Checks and Balances

"Will you give me candy if I get a perfect score on this reading log?" a student asked today.

I glanced at his log and shook my head. "You won't get a perfect score," I told him, "because you didn't capitalize the titles of the books you read."

My intention was for him to correct his error, but that didn't happen. "I'm going to get someone else to check it," he said.

"It will still be incorrect," I replied.

"He won't see it," he assured me.

"But, I know it's wrong," I reminded him. "Remember me? The one who records the grades?"

"So no candy?" he asked rhetorically.

I nodded. "And capitalize those titles, would ya?" 

EST to the Rescue

I frowned when I saw that it was raining this morning when I got up; there would probably be no walking to the farmers market in such weather. The rest of our group rose a bit later, but the day was still wet and blustery. At last, a little before noon, the sun came out and blue skies prevailed-- our trip to the market was a go after all!

But it wouldn't have been if not for the turn of the clock last night, for the farmers market closes at 1, which was one hour later today.

They Have Some Splainin to Do

While I was out on Friday, and my class was being supervised by a substitute, I received the following messages:

Student 1: SHE SPIT ON THE FLOOR WHILE SHE LICKED MY SCREEN Tongue out. SHE DID NOT SPIT IN HER HAIR OK DONT BELIVE HER! I AM NOT LYEING

Student 2: What!!!!!!!!!!Yell

Student 3: i did not lick his screen i pretended to the i laughed and drooled and it got in my hair and fell on the ground. after that i cleaned it up.

Sigh. Won't that be a fun conversation on Monday.

Ms. Brightsides

As I mentioned yesterday, Heidi's parents are in town and the main activity on the agenda is shopping, both for Heidi's birthday and some early Christmas gift buying as well. Usually, I excuse myself from a day at the mall, but this time, I really couldn't say no and so here we are, entering hour 5. Best to look at the bright side, I think-- I got my 10,000 steps 2 hours ago!

We'll See

I'm going to be out of school tomorrow because Heidi's folks are coming into town-- in fact they are stuck in our infamous rush hour traffic even now. It's usually kind of a chore to make sub plans, but today I told my students I would be out and instructed them to keep going on the stuff they are working on. They seemed to really embrace the idea, and when I told them that I was trusting them to be responsible, they practically cheered: "We can do it!"

You Know the Drill

As I've mentioned before, I have an activity where the students in my reading class have a set of question starters organized in Bloom's taxonomy, from lower to higher order thinking skill. Their task is to compose a five question quiz based on the memoir we are reading. Each question must be from a different category and they also have to provide an answer key. Then they give the quiz to another student (and take one that someone else has composed), grade the quiz that they created using the key, and have a conference with the other student about the results.

They think it's fun, and so they cheerfully revisit the text, ask higher order questions, and answer them-- twice! As they work on the assignment many students include creative twists, and some of the quizzes are both amusing and revealing, like the one today with this set of directions:

Just answer the question with something you think is correct.

Sonny Days

"Is that your son?" one of my students asked when a young PE teacher on our team stopped by my classroom to get the details about our field trip today.

"No!" I rolled my eyes at the suggestion, but then considered it a moment: he is a tall, blue-eyed skateboarder with a cute little man bun who works really hard in the best interest of his students.

"But, I'd take him if he needed a home," I added.