Fly Butterfly Fly...

The first grade class across the hall has been studying and hatching butterflies for the past several weeks. I have really enjoyed running over to watch the latest stages of development.
Yesterday was their release day. The teacher takes the kids to the courtyard, opens the butterfly cage, the first butterfly opens its wings and starts to fly away.
Up, up, up it goes, the kids are cheering and full of excitement, when along comes a bird and eats up the butterfly in mid-air! The kids were all screaming!
Luckily the rest made it out into the world safely and it could of been a teachable moment on the food chain.

So then I find out that over the previous weekend some butterflies had gotten out of the cage, on Monday there was a sub in the classroom. The sub is teaching and here comes a butterfly and lands on the table in front of him. He grabs the math manual and smashes the butterfly to death. The kids were yet again screaming. Let's just say the classroom teacher was quite livid when she got wind of that story.

The Cafe Book...

I was super excited at the arrival of the new book, The Cafe Book by the two sisters, last week. I have been slowly reading the book whenever I get a chance, absorbing and thinking of how I am implement their CAFE system into my reading block. This is what I have been looking for! This is the missing piece to what I have always wanted to do and accomplish in my classroom. I am right now dabbling with meeting groups with students at different reading levels but with similar needs.
I am really looking forward to getting this started next school year! I have so many ideas running through my head right now! We have less than two months left of this school year still and I'm already thinking of next year.

Squishing My Jello...

I gave up sugar over three weeks ago, it wasn't so bad, yes I would dream of cakes, cupcakes, cookies, and donuts, but I made it through. In the beginning Sugar Free Jello was my savior for when I needed something a little bit sweet.
One day after lunch, around the time I need a little sweet kick, I was eating my sugar free jello at my desk. The kids were quietly working on their math boxes and I was checking their page when they were done.
Now sometimes I like to squish my jello all up in the cup and then eat it. So as I was doing so one of my boys, "Mr. Witty" comes to get his journal checked.
I told him just a sec I need to finish squishing my jello, with a smile on my face knowing how funny it sounds.
He looks at me and slowly goes, "Ohhkayy, that is not something you hear everyday." Then gives me a look.
I laughed so hard, he was right.

Area is Killing Me...

For the past couple weeks I have been teaching area and perimeter of rectangles, parallelograms, and triangles. In my opinion, this is one of the easiest concepts I have taught the whole year. Or so I thought...
After countless practice and me feeling confident that they can do it, I give them the unit test, I let them take detailed notes in their JAM (journal about math)journal and use their notes when taking the test, yes the unit test was a bit more applied, but I prepared them for it, or so I thought again...
Come to see that only 2 kids, count them 2 kids got and A and a B. One A and one B out of 23 kids! YIKES!
So back to the drawing board. Give them more time and practice at finding area and perimeter. Let them study, take some more detailed notes in their JAM journal and then give them an extra credit/makeup quiz. I have not graded them, but just flipping through them, it doesn't look good. It is so obvious that some students didn't study or take notes. Ahh, back to the drawing board, again...

A little bit of nothing...

You know not much has been going on lately. Last week was spring break, which was very badly needed. The weather suck royally. Rain, cold, cloudy, then the last day of break we got a freak snowstorm and got about 6 inches of snow! It was kind of depressing. I think my body is lacking the Vitamin D you get from the sun. I'm turning into Vampire white. The characters in Twilight can pull it off, I'm not sure if I can pull off sexy ghost white.

Anywho...
Yesterday was April Fool's day, which I forgot about. This would of been the class to do a trick on. Instead they tried to do tricks on me. One boy tried to put a sign on my back that said "April Fools!" Then after lunch the boys give me an envelope and say, "Don't stick your hand in it."
I opened the envelope and it vibrated quickly, made me actually jump. Some sort of gizmo inside to make it do that. I admit it was good.
The best April Fool's was from a boy my first year teaching, came in with a cast on his arm, he had broken it earlier in the school year, and thought that he did something again to it. Played "broken arm" the whole day, even got the class to go along with it. I played up to it, helping him and whatnot. Then at the end of the day found out he was playing me all along. This was a first grader, so props to him for being so clever and getting the class to keep it quiet.

Oven just buzzed, dinner done! One more day this work week and 8 1/2 more weeks of school left!!!