1- Last Day!

Last day of school went off without a hitch. Well, there was one unfortunate one, but I'll save that for later. 

We finished Acts, thus reading/skimming the whole bible in a year. The decorations were taken down (with hardly any fussing), desks cleaned out, coatroom packed up, homework handed in. We still had read aloud time; they asked me to read Wilder Boys even though we knew we wouldn't get far. When it was time to stop, they all groaned and asked for another chapter. Not today. Then they grumbled that we should've read this book earlier in the year because it was so good... we set it aside to maybe finish it next year. I need to make sure I build in read-aloud time with the 7-8th graders. Start that habit right away.

All the work got done in time to do our class prize! We watched the movie Inside Out. That worked perfectly because I corrected papers while watching and got 90% corrected by the movie's end. After school it didn't take much doing to enter the grades and print the reports off. I finished filling out the report cards right as the carnival started. Perfect. Except I realized two of the kids never returned their report cards. One of the parents was fine getting only the paper copy. The other parent still hasn't responded. 

Two sad things: the NaNo books arrived Sunday, too late to hand them out to my kids. I think I'll wait to give them out until the Open House in August. Then I can see their faces when they get them. If any kids want them super bad, they'll reach out to me and we can figure out a time to meet up sometime this summer. 

The other sad thing was that I caught a kid cheating the last day of school. The last poetry assignment was to write a limerick. He took it home to work on it and returned a wonderful poem. Except it was too wonderful. I googled the words and found the exact website he used to find his poem. So I asked him if he wrote it himself, and he lied and said he came up with it on his own. Really? Welllll, maybe his mom and grandma helped. So I showed him the website with the poem word for word. Then it turned into my mom said it was okay for me to use it. Hmmm, doubtful, I know your mom and she would not be in favor of that. Just in case that was true, I had him rewrite it. Meanwhile, he had a mild panic attack. Once I talked him through that, THEN we could start writing. Except it was time for closing chapel. He shoved the paper in his pocket and I didn't think anything of it until after chapel when we were back at school. He handed me the paper with a finished poem on it. Hmm... written during closing chapel. Great. 

The day ended with an ice cream truck and free ice cream for students. They had a good time picking out a treat, and the weather was perfect for eating outside. The PTL 7-8th grade parents had a carnival planned for 6pm that night, so I stayed at school doing my report cards until then. All the kids who came to the carnival picked up their report cards! I just have two that need to be sent home.

The carnival was better than I thought. It was good to catch up with parents and other teachers (we haven't seen much of anyone during this school year). One of the games was a 'cake walk', except instead of cake, we got popsicles. The mom played music, we danced around the circle and stopped on a number when the music stopped. Not many people played (Mrs. L and I, plus a parent), so the mom gave all of us a popsicle even though we weren't on the winning randomly-generated number. I had a chance to talk to the mom of the cheating student. She and her husband (and I) were disappointed to end the year on that note. :( Since then, their son wrote a new limerick and sent me an apology note. Not that this is an excuse, but he was feeling overwhelmed with everything he had to do on the last day of school, especially since he was going to a friend's house between school and the carnival and didn't want to stay after. I had told everyone they couldn't leave school until all their work was handed in.

Today (Monday) was our final staff meeting of the year. The shortest one so far! Only 35 minutes. I have a bunch of things on my to-do list and a few days in Courtland to finish them before I head off for Fulda and my summer jobs. 

My plans for the summer: work at the Fulda library and the Plaid Moose Coffee Shop, work on my Habitat house (which still hasn't started yet... hopefully I'll hear something this week), travel with friends (camp, go to the Grand Canyon/SW US national parks, visit the North Shore), judge a bunch of county fairs, and of course enjoy time with family. See you in the fall!

2

My kiddos are spoiling me this week. Two boys brought in cards with thank-you presents inside. Let's just say I can add a lot of books to my class library over the summer with their thoughtful, generous gifts. ;)

Another student (I think a 7th grade girl) has been leaving us teachers little notes in our mailboxes every day this week (except Tuesday, because she/we were at the softball tournament). 

The to-do list shrunk a lot this morning. We need to finish the book of Acts in religion (we're halfway through!), take spelling tests, and I need to meet with each student one more time on their read-to-self books. Of course, tidy the classroom and take down decorations. Then we can do our class prize: watch a movie. We haven't picked one out yet, since I wasn't sure if we'd have time tomorrow or not. It's looking like we probably will.

My class went on a token spending spree today. One boy reminded me to get the prizes out of the closet, so I pulled them out and let the two 5th graders sort them into "price" categories. Since they sorted, they had first dibs and picked out which things they wanted to buy. The prize box is a lot emptier, which is good because it was getting too full. I'll let them buy tomorrow too.

The quietist 6th grader bought a little rubber duck and then borrowed a mini-skateboard a 5th grader bought this morning. Next thing I hear is her singing, "They see me rollin'..." (part of the lyrics of a pop song) as she rolls the duck back and forth across her desk on the skateboard. It was hard not to crack up!

3

Another rainy day. My kids didn't want to eat lunch outside (our balloon prize for today), so we tabled that. We were all gassed from yesterday. Everyone was SO TIRED, teachers included. All of us wanted to call it in and take it easy for the day. 

My kids asked me to make a to-do list of everything we have to accomplish before school is over with the intention of getting everything done today so we could do nothing Thursday and Friday. Hmm... well, worth a try I guess. Yeah, there were too many things to do in one day. I wrote an estimate of how long it would take to do each task and one of the 6th graders added them up: 10.5 hours (approximately). I didn't put math, lunch, or recess on the list since those are givens each day. 

Only half the class wanted to power through and try to get ahead on things. The rest of them wanted to do a normal day or an 'easy' day. So we did a mix. A few things got erased, a few got added. A lot of them want to do their work at home. We'll see if they actually do. I know one kid brought his spelling home... his cut out words floated behind him down the sidewalk on his way to the bus and he had to go back to gather them up. 

The 7-8th graders were in scramble mode. Their last trip itinerary of the year was supposed to be presented today. Half the class came down to my room at lunchtime and announced that no one had finished, thus no one was ready to present. "I never knew when it was due! You never told us!" They've known about this project for about a month; it's been on their assignment sheet for just as long. "I never got an itinerary sheet to fill out." Yes, you did. I put one in everyone's crate along with the map to study... a month ago. Sigh. There aren't that many of them, so after careful calculation, we figured out we would have time to do all of the presenting tomorrow and made today a workday. At least they were productive and didn't whine about doing work.

It's interesting the kids are ready to be done, but they're not at the same time. One 6th grader said his high of the day was "only two days of school" and his low was "only two days of school." I agree buddy. I agree.

4

Caswell Softball Day. A surprising day all around. The forecast last week and over the weekend said the weather would be 80ish. I'm so glad I checked one more time before leaving... it ended up being 70ish and misty all day. I changed my outfit and was comfortable all day.

The other surprise was that the kids played great!!! Mr. E and I expected to lose all games. He told our team the goal was to get one run per game. We ended up winning our first three games (by quite a bit) and lost the last two (but played well anyway). I pitched all five games and am not too sore today (just a little bit). My kids said, "Good pitches Miss H." So I must've done pretty well. At times I had to do some fancy footwork to avoid the ball smacking back into me. None of the batted balls hit me! Some of the catchers on the other teams didn't have great aim getting the ball back to me, so I did get wacked in the leg once and a ball hit my glove wrong and popped a blood vessel in my finger. Still, I hung in there.

After the tournament since I was in Mankato, I visited a friend I haven't seen in months. Then I got a surprise text from my dad/mom saying they were in Mankato helping my sister vehicle shop, did I want to get supper with them? Uh, yes please! It was a great end to a great day.

5

Balloon prize: sit anywhere today.

Boy, my kids were dinks today. They pushed the boundaries on everything. It started with where they could sit... "on top of our desks, right Miss H? You said anywhere!" Then they're cramming on the couch, lying on the lab table... sigh. By the afternoon they'd forgotten about finding funky seats. 

But the rest of the morning they whined about everything! No one wanted to do even the simplest thing. One boy was so obstinate I was this close to sending him to the principal. He blatantly refused to do what I asked, saying "I'll just do it during math study hall time." Grr... 

The afternoon was much better. The 7-8th graders took a test on the Body Systems and a map test on well-known countries in the world. I was surprised how much they struggled with that. We've learned all the countries, but somehow seeing how they fit into the whole world map was extremely challenging. Some of the smartest kids couldn't figure out Mexico, the US, and Canada. Oh man. I might need to revamp some of my lessons from this year... or get a better map for the quiz. 

We had another video call with my marine friend during lunch. He got back from a three week mission in the Mojave Desert called War Games, and my kids wanted to hear more about it. They only had to survive a week without getting captured by 'enemy groups' and his group succeeded. They were a high value target, so they had to move around a lot so they wouldn't be found. 

Tomorrow is Caswell Softball Day! My kids wanted me to bring our read-aloud book along so we can read between games. Hmm... I'm skeptical if that's actually going to happen, but I'll bring it anyway. Can't hurt, can it?

6

The Talent Show watch party (in person and online) was a success! Quite a few families showed up, and some church members too. The sound quality of our videos was not great, kind of terrible actually in some places. Still, overall you could understand the speakers. My kids wanted to watch it, even if they'd been at the watch party, so we watched over lunch. The ones who'd already seen it were in charge of "skipping the boring parts." 

Day 2 of dissecting went just as well as the first. The girls named their pig Wilbur since they had a male. The boys didn't name theirs; they had a femail. We saw all sorts of cool stuff... brains, lungs, kidneys, hearts, intestines, a few others. It did double-duty to prep them for the body systems test, just remembering the parts of the body, where they are, what they do, how they connect to other body structures. Of course, there's a lingering smell of preservative wafting from my room to the gym, but otherwise my classroom has returned to its previous state pre-dissecting.

The 5-6th graders wrapped up a few projects today. One group presented a powerpoint about Russia's involvement in WWII. They did super well; I learned a ton. The other two groups weren't quite ready so they'll present Monday afternoon. We also FINALLY did our egg car lab. Man, that was like pulling teeth to get them to finish! Here are their runs:

We also smashed the pinatas this afternoon. It was rainy today, so we broke them in the gym by slinging a string over the basketball hoop. The preschoolers watched. My kiddos did a fantastic job and built them well! It took many smashes to bring them down. In fact, the yarn holding them up broke, so we switched to pitching. One group member tossed, the other swung with a bat. It was pretty entertaining. 

7

Another gorgeous day! God is really blessing us with this weather. It makes me want to kayak... soon I'll get the chance!

Tonight is our spring talent show. Mrs. L linked all the videos and uploaded them; I have them set up to share with parents and community members. I hope at least a few families come to the in-person viewing. I'm excited to see everyone's faces while watching. We teachers came up with some funny stuff. If you want to watch, you can view the show here. 

The 7-8th graders got started on dissecting fetal pigs today. Dissecting with masks on is challenging since the masks fog up the glasses (not the most comfortable accessory even on a good day). Still, we powered through. They haven't cut into it too deeply, today's steps were to examine the outside of the pig, inside the mouth, and the eyes. The girl group accidentally cut into the eye instead of around it. There was lots of screaming when liquid squirted out. The boys were able to extract the eye, and with such a small class, it was easy to call the girls over for a quick look. We'll try to finish tomorrow. In the meantime, my classroom has a slight eau d'preserved pig scent when you walk in. 

Read aloud update: we started our last book of the year (probably) Millionaires for the Month by Stacy McAnulty. I had a 6th grader calculate how many pages per day we need to read to finish in time. Answer: 52. We did some extra reading today and made it to 64, so we're well on our way!

8

 Balloon prize: redo round

Today ended up being an outside day. Such perfect weather, it was too nice to stay inside. I helped Mr. E and the 7-8th graders film their talent show video after lunch, which took a long time and ate up noon recess. Mr. E and I conferred and decided to punt on class today, with stipulations. The 5-8th graders have been hypercritical of each other while we've played softball, so Mr. E gave a big lecture about positivity and being good role models, etc. IF they could play nicely, we would stay outside for an hour. They did it! 

I pitched, Mr. E umped, and the kids played. It was awesome. (I'm improving my pitches little by little...). After our hour was up, we went inside. Ugh, that was hard. 

Thinking about what I wanted to accomplish with my students this afternoon, I figured we could probably go outside and read for a while. The day I'd picked to read outside didn't end up being nice, so we set that prize aside for later. Today was later. 

Now to decide how long... We were going to finish playing pictionary; they were okay skipping that. Have recess; they wanted me to read-aloud while they played catch. That could work. And I wanted them to work on their egg car lab; they did that a bit in the morning and all assured me they'd be ready to test their vehicles tomorrow as planned. So out we went. 

I read aloud for another 40 minutes. It took a bit to pick a book; they weren't super sucked in by the stories we read from A Long Way From Chicago, so we read the first few chapters of a Gordon Korman book. They thought we could finish the book in an hour. We couldn't. They wanted to try anyway. So we did. It was okay but not as gripping as any of us were thinking. We'll see what they say about it tomorrow.

9

Balloon prize: read aloud all morning. They love that prize. We finished our read-aloud book and started another, A Long Way From Chicago by Richard Peck. I picked that one because we need a one day filler book, and this one is a bunch of short stories stuck together so we don't have to read the whole book if we don't have time. There's a book waiting at the library they want me to read before the end of the year (Millionaires for a Month, I've never read it before), and will pick it up tomorrow night when I'm running errands. 

Another fun book story from today... Social studies time found us studying the end of the Cold War, specifically the space race. I mentioned the somewhat recent movie Hidden Figures, and the 5th grade girl perked up, "Hold on Miss H! Just wait, just wait..." She dashed into the reading corner, shuffled around a bit, and about ten seconds later she waltzed right up to me and presented me with one of the picture books I have about the real-life ladies in Hidden Figures. "Miss H, isn't it great. I know your library almost better than you do!" Oh, proud teacher moment! 

My kids have really been digging into the books in the library. This is the first time I've had a class do that and it's lovely. They'll peruse the shelves and pull out books, sometimes asking me if I think they'll like it. Today one of the 6th graders found about five books he wants to read over the summer. He wrote them down on my checkout clipboard saying, "Miss H, you gotta stop having all these good books! There are too many!" My response: Not possible. 

Sigh, it's so nice to have a class that loves to read.

10

Balloon prize: use a beanbag all day. Once everyone figured out which bean bag they were using, things settled down... for a while. They were squirrely again today. And mean to each other. I went out for noon recess to pitch again and they were so critical of every little mistake. Sigh. It's only Monday. 

I'm trying to get my students NaNos published. All but one of the books are ready to go. That last one has to be approved by Amazon before it can be printed, so all that I can do is wait. I'm not sure how long it will take for the books to print/ship. We're running out of time! I'm tempted to just order the ones I have ready and do that last one separate. Shipping is really expensive though, so I'd rather combine everything in one order if I can. Hmm... I'll give it another couple hours before ordering. 

11

 A bit of a mixed up day today. Mr. E did another cooking class with his students, so we flip-flopped our whole afternoon. It was kind of nice actually. 

Before lunch, my class played the adjective game. Their two things to describe were a small piece of black tissue paper and a flower bud from the remnants of my birthday bouquet. As per usual, we had some interesting adjectives. The flower was "killable". The tissue paper was "enjoyable". 

Me: "How is that enjoyable?"
Them: "You can make art projects..."
Them: "You can eat it."
Me: "..."
Them: "Well, you can!"
Me: "That's not enjoyable."

After lunch instead of recess, my class played and filmed tone chimes, then we did 20 minutes of social studies. Such a good discussion today. We were looking at more photos from the time of the civil rights movement. 

At 1:00 we went out for recess. Mr. E was still cooking, so I went out with my glove (I remembered to bring it from home!) to pitch until he arrived. Once he got to the field, he umped and I kept pitching. It was fun having both of us out there, and the kids had fun too. Today's weather is beautiful, just a little windy, but not too bad. 

Since I was out at recess, I could call them in on time, so the 7-8th graders and I had plenty of time to learn about Antarctica. They had all done their spelling tests while Mr. E got food prepped for their cooking class, so we played a Kahoot during our study hall time. "We want a fun one, Miss H." So I picked one about the top songs from 2000-2019. Since I hadn't made it, I could play too. There was a lot of guessing going on, but it was pretty fun! Now they want to do one on farming. We did a quick search and didn't find any challenging enough for our farm boys. They might need to make their own...

12

We had THE best speaker for 7-8th grade today. It was someone I got connected with through the Croplife Ambassador program (the same organization of the previous Ag speaker who was a little dry). He is from Ohio, so we tuned him in remotely. 

Such an awesome guy. He talked about interesting things, but he seems to be just an engaging speaker. (He works as a sales manager for an ag company and also teaches a college level class in their ag economy department). I can tell he's a teacher; he called on individual students and seemed to be very comfortable talking to a group of people remotely. 

The 7-8th graders asked great questions and he answered them very thoroughly. I learned things too! He went over some slides generated by the Croplife program talking about how the world population is rising and we need to feed more people on fewer acres. He supplemented his talk with questions for my students about their lives and how they could be involved in the ag industry without being farmers. 

He also talked about GMOs/organic food, how insecticides affect pollinators and what the ag industry is doing to protect pollinators, and how tiling works (a student's question). And he gave them some advice when thinking about college. My biggest takeaway from that was 'take teachers, not classes'. He said he learned the most from specific teachers instead of course content, so if you find a teacher you like, stick with him/her. Good advice, and very true. 

Our balloon prize for the day was to read outside, but I forgot and it was kind of rainy so we're saving that for another day.

13

Oh my goodness, today was a hair-pulling day... My kids were so obstinate, it's ridiculous. Mostly whining and complaining about everything they had to do. Their balloon prize for the day was drinking juice or Gatorade during the day and only a few remembered to bring some. 

It was Miss K's last day, and some of the kids brought presents in for her: candy, some lotion, a fancy water bottle... I wrote a card and had them sign. One 6th grader made a chocolate caramel cake. We sent a piece home with her and will eat our pieces at snack tomorrow. A 5th grader had volunteered tulips from their garden, but he forgot them on the table at home. Bummer. 

Her last lesson went super well. It was on electrical charges. Her dad is an electrician, so she knows a ton about it already. I learned many facts I didn't know! The most interesting one was that every time you turn on a light, the electrical current creates a 'scar' on the filament from the heat of the electrons moving. So the longer you leave a light on, the bigger the scar, and the quicker the bulb will burn out. LED lights don't have filaments, so they don't burn out. Or, at least, they produce way less heat.

Mr. E had a meeting with someone to talk about using part of the woods as a play area for the kids (I think the answer is 'no' because of liability), so I played softball with the 5-8th graders. I got to pitch and did a decent job. I didn't bring a glove and ended up using Mr. E's glove which was waaay too big for me. That's fine; I could blame all my mistakes on having too big a glove. ;) It was actually really fun and ended up being my high of the day. 

We filmed 7-8th tone chimes. That went okay. Miss K had a tripod we used for filming which was super helpful. I didn't have to hold the camera! We filmed two songs; the first turned out very nice, the second was a little rusty. I need to watch them again to see if they're usable for the talent show/church. 

The 5-6th graders finally filmed our caterpillar skit. The first time went all right, just a few errors, so I made them do it again. Except they kept messing up, and then the ipad had low battery. Okay. Let's do it after math. They were really dragging their feet and even though we filmed it a few more times, I think the first time is going to be the winner. Again, I'll have to watch them to decide which we should use. Sigh. Glad that's over! Hopefully they'll all be in a better mood tomorrow. 

14

My students have pretty much wrapped up their pinata-making. I finally hung them up and cut a hole to insert candy. I'll wait to put the candy in right before we smash them, just in case. It took a surprising amount of effort to stick the string through them. Both Miss K and I had to work on the pickle. Turned out the balloon blocked the hole on the other side. But we got it eventually!

It's teacher appreciation week. Yesterday a student gave me a giant cupcake on behalf of PTL. Today I got a hollow chocolate apple. A different student brought me a pot of flowers with a little note saying "Thank you for helping me GROW!!!" So cute. And the flowers are bright and pretty, just the way I like them! Now I need to decide if I'm going to keep it at school or at home...

We didn't get a chance to practice our English skit today. Our balloon prize was read-aloud all morning. My thought had been to practice in the afternoon, but I forgot today was a PE day, so we didn't have time. Oh well. We'll practice tomorrow and hopefully film it. I plan to film the 7-8th graders playing tone chimes tomorrow too. I had wanted to do it today, but the girls said we shouldn't film on a PE day since they wear athletic clothes that day. Some of them want to dress up.

Speaking of filming, we teachers came up with a plan for filming our part of the Talent Show. We're going to shoot our little bits after school Thursday. I talked to our cook and our piano teacher about being in it. Our cook is still thinking; the piano teacher is in. She left me a note in my mailbox, "Emily, I'm good Wed/Thur after school to 'do our thing'- text and let me know" ...very clandestine. (I told her it was a secret from the kids). Quick refresher on our 'talents': I'm going to hula hoop badly, Mrs. L will juggle (she can't), Mrs. E is going to play piano (she's actually going to be good), Mr. D will make balloon animals dressed as Batman (his trademark costume for Variety Night). Miss F said she is the magic opener of glue sticks for her preschoolers and they are just in awe of her, so she's going to open things. I thought one of us could walk past with a pickle jar or something we can't get open and then she'll say her magic words and open it easily. Mr. E is our judge (not impressed with any of our talents). 

Mrs. O (piano teacher) is going to play a beautiful piano piece, but Mr. E will cut her off, "We already know you can play piano! What else do you got?"

"Uh, I can draw?" She's going to draw on the whiteboard or something. 

Mr. E, "Hmm, I think you better stick to piano."

Ba dun ching!

I can't wait for everyone to see it! 

15

Sigh. Fierce wind today. My kids were climbing the walls. Correlation? Possibly. I put some of that energy to good use and had them practice our Talent Show skit a bunch of times, but even with that, they were super silly. 

The class iPad gave me trouble. Somehow the storage is almost full even though I keep deleting the videos we're filming (and yes, I am emptying the recycle bin). I texted the IT guys about it, but no response yet. 

After school I watched this super awesome webinar about making Writers Workshop more effective. The speaker was engaging and passionate and an awesome teacher; I want to be her. And I have a lot of work to do to even come close. My students aren't the only ones who have been slacking on their English assignments... I could be doing a much better job teaching them. Smekens Education. I signed up for a two-day virtual conference this summer to help me plan better ways to teach reading/writing in my classroom. I know it's going to be good!

Tonight is weather spotter training watched virtually with a college friend. Don't worry; I'm not signing up to be a spotter. Just learning stuff about storms and how to spot dangerous ones.