This was the second week back from Spring Break. I didn’t write after the first week (Week 30) because as things were “sub-optimal” that week, and I really wasn’t in the mood to voluntarily call up memories of what had happened, let alone reflect on it. This week started off much better. How much better? Like my class had a personality transplant. Based on that, I’m chalking it up to a rough transition back to classroom routines after a week off.

Some things that went right the week before last, and didn’t work so well this week…

While Week 30 would try the nerves of teachers of lesser experience, the kids did a heck of a job on their end of week assessment. I have the students write those. In this case, due to SBAC testing, we did not have computers available to work on, so they had to hand-write their responses. The class did a super-excellent job on the whole, with very few requiring revision or re-writing. This week’s writing is not so great.  I don’t want to read too much into this. Was it that students being a little too loose in week 30, and better behaved, but not learning as effectively in week 31? Recent articles have come out on the effectiveness of reading and writing on computer versus paper and print, is it that? The painting above is a good object lesson in the history of reading into things what we want to see.

Image Credit: Jackson Pollock, Number 31, 1950 by Detlef Schobert, on Flickr