New School Year – Day 20

“You were supposed to answer these questions with complete sentences,” I said.
”Wrestling, fighting and hitting is not a complete sentence. The school principal is not a complete sentence.

The sixth grader looked at me and said, “Well, to ME they ARE complete sentences.”

“Oh, really? You are just going to create your own little world, or what?”

Today I had a rambunctious group of Kindergarteners at one school in the morning and a pretty good

group of sixth graders in the afternoon. I changed the lesson plan a little for the K’s because I didn’t feel like I could keep the reins on them if they did “stations” (kids split up into various areas to work independently) – not with this group and not with me not being familiar with their stations. So, I read 3 Mercer Mayer books to them and we talked about them, and I rewarded their good sitting/listening skills by teaching them the “Pizza Hut” song. Also did the “Hokey Pokey” earlier on.

When some boys would not stop talking, I removed them from the group and made them sit over to the side. Later, when a girl did it, I told her to go sit at the table and she refused. Twice. So, I told her to go and “clip down” which means moving down on the behavior chart. She refused. So – I moved her clip down. I asked her to move to the edge of the circle so that she would not be surrounded by other girls and she refused. So – I moved all the other girls away from her. Part way through the next book, she began crying loudly about “clipping down” and not wanting to be on the yellow level. I ignored her, for the most part.

Sixth grade went well, overall. A little rambunctious and talkative, but not too bad. When we went outside for recess it was so INCREDIBLY GORGEOUS outside that I decided that an extra 10 minutes of recess was warranted. 🙂

There was a particular math problem that we were supposed to do together but I did NOT know how to do it – just couldn’t remember and the Teacher’s Manual was no help. So – they had to do that one themselves. I didn’t tell the kids. I did help them with some other problems, though.