Blowup

Holy cow my kids were at each others' throats today! Tempers were running high and hot. Three of them yelled at each other over the course of the day (over little things, like someone was too bossy in what they were saying or someone always gets kicked off the couch). Ugh! 

We had to have a class discussion about couch rules. Our end results: helper of the day gets first dibs on the couch; if you haven't had a turn, you get next choice; you can't sit on the couch two times in a row. They wanted to add more rules, but I said we should live with these for a week and then reassess. 

I was not the 7-8th graders' favorite person today. First I gave them the news they had to count picture books read in MINUTES not pages. That completely wrecked their grand plans of reading the same book over and over again for mega pages. Then, it was discovered that the orange spelling group needed to write sentences this week instead of definitions. One out of four remembered/checked those instructions. So three had to re-do the assignment. One 8th grader said, very politely, "Please Miss H, leave our classroom before you tell us anymore bad news."

One nice thing from today: the 7-8th graders have been on a mission to find books to read so they can win the I Love to Read Month class challenge (so they can have a shootout vs teachers). They noticed I have more shelf space, so they decided to make a display of their favorite books. The boy who did it moved a shelf of books down, "so it will be more at eye level, then it's more eye-catching!" It actually inspired some of my kids to pick out some of those books!