Flower Dissection

Another rough and tumble day in 5-6th grade... As I've said before, Mondays are generally chattier days, and today was no different. My squirrely boy had trouble settling all day.

The morning was full of tech problems, bad enough problems that I called the IT guys (they actually answered for once). The kids couldn't log onto their accounts, plus once they did then powerpoint had issues. While I had them on the phone I mentioned all the other computer problems I've been having to them. Hopefully they'll remember at least some of them. Two of our six computers don't work and it's an error that has happened in the past. It's also one that can't be fixed remotely. The tech guy said he would 'hopefully' be able to stop by tonight. It was a lengthy phone conversation and half the class was productive during it. The other half goofed off and was noisy. It's hard to do classroom management when you're trying to talk to someone on the phone.

The 7-8th graders were squirrely too, though we did accomplish everything I wanted to with them. We did a lab on Moh's scale of hardness (testing how hard rocks are by scraping reference materials against them). I had a box of cool rocks donated by a local church member that we sorted through. There are some native american artifacts, coral/seashell fossils, and just generally neat looking rocks. I wanted to leave them out for my 5-6th to look at, but with their behavior today I figured they couldn't handle it so I packed them away.

For 5-6th science, we examined a giant slab of tree trunk for the different parts and dissected flowers we picked outside. They were able to find most of the parts of the flower! A lot of them said it was their favorite part of the day.

They are so slow to pack up at the end of the day. Every day we are the last class down to the bus. The lunch lady switched us with the 7-8th graders because we just can't get cleaned up/set up in time. Gah!!! I know it's the kids and not me, but it's hard not to feel like a failure when I can't get them to do stuff quickly. Sigh. The year is young. We'll work on that.