Cincuenta Días

We have been in school for 50 days now. Some days I can't believe we've been in school for so long, but when I realize we have 170 school days this year it seems like it'll never end.

My kids have already come so far though and it makes me excited to think about where they'll be in another seven months.

At the beginning of the school year they didn't even understand "Put your chair on top of your desk and line up". Now they can do that flawlessly. I'm still not sure they know what their desk actually is, but they know the routine.

In the beginning a good chunk of my students were getting 30, 40, and 50 percents on their spelling tests. Now those same students are getting 60's, 70's, and 80's. They are starting to learn how to sound out letters to create words and that's pretty awesome stuff. It's great to see their face light up when they've sounded out a word correctly! I've been giving a spelling test where the students just have to identify the correct word out of three. Next week some of my higher students will start doing an actual spelling test and I'm very excited for that.

For the past month we have been discussing "matter" in Science class. We've done a nature walk, a sink/float station, and an identification center. This week we are talking specifically about "mixing matter", so today my students are going to be making Lemonade. I realized around 2:00 yesterday afternoon that this hands-on activity could go really badly. So I ran down to Jeff's room and asked if he and his sixth graders would like to help out. Luckily he agreed, so now I'll have another adult and 21 eleven year olds helping. That should make things run a little more smoothly. Yesterday the kids created the most adorable signs that say "Lemonade Stand". I'll be sure to take plenty of pictures today so you can see them. Hopefully it's going to be a fun day!

Tomorrow I have my first set of parent/teacher conferences. I should probably be nervous about them, but I'm actually excited to be able to sit down with my students parents one on one. I would love to be able to tell them face to face how wonderful their child is or what their child needs to improve on. I'm lucky that I have Wendy because she can translate everything for me.

Wish me luck...

“Overcome the notion that you must be regular. It robs you of the chance to be extraordinary” –Uta Hagen