The Blog of Ms. Mercer

Well, the week started with me being sick and staying home.  It was either a cold, or a reaction to last week’s flu shot (shot Wednesday night, illness Friday night). Then dh got it. I was better in time for Halloween. Okay, as you can tell from this, I don’t like Halloween. In fact, I hate all candy-based holidays with the cold loathing of 10 years of dealing with the after-effects of sugar highs, and now that I have my own nine year old at home, I really don’t get a break from it, BUT…it was not so bad this year. First, being sick, I didn’t get a Halloween costume together for son. He was perfectly okay with wearing a two-year old costume (SpongeBob) and did so without complaint (unlike this “lucky” mom). And I was worried about work, cause one sugar-filled class was a pain to deal with on Wednesday, but they were all pretty good for the rest of the week. I’ve had worse Halloween seasons, so I’m thankful in advance of Turkey Day.

Enough prattle about me and my egocentric concerns, let’s look at the lab…

I was only around three days. I’m having issues with my ELD class which is not really ELD (it has all the low scoring EOs - native English speakers). I wanted to do more last week, but got sick, and came back, the learning system they use (Orchard) is buggier than the Mosquito Coast, and well…I’m going to  try for podcasting in the next week. It’ll be hard because it’s a big class, kids are arriving late (start of school day), and there are three different grade levels.

Sixth grade movie project is progressing, but too slowly (my illness did not help). I want this done now, and one teacher would like to move on to ancient civ unit. I think we can move on in part because not everyone can work on the movie all the time, and at the same time, so I’ve started the new unit. Let’s hope next week goes better for all of us.

I have a problem with a student in fifth grade who is off task, and will not take ownership (always pointing to someone else when she is caught, “but they’re blah, blah, “). I hate being a pain, but her writing is well below grade-level and searching Google for info on Barbie is not going to get her where she needs to be.  I showed them an awesome video on the Hubble site called “Revelations.” They were all rocking out and watching the images, and having a good old time.

Fourth, hmm very difficult grade level, but many of the kids were suspended this week, so things were a little smoother? I’m going to introduce them to spreadsheets. This week was hard in some ways (videos on economics) and easy in others ( a game on Disney called Hot Shot at Business).

Third and Second were nice. Magic school bus, and moving them over to web pages with links so they are starting to do basic Internet navigation.

Okay, more feel good prattle for me. Sorry…

First, big score with adminstraters that I preserved in this slide show:

[slideshare id=151971&doc=jott-1193875920160771-5&w=425]

Then, a co-worker as nice enough to give me my site’s coveted Kudo Quarter. It’s a quarter on a string of green yarn, that’s given from staff member to staff member for doing something they liked. I got it for making an effort to communicate and tailor my lessons to what is being taught in the regular classroom and support their teaching. It’s nice to be recognized, and get a pat on the back like that.