Day 29

Yesterday was the end of the sixth week and the tenth day of this blog. My students leave at 1:25 on Fridays. Fridays are our test days and I evaluated my students three ways. We had our Friday spelling test and pretest for the next weeks words. We did DIBLES testing in our small reading groups, and we had our first Science quiz on volcanoes & earthquakes. I have not corrected the tests so I do not know how well my students did.

Before the Science test reviewed the Science Vocabulary words in preparation for their quiz. I discovered some issues with our DIBLES materials and hope to have them fixed by next week. I did not have large print reading examples for all three of my reading tutors and will get them copied by next Friday. Additionally, some of my testing booklets are not in order. I now need to record my DIBLES scores. I also finally completed my last student on the IOWA test. When I sent my materials to the Assistant Principals office, both the Principal and Assistant Principal were in the office. The principal told my student that since I had finally completed my testing (the last teacher in the school) that I could stay for another week. My students had a good laugh over it.

I spent about a half hour going over Brain Teasers with my students. They had fun and it gave me an excuse to give them a reward for answering a question right. I put up 20 questions every day and invite my students to submit answers for the questions. The student who answers the most questions right gets a reward. The questions stay up all day. They can use the computers in my room during recess if they want to. So far only two students have participated. One young lady had won both days.

Yesterday I had my weekly weigh-in, and event look forward to every week. If I gain week I owe the class treat. If I loose weight I do not owe them a treat. I have a line graph on my wall showing my progress, rather my lack of progress. After six weeks I am exactly where I was on week number two. The students enjoy it so I continue with it.

After our students left on Friday, the fifth grade team got together for their bi-weekly planning meeting. We reviewed our progress with our Science unit and then set things up for our Math unit. In Science we are on our Earth unit (I will start weathering next week) and working on chapter 2 in Math. The principal set in with us yesterday and also one of our reading specialists. We completed our team meeting and went back to week.

I left early yesterday (4:30 p.m.) because I will come in on Sunday. Either I stay until 8 p.m. on Friday night or I work for several hours on the weekend. That is life on the 5th grade front.