went very well today. The first one was just our room practicing by ourselves. I knew there'd be an official drill later on and I wanted my students to be prepared, so we practiced lining up and walking out to 2nd base on the kickball field. They did great! I asked them to stay standing in a line once we got out there so it would be easier to count them, and they did! About an hour later, Mr. E pulled the fire alarm for our official drill. Everyone in our classroom jumped when the alarm went off, even me, and I knew it was coming! Still, they all remembered what to do and we got it done in record time. The fire fighters come Wednesday morning for Fire Prevention Week. I should ask them if they'd let my kids use a fire extinguisher. We talked about how to use the one in our classroom, but it'd be cool if they could actually practice on a fire. I did it once for RA training back in college and it was neat.