Anyway, yesterday was a good day at school (I think...though now I can barely even remember). I went to bed nice and early last night and woke up to my roommate's mother calling, explaining that she could not get ahold of Brittany (yes, my roommate and I have the same name) and could I please tell her that they don't have school today?? I was excited at the prospect of having a surprise day off school and considering my school would be closed as well, considering that most of the other schools had decided to close due to bad weather conditions. So, I checked Wood TV 8 and guess what?? 50+ school closings and which schools do you think were still in? Grand Haven!!
So, I went to school today, while all of my friends stayed home and had a pajama day. Though, it wasn't all bad because my kids were unusually calm today and my lessons went very well. I led the morning lesson, which was interrupted by a tornado drill (So the students would know what to do if there was an actual tornado--quite important considering a tornado warning was already issued for the county). Then I led a story with comprehension questions, which most students completed without any problems.
Later I taught math and today we were learning a whole new concept so it was an important day. We learned how to solve two-step story problems. My students were great listeners and we got through the lesson without any problems. About partway through the lesson I decided that the students may get more out of the lesson if they were physically involved. So, I had them act out the story problems. This was a lot of fun and helped my students to really grasp the concept. They really got it!! I was so glad that I stopped halfway through to try something new, because it went over very well.
Finally, at the end of the day I led them through a writing lesson. First we did Daily Oral Language using two Jane Goodall paragraphs. Daily Oral Language deals with editing incorrect paragraphs by looking at spelling and grammar. This is no longer required in the curriculum, but my teacher and I both think that it is important and that our students could use it, so we decided to implement it into our writing lessons. Today was the first day of implementing this and it went very well. After editing the paragraphs together as a class, I had the students go back to their Halloween stories that they had written and edit them just as we had done with the paragraphs. This seemed to work well and really incorporated the DOL.
While most things are going wonderfully in our classroom, there is one thing that we are having a real problem with and that is mean girls. Many of our girls (seriously, about half) are being very mean to the other girls. They use attitudes and say mean things and generally do not treat each other with respect. My teacher suggested taking the girls into the hall and talking to them about the issue, and while I think this is important, I also wonder if some team building activities would bring the girls together and make them realize that they need to be respectful towards one another and work together. I may do some further research on this and look up some games/activities that may be helpful. Any ideas on how to do this would be greatly appreciated. I just feel like something should be done to stop this before they reach middle/high school and turn out like this:
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