An Awesome Friday

I have to admit that I have been bored with reading class the past few weeks, but I think I have figured out how to make things a bit more interesting.

Novel study - We have been reading Bud, Not Buddy as a class for the past month. The kids love the story, but we are all a bit tired of reading from the book every day. Last week, as we approach the end of the book, we got to the part **SPOILER ALERT** where Bud is taken in by a group of musicians, loves hearing their music, gets a musician name (Sleepy La Bone), and finds out that Mr. C is actually his grandfather. Well, on a whim, I asked the students to come up with their own musician name and we shared them on Thursday. It was so much fun, and the kids gave me a name - Turbo Turner, to which I did the robot dance. Yes, it was totally nerdy.

That night I realized that the students did not know what big band music of the 1930s sounded like (the type the band in the book plays, as it is set in the '30s). The next day I brought in a few samples for the students. Wow, it was pretty awesome to watch them diggin' the tunes! I had them listen to the way the instruments spoke (which was described in the text). I am so glad that I tried this out! I will definitely do this type of thing in the future. Kids just love music!

I also introduced the students to an e.e. cummings poem in light of the poetry focus lessons. the poem is:

1(a

le
af
fa
ll

s)
one
l

ines

The students were baffled that this could be a poem because it looked so weird. Well, we examined it and I showed them the letters written horizontally all smooshed together: l(aleaffalls)oneliness. It means, a leaf falls in loneliness. The students were actually interested in the information I was giving them!

All in all, Friday was an awesome day in Reading and I realized that I am going to have to insert various "non-curriculum" tidbits into my lessons. I noticed that they were more engaged. Perhaps it was my excitement, or just that we strayed from the usual format that day. What ever the case may be, I hope to have this happen more and more in the classroom.

The Rappin Mathematician Decimals

The Rappin Mathematician Decimals

I am excited that I found this video! I am teaching a mathematics lesson about the addition and subtraction of decimals. This video will be perfect, the chorus is "just line up the dot and give it all you got." It is still in my head. Hopefully it will help the students remember how to set up one of these problems.

So much to do, so much to do....

So, now that I am immersed in student teaching I see why we were warned that we will have time for little else this semester. Not only am I planning lessons, assessing students, reviewing data, going to numerous meetings, but I am writing, writing, writing. Thank goodness I was an English major! I can bust out a paper with relative ease, but I sure do agonize over it. Of course, I am writing this post as a break/distraction from my writing endeavors. To my fellow MAT folks, should you be reading this, PLEASE tell me how you are able to find some sort of balance because I am about to fall over.

In the Zone (work, not proximal development)

Why is it that I always get "in the zone" late at night? I hate that I am a night owl, yet I chose a profession that requires me to be up at the crack of dawn. I guess I will just have to retrain my body to get to bed earlier. The problem is that I come home and start working and it just gets my brain going. I begin to cross items of my to do list and before I know it the clock says 11:00PM. What's a girl to do? Tips, please.