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.