Labor Day Weekend!

It's so nice to be relaxed on a three day weekend. My lesson plans and grading are done, and I'm just enjoying my wii. Tomorrow I will be catching up on the house and garden though. However, I plan to spend some time at the Teacher Materials Center (TMC) laminating some month titles for our calendar, creating a nifty new bulletin board for our Mesopotamia Museum, and some miscellaneous things.

I'm really excited about this Mesopotamia unit I've created. As we study different things, the students are creating things to create a museum of Mesopotamia. So far we've created cylinder seals, a ziggerat, and a Sumerian home. My idea for the bulletin board is to draw an unlabled map in the center on brown wrapping paper stuff to make it look old. The title will be something like Museum of Mesopotamia. The kids will individually illustrate different Mesopotamian inventions to surround the map, and they will label the map as well. They've already had a basic map quiz, but I would like them to add a little more detail. In the next couple of weeks, I also want to take them to SAU's archeology museum to see some real artifacts as well as how a museum is set up.

I'm really concerned about my other classes however. I'm not exactly sure what all the problems are, although I have speculations, but I have a few kids not doing well at all, and my two fifth graders who are straight A students are having ulcers because they're getting B's in a few things. I know it's not all me, but I want to do my best in being clear and teaching well as well as being fair in grading. A couple things I'm going to start doing is to highlight all quizzes/tests in my lesson plans so I can review the material as well as giving the students a good heads up. I need to do some penmanship review, which I've already added into my plans for this week. I feel like I never have enough time to be fully prepared or to grade. I need to give papers back sooner so the students can be more updated on how they're doing and what to change.

Oh, for those interested in my "problem of the day," sometimes they're riddles, sometimes they're random math story problems, sometimes they're word or other puzzles. The one for Tuesday is a tanagram of different shapes that will arrange to make a square.

And, can I just say that my favorite is the one that gets in the most trouble. He's just too sweet. He's just never where he's supposed to be. Friday I told the kids that had missing work they would have to miss recess until they got it turned in. Just before recess he turned in his spelling sentences, and I told him he could have recess now. He randomly engulfed me in a hug. So charming.

Anyway, that's the ups and downs of school so far. I love it, but I'm always wishing I were more with it. I'm hoping that that will continue to get better over time.